photo credit: jcfrog

One question I get asked a lot goes something along the lines of “how will forums keep up with [something]?” or “forums are old hat, why would people use them over [something]?” or “why use forums when you can use [something]?” However will forums survive? Let’s talk about it.

This is Limited Thinking

Forums aren’t going anywhere. Let’s get that out of the way. My great grand kids may well look back at this post and laugh at their crazy great grandfather and his talk of vinyl records, er- I mean forums. But, for as far into the future as I can possibly see, I do not see a time where structured, text based online discussion communities will cease to exist. Unless the internet ceases to exist or, at least, changes very dramatically.

Last October, I traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina for ConvergeSouth and the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro. I spoke at the latter, leading a solo session and participating in the day’s opening panel.

Led by Kelby Carr of Type-A Mom, the panel also featured Jared Smith of Charleston Weather, Heather Solos of Home Ec 101 and Anne Fitten-Glenn. It was titled “The Blogging Revolution” and we discussed blogging in general, the responsibility of it, where we saw the medium going and more. We had a great Q&A and discussion with the group that attended. Thank you to Kelby Carr and Dave Slusher for having me.

Unfortunately, we used up my entire camera tape before we ended, so I didn’t get the entire session. However, in the clip below, you can watch the length of the recording.

In addition to Vimeo, the video has also been uploaded to YouTube, in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

photo credit:
Caveman 92223 — On the Road Again!

Recently, on the e-mint discussion list, a member was asking for some suggestions for a list of 10 ways to kill your online community, with some humor. Taking approximately 10-15 minutes, I came up with a quick, fun, spur of the moment list and I thought I’d share it with you!

1. Don’t have any guidelines! We’re all adults – and cursing is fun! Weeeeeeeeee…

2. Since we’re all adults, it’s not like you actually need to visit your site much. A few times a month should be good.

3. Create an open group that anyone can join called “Moderators” and let anyone who wants to join in and move, edit or delete whatever they want. They’re here to help!

4. As the administrator, when you post, try to set the worst example possible. Since humans all strive to be better than one another, this will force your members to be awesome!

photo credit: love･janine

I recently took some time away. Literally three weeks without logging into my forums. And guess what? They were still there when I got back!

Regardless of what you do, what your profession is, what your hobbies are; sometimes, we can get wrapped up a little too much where we think something needs us every single day and cannot live without us. “I can’t leave – what might happen?!”

This is one of the reasons you want to have moderators or staff members of some kind because a smart staff member is golden at these times. If you don’t have one, it’s likely that your community is fairly small and might be OK without you for a while. Or, if you’d like, you could ask a trusted friend to watch the place for you. Just like you’d ask for someone to check in on your pets and make sure they are taken care of while you are away, you can do the same thing for your online community.

What did I come back to? Well, yes, hundreds and hundreds of new posts, public and in the staff forums, private messages and e-mails. But, beyond that, were my communities in ruin? Were all of the posts spam? Had numerous members left? No, no and no. Things were fine. Things were functioning. They could do without me for a while.

In a way, that’s good community management. If you have to be at your community at all times for it to work well, you should really go do something else because you are going to end up sapping all the joy out of this job (or hobby).

Unhappy with the activity on your community? One way to take matters into your own hands is to start topics on your forums, allowing people who want to participate to add to the activity, rather than having them feel as if they have to create the activity. After you get past the standard sort of threads, you may be wondering: where can I get ideas for new ones? Let’s talk about five of my favorite ways.

1. Social Bookmarking and News Sites

My favorite way to find interesting and/or funny content that I can share is on social news sites. My two favorites for this purpose are Digg (add me) and Mixx (me). The quickest way to do it is to visit the site and open up the main category pages or the categories that most interest you and scan the top stories. Share the ones that you feel are the most interesting and appropriate for your community.

There are plenty of other ones, like StumbleUpon (me), Yahoo! Buzz (me), Propeller (me), reddit (me) and Kirtsy (me). There are also niche sites dedicated to specific topics that may be even more helpful, such as Tip’d for financial news and Sphinn (me) for online marketing news.

2. News Aggregators

These sites allow you to see the biggest news stories of the day, from a very wide array of publications, from just a single site, which can save you time. The ones that I recommend are Google News and Yahoo! News. The sites are pretty straightforward.

But, perhaps even a bigger benefit is the ability to search for news related to your community’s niche in one place. So, for example, if your forums were about the Jonas Brothers, you could run a search for “Jonas Brothers” on Google News. You would then be able to see all related headlines and you can even sort them by date to find the most recent ones, if you need to. Or if your community was about or was interested in breastfeeding, you could monitor that.

A cool way to monitor these sources is with an RSS reader. For example, here’s the RSS feed for the Google News search “Jonas Brothers.” You can also subscribe to e-mail news alerts.

On January 28, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis sent out an e-mail to his private mailing list titled “We Live in Public (and The End of Empathy).” The e-mail talked about the state of the internet as it relates to how people behave online and how accountable they are for those actions. There is a dehumanizing element to the internet that is fed by anonymity and the fact that you don’t have to see or face the people you are talking to, or about. Jason posted the e-mail on his personal site. I’d recommend reading it. If you are a community manager or moderator, parts of it – at least – will resonate with you.

Jason invited replies, so I decided to send him one, since I enjoyed the e-mail and found myself identifying with parts of it. I can’t share all of what I sent, but here are some of the more important thoughts.

What Jason talks about, I’ve certainly noticed, as well, and it does bother me. I’ve been managing online communities for nearly 10 years now and it’s something that I battle on a daily basis, so this really resonates with me. I’d like to think I’m “winning,” my communities are free of this type of thing. I could never run a community that worked like that. My communities are friendly, respectful and family/work friendly (for the most part). It takes work to get there, but that’s the environment that I want and that is my goal – that is the allure of the community. We welcome disagreement, but it must be respectful. We don’t allow anyone to call anyone names, to flame people, to beat people down, whether it be a member, myself, a staff member, Britney Spears – whoever.

I caught this part: “At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.” I can say that, in my case, that hasn’t happened on my communities. That’s what I prevent. Funnily, that is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to give a blueprint on how to create a respectful community. Community managers, like myself, don’t have to settle for this sort of stuff, just because there are people out there who want to inflict it and people out there who cry foul when you stop them from doing it. You can stand up and you can protect your community. The problem is that it takes work and not everyone wants to do that. In some circles, it’s also not cool. It’s “censorship.” But, I don’t care.

I had a guy recently come to one of my forums and as his first post, I think, he posted and said that everyone else that had replied to the thread was a “clown.” Not in the funny way, but basically he said, “you shouldn’t take the advice of any of these clowns.” We removed his post and he replied to a member of my staff that the removal of that post reminded him of 1939 Germany. Ah ha, Godwin’s law! Yes, this comparison has happened many times. I’m used to it. I’ve been called every name there is. I’ve written about it some.

But, just because that happens doesn’t mean it needs to be that way. I would like to believe there is room for people like myself, who are cultivating communities with this in mind. Part of the problem is what Jason says – the mentality where people want to get as many pageviews, unique visitors, friends, followers, etc. as they can. For this reason, a lot of people don’t want to offend the users they have, so they let people do whatever they want. Sometimes they pass it off as “well, this is what my user’s want.” They take the traffic, they cash the check, but in the process, they create a community of trolls.

I was on the phone a couple of weeks ago with two people from a major corporation and I was giving them some feedback on an internal community they have going on and I told them that one of the luxuries I have is that I own my sites, I am my own boss – no one tells me anything. I don’t have to worry about someone above me that I have to please with numbers – someone that needs to see that the community has X number of posts, members, etc. to justify it. Results are good, but sometimes to get those results, to please your boss, you sell out the would be soul of your community and that’s sad.

Those aren’t my values and I’ll never run a community where that is OK. I would like to think this is not the majority – that what we hear in these IAS comments is the loud shouting of the minority. I hope so.

On last night’s episode of SuccessfoolTV, I came on to talk about online community, forums, social media, the book and more. I thought it went really well and that it was really informative, so I wanted to share it. You can check it out below.

Live TV by Ustream

Thank you to Alejandro for having me and to everyone who stopped in, helped to spread the word through Twitter and had kind words to say, during and after. I really appreciate it.

There’s a new book out called “Designing the Digital Experience: How To Use EXPERIENCE DESIGN Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love” and it was written by David Lee King. I met David a while back for something pertaining to my book and he was working on a book himself. He asked me to read a pre-release copy in consideration of advance praise.

I read the book and I enjoyed and was happy to provide him with the praise. Here is what I said:

When your aim is to provide a valuable product or service, it’s not just the product itself that counts, but the atmosphere that you have – the experience that you create. This is true of the offline world and of brick and mortar business, but it is also true online. The websites, communities, services, companies and individuals who provide their visitors with an enjoyable, memorable experience will have a distinct, noticeable advantage over those that do not. David Lee King’s “Designing the Digital Experience” presents solid ideas and strategies that can help you to gain that advantage.

If you have an interest in the subject, I’d definitely recommend picking up David’s book.

On October 21, I presented at a Social Media Club Louisville meeting via live video. It was actually the first time that I’ve ever done anything like this (I’ve given presentations, but never without actually being at the venue), but I thought it went well. The talk didn’t really have a title… but, I’m going to give it one now. I’ll call it “The Value of Online Forums and How to Approach Them as a Marketer.”

A big thank you to my friend Jason Falls who set it all up and emceed it. He recorded the video and posted it on the Social Media Club Louisville website, so I wanted to share it here. Please let me know what you think.