photo credit: Renato Ganoza

Posting on Branch, Geoff Stearns started a discussion titled “Seeding a new online community.” In his post, Stearns asks for ideas and practices for getting a new online community started.

He specifically references the video embedded at the bottom of this article. In this clip, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman says that he, and the other co-founder Alexis Ohanian, grew Reddit by submitting content under many different usernames.

He explains that, when he or Ohanian visited the submission page, they would see an additional field that other users wouldn’t: a user field. In this field, they could enter whatever username they wanted and, if it was available, it would then be registered and the content would be submitted under that name.

photo credit: LOLren

As people endeavor to add more features and sections to their forums and communities – more than “just” discussion threads – there is a great opportunity for additional value for all parties involved. But, in the thirst to be “more,” it can be easy to forget the cost that you may incur.

This can include things like articles and dedicated editorial, product reviews, Facebook-like profiles with comments and a wall, member blogs, chat rooms, wikis, photo albums and plenty of other dedicated sections that receive top billing, or close to it, on your community.

These sections can all be great, meaningful parts of your community. So, what’s the problem?

photo credit: psyberartist

This is a guest post from my friend Scott Fox, who runs ClickMillioniares.com, a lifestyle business community. He is the author of “Click Millionaires: Work Less, Live More with an Internet Business You Love.” Scott has developed successful premium membership programs for others, and for himself.

Online forums are great. They can provide friendly gathering places for people worldwide to meet and share information, build relationships, and have fun together.

Unfortunately, many forum owners find themselves challenged by the amount of time it takes to moderate a community to keep it friendly and welcoming for new members. Since most online forums are supported primarily by advertising, a question I often get is “How can I make money by charging for memberships, too?”

photo credit: winnifredxoxo

As we put together “Monetizing Online Forums,” we focused on identifying all of the potentially appropriate ways that you can monetize an online forum.

I think that a lot of people who run an online forum and want to monetize it aren’t fully aware of the options that exist. There is a lot more out there than just banners and display ads. I mean, those things can be great, but you don’t have to use them. If you do the research, you’ll find so much more.

In this post, I am going to walk through them. If you want to go into detail on any of these methods, learn who they are right for and how to integrate them in the right way, the book has all of those details.

I’ve had a copy of “Thank You and You’re Welcome”, a small, spiral bound book, on my shelf since it was released back in 2008. It was authored by Kanye West with J. Sakiya Sandifer. Recently, I had reason to pull it back out and I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the “Kanye-isms,” as the book’s description on Amazon.com calls them, apply really well to community management.

For example, the title of the book. A “Thank You and You’re Welcome” moment is when both parties involved in a transaction give and gain. West refers to his early work with rapper Common and how working with an established artist improved his credibility. At the same time, Kanye produced hits for Common that helped him reach new audiences. Both sides gave, both sides benefited.

photo credit: smplstc

This is a guest post from Benjamin Plass, a ManagingCommunities.com reader, who is the Head of Community Management for Goodgame Studios.

Every community manager has goals. Everyone wants their community to grow. The forum structure influences this growth. It is therefore very important to understand and adjust it to your needs and overall goals.

To make your community grow, you have to engage your first time visitors and new members. The conversion from reader to a posting member is a big step and as Patrick has discussed, the majority of your users will just be reading.

photo credit: mikecogh

I was recently watching a video released by an actor and popular YouTuber. He had announced plans to start a Kickstarter project to fund an idea that he had and that was the subject of the video.

Now, this video was on YouTube and with that comes YouTube comments, generally regarded as poor quality. You can add a healthy amount of self entitlement into the mix, too. But, what really struck me was the people who were offering him unsolicited advice. I want to highlight advice that fits into two particular categories.

The first category is people telling him how he should make money online. Don’t use Kickstarter, we don’t want to give you money (always love the “we,” forgetting that within an hour or two, the campaign already passed a thousand dollars). You should monetize your videos on YouTube, you’ll make way more money, you should do X, Y and Z.

Burson-Marsteller and Visible have released their third annual Global Social Media Check-Up report, detailing how the Fortune Global 100 participates on the social web.

Much of it is focused on how many accounts they have on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest, how many people follow them through those accounts and how active they are.

One of the metrics that I found most interesting is their reporting of the average number of mentions per Fortune 100 company on various segments of the social web. These segments were video/photo sites, Twitter, reviews/shopping sites, news, forums, Facebook and blogs. The data was collected in February of this year.

Here is how these segments ranked:

photo credit: ChristopherA

The 90-9-1 rule, popularized by Jacob Nielsen, based on research by Will Hall, says that 90% of users in an online community are lurkers who don’t contribute, while 9% contribute sometimes and 1% contribute frequently.

Last year, Paul Schneider attempted to update this principle by looking at a relatively small data set of 15 clients and suggested that the the rule should now be 70-20-10.

Once in a while, I see someone comment or write a post about how 90-9-1 is dead or no longer relevant or something similar. Sooner or later, if it reaches enough people, someone will come along and suggest the 70-20-10 rule needs to be updated, too.

photo credit: fauxto_digit

In response to my request for reader suggestions, Kal was kind enough to outline the following scenario:

“I run a very small online games community that has around 500 [daily active users]. … The community and games are free but there is also the possibility to subscribe which gives access to additional features such as new games to play and being able to change colours and styles of the website – things like that.”