Give us your favourite example of a successful online community? Actually, how do you define a ‘successful community’?
I don’t think there is a universal determinant of what makes a successful online community. Every online community should be unique and have its own goals. Some may want to reach 1,000 members. Others may want to reach 500,000 forum posts. Some may want to develop a community with engaging discussion and mature, friendly members. This raises another important issue when it comes to developing online communities – measuring success with numbers isn’t appropriate. You might have 100,000 posts but they might be full of abuse – is that a sign of success? On the other hand you may only have 100 members but they are creating podcast tran scription service or valuable content and representing everything good about your community. Harder to measure, but I would take the second scenario over the first every time.
I would have to include my own community,�Female Forum�as an example of a successful community. The site only launched in September, yet is has exceeded the goals I had in place for it for the first three months. We have a great bunch of members who have struck up real friendships with people that were once strangers. I can’t think of any job better than community building – bringing people together is an amazing feeling. �Read:�http://www.transcriberry.com
How did you decide Female Forum was where you wanted to go next? Was there a gap in the market or is it something you were really interested in?
I am passionate about online communities. Although I recommend people who are thinking about launching an online community to only develop one based on something they are passionate about, for me the subject doesn’t matter.
I wanted to give myself a big new challenge and develop a new online community from scratch. When I develop online communities, I want to do verbatim tran scription different. There is no point setting up a ‘cookie cutter’ online community that is no different to those that already exist. It took me a few months to find a niche that I thought would be worth pursuing – namely an online community for women.
It seemed that the existing websites that catered solely for women were overly complex. The community features tended to be hidden away and unintuitive. I thought I could do better. Sure, I am a man – but developing and facilitating relationships is basically the same regardless of your audience.
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