Online Community Management For Dummies®

Chapter 10

Encouraging Community Interaction and Involvement

In This Chapter

• Making your online community fun and interesting
• Figuring out what others are saying about your community
• Gaining popularity through word of mouth

There's nothing more rewarding than watching your community grow and its members interact. When a community clicks, it becomes a congenial and positive place to interact. This camaraderie doesn't always happen on its own, however. Sometimes, topics don't come easily, or participation isn't happening. At other times, a community is entirely too serious and needs some fun to liven things up.

In this chapter, I focus on fun ways to encourage community participation and feedback, while keeping the tone light and positive.

Creating an Upbeat Environment

An online community doesn't have to be a perpetually serious place. Cerebral topics and daily debates get old after a while. Wouldn't it be better if your members walked away each day smiling or inspired to take action? Not everyone has the talent to make people interact and even laugh, and that's where you come in. With some creativity, you can take your community from a place to leave comments to a lively haven that folks don't want to leave. It's human nature to want to have fun.

You can't force community. You can't put members in the same virtual room and expect magic to happen. Instead, you have to get the ...