Running a Community - Ideas????????

in #community5 years ago

With the beta steem communities live a few weeks now, many of us have enjoyed the pleasure of playing around with the options and features available from the Hive community setup.

Features and options are limited at the moment and I do believe there is much work to be done to develop this further, but that's really for a feedback post and not this one.  The aim of this post is to try and gather ideas from other community owners and users on growing and running a great community.

I have a few ideas myself on things I am going to try and I would love to hear your thoughts, your suggestions, and your ideas.

When I look at other communities online, Facebook and Linkedin, there have been a few things I have noticed.  Some communities have a lot of posts, however, its self-promotion with no engagement.  No likes, no comments no activity.  Then there are communities that do not allow link drops.  These have a lot of discussions and engagement.  And there are communities with a good mix of discussions, questions and answers, and link drops.

I like the last the best.  A good mix.  But to get this, the community must be managed well.  It would be easy to have a community where people just post about the topic and then I could do a bit of curation and moderation.  But that's not the type of community I want to have.  Actually I already have one of these on Facebook and its a load of shit.

The audience to Excel for All is not really the current steem user and I will have to attract new members to steem for this community to be successful.  I will be using my WordPress blog, email list, student lists, and other social networks to attract new users.  But the community has to be appealing when they get there.  There must be a good mix, a place where they know they will get a solution if they ask questions and not just a place to read people's content.

New users mean redfish, with little or no SP to begin with.  So I have to try and grow these accounts as fast as possible.  To do this, I plan on having some weekly community posts.  The liquid funds earned on these posts will be put into a pool which I can then divvy out. If I divvy it out in vests rather than liquid, the community may grow faster. And it will encourage a mindset of ownership right from the start.

I plan on creating a leaderboard and doing something like the top 3 questions asked based on votes, or the top 3 solutions based on votes.  Maybe even something more complex like calculating influence within the community using a previously shown example of entropy and information gain. This will require a little planning, access to the blockchain data and of course my magic Excel powers.  But I am sure I can create something that will encourage activity within the community.  

If you are running a hivemind community, I would love to hear

1.  How do you plan on attracting nonsteem users to your community?

2.  How will you encourage them to be active within the community?

3. How will you prevent your community from becoming a wall of content with little or no engagement?  Or maybe you would like a wall of content?

4.  How can we encourage new users to be powering up and have a mindset of ownership rather than using steem as a current cash flow?

 5. What tips can you share for running a community? 

I look forward to reading your replies

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until the community features allows for posts that only show on the community they will be about posting links but only links the community rules allow for.

I just released a post yesterday on how one of my communities will work in 2020. It will also have a sister version on Medium in the form of a publication.

https://steemit.com/hive-138861/@shadowspub/the-value-of-writing-prompts-and-a-place-to-publish-them-in-2020

Will everything on steem now be on question and answer, I will like to say that there's a forum like that on steem already. Maybe, just my ideas, structure something more creative that will give non-steem members reason to be here and stay.

A lot of users have tried to effect change on steemit by making this community a better place for all of us, but end up abandoning their projects due to the system break down. No one knows specially what will become of steem in the later years. All are striving to get known and milk from the curation and upvote, seeking support from people by appealing to their sense of duties.

What do we all have in common to be on steem?

why would everything on steem be a question and answer? that format is suitable for the community I am running and not for everything.

"All are striving to get known and milk from the curation and upvote, seeking support from people by appealing to their sense of duties"

this I disagree with.

we don't have to have anything in common to be on steem. however, communities bring people together becuase of commonalaties

Your ideas seem very good to me. Depending on how expensive it would be to create and maintain them, I would consider adding a SMT into the mix, to be able to control the parameters of the economy. The risk of having your own SMT, as a small community if there isn't purchase power or will, is the SMT value will continuously drop, as we have seen for many tribe tokens. Not that it would be a difference compared to what's been happening with STEEM price or other alts in the bear market.

About attracting non-steemians, they are of two types, as we know:

  1. early adopters, who prefer to try new products before others do, and they may be interested in trying communities, SMTs when they are launched
  2. mainstream users, who will mostly try a product at the invitation of someone they follow and trust, and then by word of mouth. But if the product they try is not easy to use, it better be really useful, and that only compensates for a while.

thank you for the kind words @gadrian. As you know, I am considering an smt but it will be a while before I make any moves on that, if I do at all.

bring new people won't be easy, that's for sure, however, I will give it my best shot and see how it goes. nothing ventured nothing gained.

  1. Money
  2. Money
  3. Remove money
  4. More money for those vesting
  5. Hold lots of Money(SP)

With this:

I plan on creating a leader-board and doing something like the top 3 questions asked based on votes, or the top 3 solutions based on votes. Maybe even something more complex like calculating influence within the community using a previously shown example of entropy and information gain.

And a little magic, I think you are ahead in thinking about how to on-board, grow, and retain new users :)

well I agree with 4 & 5. More for those that vest and hold lots of SP. But I am not 100% convinced about the rest of them. I am in a few awesome communities that have no money involved. And well if people only come for the money, they will be disappointed because I don't hold enough SP to give a sizable vote.

Good to hear from you Asher, I hope you are doing good and had a nice Christmas

Thanks, and you too!

Yeah the answers were slightly in jest, but the one thing Steem has going for it is the chance of some financial reward for interaction. I know it's not the way to push the product, but we shouldn't ignore the fact it's what it makes the place pretty unique.

If you need some data pulling at any point let me know :)

How can we encourage new users to be powering up and have a mindset of ownership rather than using steem as a current cash flow?

make a community, i.e for all stupid and silly jokes, where only people holding x amount of steem power are allowed in.

Can call it 'The stupid exclusive dolphin community' lol.

Sign me up! :)

Lol not a bad idea although there might be one already

I have created a couple of communities, but do not know hoe to answer any of your questions. I wanted a place for people to share there experiences and learn together:

Ham Radio
Learning Python
Raspberry Pi

I follow you and it will be interesting to see how things work out for us all. Still need for the beta interface to make some usability changes, but it will be very interesting to see what the other frontend's do once the communities are officially released.

yea there are some changes needed, though I have not yet given feedback, I really should. after all that's the idea of a beta.

Hi @paulag, a modest tip of appreciation:
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Thanks!

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Dear @paulag, i would like to invite you to give your opinion on my latest post:
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Do you remember when you want to set a coin in steem-engine and i warn you about do it?
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Of course if you want join our steem-bounty community you will be very welcome...
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steem-bounty, yes I should join that community

as for disputes between steem users, that's not up my ally, sorry!

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Running a community within the steemit community simply requires some natural social aptitude, social media finesse and a thick skin lol, since communities will rise and fall, will splutter and not get off the ground, will wilt after day 3, etc. So simply get on with it hey. And don't be attached to the outcome. If it takes, then all good, if not then no worries hey.

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