You Can't Build A Passionate Community If No-One Can Find You - Dominic Woodman

You can’t build a passionate

community, if no-one can find you

My first 2 5 designs were terrible

Eventually they got better

●Get something done

●Similar Circumstances

●Impart Knowledge

Getting that right, doesn’t mean people

can find you.

World’s most awesome community

How do people find communities?

:)

Content doesn’t come from one person

Crowd by James Cridland licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

Common problems for communities

Common problems

for all sites

We’ll cover this bit

Problems

3 by i_yudai is licensed under creative commons 2.0.

Duplicate

Content

ThinContent

Badly Optimize

d Content

Fix duplicate content

Two redheaded twins during the Roodharigendag (Redhead Day) in Breda, Netherlands by Eddy Van 3000 licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

There’s a lot of duplicate

content online.

Some of it is identical

In communities the common problem is

similar content.

Why is this a problem?

Rank increases on these 4 days. Why?

There are two different URLs ranking

client/good-resourceclient/bad-forum-thread

Here good resource is being shown

Google is going to need some help.

1. Moderate existing content2. Creating Resources3. Preempting Questions

They do overlap a little bit.

ModerationDevelopment Time - None

Personal Time - Large

1

Creating ResourcesDevelopment Time - None to small

Personal Time - Medium

2

●Combining Knowledge

●Prominently Linked

Pre-empting QuestionsDevelopment Time: Medium to Large

Personal Time: None

3

Duplicate Content

ThinContent

Badly Optimized Content

Fix thin content

A tornado approaching Elie, Manitoba. by Justin1569 is licensed under creative commons 3.0.

Content that wouldn’t satisfy a user’s query.

Small amounts are just bad pages. Large amounts can weigh down an entire site.

Where can you find it on community sites?

Threads

Automatically generated pages

Actually it’s not just 1 page

1. Remove it2. Hide it from search engines3. Make it better

Remove itDevelopment Time - None to Small

Personal Time - Medium

1

Hide it from search engines

Development Time - None to SmallPersonal Time - Medium

2

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

bit.ly/see-robots

Make it betterDevelopment Time: Small to large

Personal Time: Small to large

3

Who would you interview?

Which question gets answered?

● Asking users for more detail● Having events with your best users● Manually formatting posts

Users asking for more detail

Taking a community offline

Making a post useable

● Asking users for more detail automatically

● Asking specific questions● Gamification

Bringing more people to the conversation

Providing ways to find thin content

bit.ly/gamification-sprint

Duplicate Content

ThinContent

Badly Optimized Content

Optimizing Content

The final piece we’ve been missing out is

some basic optimisation.

People are lazy.

Title tagMeta tag

H1

H2

1.Moderation2.Control Formatting

Options

ModerationDevelopment Time - None

Personal Time - Large

1

Before: Block now or later?

After: When should you block a cardigan’s sleeves?

Control Formatting Options

Development Time - LargePersonal Time - Small

2

Finally a little something extra

bit.ly/forumdates-sprint

Things you can do this week

Duplicate Content● Set up a schedule with your moderators for aggregating threads.● Find the most common 3 topics in your community and make stickied threads.● Aggregate the 3 most common topics and begin building resources for them.

Thin Content● Investigate if you can noindex individual threads.● Work with moderators to identify new thin threads and ask users to fill them out, or

encourage discussion.● Browse your site with SeeRobots and see if you can find thin pages like profiles which

are indexed.● Start looking at ways to automate nudging to users to provide more detail, messages,

emails, rewards etc.Optimizing Content

● Set up a schedule with your moderators to rewrite poor titles.● Meet your development to discuss the idea of providing a more controlled posting

environment.Bonus Points

● Send your development team the instructions on bit.ly/forum-dates

bit.ly/thisweek-sprint

Thanks! - @dom_woodmanOvation by Jason James licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.