THE ART OF THE

THREAD Building community without losing your mind

THREE

principles:

1 SUCCESSFUL communities require

DESIGN

2 COMMENTS correlate with TRAFFIC

JUNE 2008 AUGUST 2008

3 near-term investment

LONG-TERM PAYOFF

ASK the

THE CHEAPEST QUESTION:

What do you think?

POSE QUESTIONS THAT REFLECT A genuine hunger for answers

POSE QUESTIONS WITH A SET OF actual respondents in mind

ANSWER the

a day later?!

WHEN IT COMES TO GRATITUDE, DON’T STATE IT DEMONSTRATE IT

Threads should feel more like chat than correspondence.

PRIZE the

PAIN the

“ “ I strongly believe that if this blog didn’t have comments,

it would lose about 75 percent of whatever magic it has.

Your most powerful troll-squasher is not

your delete button.

IT’S YOUR MEGAPHONE.

Assume good faith.

“ “ If I miss a couple [trollish comments],

don’t make the job harder by engaging.

AWESOME: YOUR COMMENTERS BECOME

your best sources

ULTIMATE: YOUR COMMENTERS BECOME

each other’s best sources

Treat comments as content:

the ASK … the ANSWER …

the PAIN … the PRIZE …

Assign Curate Edit Promote

Questions?