Building Your Community
You have a Great Idea. You’ve begun your online presence. Here are the top four ways to gather a community of people around your Great Idea.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Lots of people have a social media account. You can launch one for your Great Idea.
There are a lot of advantages to using Social Media:
- It is free
- You just sign up, and it works
- People will find you and follow you
- A community will gather
However, Social Media is not free. You will pay a price, and the price will be very high:
- The community that gathers will not be yours. Instead, the community will be gathered around your presence within the Social Media site.
- You are contributing your hard work to build the website of the Social media platform, and not your own website
- You will not own your own content. Instead, the Social Media site will own your content.
- And as we’ve been learning in recent times, there is a very dark side to Social Media: privacy violations, false information, and more.
- You will eventually be discovered by Internet trolls. Far too much of your energy will be squandered in dealing with them.
ALLOW COMMENTS AT YOUR OWN WEBSITE
If you have your own website, you can probably add a commenting system. People can post their own comments, right there on your own webpages.
Here are three varations:
- Open Comments
- Closed Comments
- Paywall
Variation 1. Open Comments
Most Content Management Systems allow anyone to post a comment. For many, that is the default.
Open Comments are advantageous to you:
- Once you set it up, it is free.
- People just sign up, and it works.
- People will find you and follow you.
- The community that gathers will be yours, instead of Social Media’s.
- You will be contributing your hard work to build your own website, instead of Social Media’s website.
- You will avoid the very dark side of Social Media: privacy violations, false information, and more.
However, there is a disadvantage to this:
- You will eventually be discovered by Internet trolls. Far too much of your energy will be squandered in dealing with them.
How can we get rid of that problem? Here are two ways:
Variation 2. Closed Comments
This is just like the above. However, before anyone can post a comment, they must first register with you. They give you their name and email address, and then you allow them to post comments.
Advantages:
- This makes people accountable for their comments.
- Very few Internet Trolls are willing to register, and hence you will have a lot fewer Trolls to contend with.
However, there is a drawback to Closed Comments:
- You will need to set up your registration system. Some web systems make that easy. Others do not.
Variation 3. Paywall
You make about half your articles open to the public. As to the other half, you hide them behind a paywall.
For people to read those hidden articles, they must register with your website. And use their credit card information to subscribe to your site. You charge them monthly. Or annually.
This introduces even more advantages:
- It makes people accountable for their comments.
- Very few Internet Trolls are willing to register, and hence you will have a lot fewer Trolls to contend with.
- Even fewer Internet Trolls are willing to pay you money, just so they can post inflammatory comments.
- You make an income from your hard work.
- Experts say people value for-pay content far more than free content. So by your charging a fee, people will value your insights more highly.
However, there are two drawbacks to a Paywall:
- Half of your total work will be hidden behind your paywall. That means the general public will miss out on 50% of your work.
- You will need to set up your Paywall system. Some web systems make that easy. Others do not.
PATREON
Patreon is a third-party site. It exists so content creators can accept donations in support of their work.
So you set up your Patreon page. And then on your website, you add a link to your Patron page.
There are a lot of advantages to using Patreon:
- It is free for your donors to use.
- You just sign up, and it works.
- It has a good reputation.
- It does not do nefarious things with people’s information.
- It is widely used.
- You can post private content at Patreon. That way, only your donors have access to it.
- You can allow comments only at Patreon. That way, you will almost certainly avoid Internet Trolls.
There is a disadvantage to using Patreon:
- From every donation, Patreon will extract a small percent.
YOUR OWN FORUM
You can set up your own forum. It can be at your own website.
A forum is like a commenting system (see above). There are three varations:
- Open Forum
- Closed Forum
- Paywall
The advantages and disadvantages of each are similar to the commenting systems I discussed above.
Variation 1. Open Forum
Most Forum systems allow anyone to post a comment. For many website systems, that is the default.
An Open Forum carries advantages for you:
- Once you set it up, it is free.
- People just sign up, and it works.
- People will find you and follow you.
- The community that gathers will be yours.
- You will be contributing your hard work to build your own website.
- You will avoid the very dark side to Social Media.
However, there is a disadvantage to this:
- You will eventually be discovered by Internet trolls. Far too much of your energy will be squandered in dealing with them.
How can we get rid of that problem? Here are two ways:
Variation 2. Closed Forum
This is just like the above. However, before anyone can post a comment in your Forum, they must first register with you. They give you their name and email address, and then you allow them to post comments in your Forum.
Advantages:
- This makes people accountable for what their comments.
- Very few Internet Trolls are willing to register, and hence you will have a lot fewer Trolls to contend with.
However, there is a drawback to a Closed Forum:
- You will need to set up your registration system. Some web systems make that easy. Others do not.
Variation 3. Paywall
You hide your Forum behind a paywall.
Marketing experts consider this one of the top ten ways to build your website and gather a community around your Great Idea.
For people to access your Forum, they must register with your website. And use their credit card information to subscribe to your site. You charge them monthly. Or annually.
This introduces even more advantages:
- It makes people accountable for their comments.
- Very few Internet Trolls are willing to register, and hence you will have a lot fewer Trolls to contend with.
- Even fewer Internet Trolls are willing to pay you money
- You make an income from your hard work.
- Experts say people value for-pay content far more than free content. So by your charging a fee, people will value your insights more highly.
However, there are two drawbacks to a Paywall:
- Your Forum be hidden behind your paywall. That means the general public will miss out on it.
- You will need to set up your Paywall system. Some web systems make that easy. Others do not.
Originally published on January 26, 2019
Last updated on July 12, 2023
TOPICS: comments, community, forum, marketing,