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Community manager TIPs | Forum

Yevhen
Yevhen Jan 7 '17
Here we will publish all the Tips and Tricks for beginners.
dave Leader
dave Jan 7 '17
Tip: 


php starts with <?php  and ends with ?> however if you ONLY have php in your file you dont need the closing ?>

Yevhen
Yevhen Jan 7 '17
Sorry =) But this topic I would like to open not for Developers but firstly for Managers. This tips will be not for technical side but for social. How to bring people, how to keep people on the site, how to engage them into community life, etc. =)
The Forum post is edited by Yevhen Jan 7 '17
Yevhen
Yevhen Jan 7 '17
TIP:
BEFORE creating Your first community, You need to know:
- what functionality Your users need (not YOU, but users)
- what type of community You need (social, private, public, commercial, voluntary, etc.)
- what type of registration You need (open, invitation, closed)
- what topics and goals of Your community are
- what 'pains' (problems) Your site will decide and help with
- why me or smbdy else should move from FB, G+, twitter to YOUR site (without nice mobile version and non-professional design)
- etc.

How can we do this? Easy! You have to make a research on Internet and find WHERE Your people are (which network). Example: Facebook. After that You have to organize a group for Your people in that network. Not a page but a group! Try to make it professional as You can. Waste 1-2 hrs for reading some nice instruction how to do this. After You get a necessary minimum of people - start Your work on hosting with Oxwall CMS. Don't show it to anybody! Unless You want to loose Your people. Now is a hard time. You will need some help of people who nows how to do this in a proper way.
Time to time You have to make some polls in Your group which will give You answers for the questions above. When the site will be ready, start to bring people one by one and polish Your role organization and security access rules..... to be continued...
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Jan 11 '17
Marketing TIP:


- Use facebook ads and google adwords for get you business grow quickly.

- Focus on SEO for you business and make that point to number 1 in you "to do" list. 

- Focus on mobile users they are more easy to bring to your new site then desktop users if you have a mobile app to you social website focus on that app more then you desktop version. Do not do the big mistake i did i was ONLY focus on my desktop version and that was a HUGE mistake i did when started my website.

- Not hire SEO freelancers mostly 90% are jokers and scammers who will not help you get better SEO and steel you money for SEO they own websites. Study SEO on MOZ and other SEO forums and do it you self you will have 100 times better SEO and save alot of money.


If i know some more good tips i wll post it here later


Thanks..


The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Jan 11 '17
Senior Developer Leader
Senior Developer Jan 12 '17

With Oxwall you can make different niche communities, so you have to decide what is going to be yours. There is gaming communities, free or open communities, closed communities, dating, stores, chatting, etc...


- There is a lot of possibilities, but you have to decide what is your main goal, you cannot start with everything at the same time if you don't have the money and time to do it all, so focus on your main business and as you grow you can now hire some people who help you doing repetitive tasks for a little money, so you can keep focusing on getting more people for your website. If there is no users there is no money, and nobody wants that.


- Decide how are you going to make profit of it. I have seen countless of websites come and go, their main problem is that they didn't know how to get money from their websites, you cannot put your money in something that is not going to be profitable, there is hidden costs in doing your website. So how are you going to pay your server costs, publicity, adding more plugins and features, even your internet connection? How are you going to make people pay for being on your website? Some websites does have investors and can start without the people paying for their services, but they have a plan on how get money from the people when they are grown enough. For instance, I'm the only one investor of my own website but I do have a plan to make profit of my website in 2 years and I know how to do it. Some others prefer to put adsense on their websites, that is good source of income too.


- You know what is best for your website, but your users know what they want, try to give them what they want but without compromising your main goal.


- Make SEO your priority #1, as OW-Ghost said. If the people search for you, they need to find you in the first page of google and other search engines.

- Make a facebook group for your niche, so you can get more people from facebook. Do not spam facebook, you can add your website url to your profile, to your group and your facebook page.

- Add moderators who helps you with the hard work, remove spam and help you grow.

- The moderators are free workers, they feel important so you have to set harder rules for them, because nobody wants a crazy mod who feels powerful and thinks he owns your community. So you have to show them who's the boss.

- Buy and install the plugins that make your website look better and work faster, nobody likes an ugly slow website.

- Automatize the repetitive tasks or get people who can make the repetitive tasks for you.

- Keep updating your website once every day at least, fresh content make the people come to your website more frequently.

- If you keep your website fresh, Google will crawl your website more frequently too.


- And the last but not least, keep going no matter what, there is evil people who wants to see you fail, there is people who doesn't believe in you, there will be a lot of wrong choices that you are going to make, difficult choices, bad moments in your life too. But if you keep going nothing can stop you from being successful.


I wish you all good luck!

Yevhen
Yevhen Jan 12 '17
Thanks! Impressive!
dave Leader
dave Jan 12 '17
One of the main goals should be content - content - content.  Be sure the members you do have are posting as much as possible. Any site without proper content has a very hard time gaining momentum.  This also gives something for the search engine spiders to grab onto to help people find your site. 


Some eye candy is fine but you should never put it as the top goal.  There are plenty of successful sites out there with very basic themes. People go there and use those sites because it gives them the content they need.  Content will get you more users than the most expensive theme will.

OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Jan 12 '17
Yeah i agree... content is the king for bee visible more on interent...i agree totally i was forget that point :)
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Jan 22 '17
Question to SD:



>>>- The moderators are free workers, they feel important so you have to set harder rules for them, because nobody wants a crazy mod who feels powerful and thinks he owns your community. So you have to show them who's the boss.<<<



How do you get free moderators to a dating site? I think easy more to a website that have forums and groups and other things that not belongs to a dating site, but how to get free moderators to dating sites? any tip?

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Jan 22 '17
dave Leader
dave Jan 23 '17
OW-Ghost  -  promoting from within is a good way. Some might think that this may cause a conflict of interest however if someone has established good character and is respected then that persons character values will not allow them in most cases to do anything malicous.   You can also approach them to ask them if they would mind removing their dating profile while they are moderator and place their profile on another site or even none at all, this would remove that possible conflict.  There are people that would give up the profile in order to be more involved and a bigger part of the site, you just have to weed them out over time. 


There are also moderators that will barter for moderating.  If you have the advertisement plugin you can barter with them and have them moderate while you advertise for them.  But there has to be a strict understanding that they are not allowed to push their products on users, they must rely on the advertisement and not talk about their products otherwise. 


You can also check the local universities or community college. There are social media courses where people want to learn the business and they can present their experience (no personal data) to their course as either a personal experience or some other social media  project.  


But regardles what you do or how you get them, you really need to watch them closely, respect them, never call them out in public, support them, and correct them politely (in private) when they mess up or when your wishes are not made clear.  


Hope that helps.. 


Dave

 

The Forum post is edited by dave Jan 23 '17
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Jan 23 '17
okey thank you for the tip.


I think i will let someone in my family moderate i would not trust anyone, only if i know he or she for a VERY long time. 


Trust takes time to build and there is not many who want work for free along time maybe short time before they want to do something else with they life that brings them money...

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Jan 23 '17
Daniel
Daniel Jan 23 '17
My way:


I am going to the free traffic class (SEO) and paid traffic (Google/FB etc) class in Wednesday and Saturday. And I did learn some useful things. 


And something can be technically done, for example, there is a technical way to put your member's photo to the first page of pinterest, or get more visits of your member's videos in vimeo. Of cause you need to have your member's agreement of the use of they are contents, otherwise you may get trouble.


and there is many way to get free traffic i learnt from the class, in the class i am going to the students are willing to exchange they are experiences, that why i love to meet new people in the class.