BuddyPress.org

When you launch your community, it’s advisable to make sure that all features available to your users are working as they should. Otherwise, you’ll be devoting a large percentage of time responding to queries from users and fixing their problems; time that could otherwise be better invested in developing the features that you wish to add to your site at a later date.

I think that the tool doesn’t make the community. BP is just a tool, not a passport for have anything…

If you know your community, the people who make it, their needs in matter of communication , you can choose a tool; Maybe BP, maybe another system…

Don’t think that if you invest a lot of your time and efforts into the tool settings, that you receive immediate feedback from anybody. As a BP user, you’re only the tool builder, a part, a little part of a fresh borned community or an old one, with many subscribers and perhaps plenty years of experience and several internal usage.

Depends also of the age of the public you accept. Sharing with “internet generation” people is not the same as sharing with seniors… Sharing with sport clubs is not the same as sharing in a business company.

I’m always affraid when reading here on the forum, people who ask for enhancement a la facebook ! This is only trend, not long term usage… It’s now, not tomorrow. And maintaining a community or simply a group is not only manage today, it’s essentially manage tomorrow, but also next mounth or more better, next year.

BP didn’t this. And never will do i guess

BP can be a trap if you don’t take care of what people are. Bp certainly brings you some satisfaction if you give people what they want, but this doesn’t give you any waranty that you are right by deciding “now i have my BP community”, because the second question who follows immediatly after is: “where are the people ?”.

Your question above is the evidence of that.

@Chouf1 has some great points – anyone has access to the same tools when creating a community site. BUT – it takes a ringleader upstart and keep a community going. For that, I’d say treat a community idea like a business plan. It will take time to foster growth, activity and membership – (catch-22 of a void site with no activity and members and who will join to start in)

One of the online communities that I’m apart of grew from a local hangout of car geeks (few dozen people) back in the mid-90s now to the largest automotive discussion forums (500k+ users and some 60,285,241 posts later) – all it took was a span of 13 years Frankly the site still operates and grows on outdated forum software, no frills, no social aspect, no mobile, web 0.5 basically. Now it could be better – and that has lead to other small niche community from this (20-30k users on better tools) but the point is; you have to be passionate about your community and provide the value-added benefits that your users seek.

How soon should you start to promote the website?

When everything is perfectly functioning and tested?

Or it is better to start to get the people in when the main features are ok, even if a few things are not working as they should or you would like them to?

I’m a K.I.S.S. advocate – if a site is too complex or overwhelming that may drive users away. Sometimes it works out for the best to keep it low on the extra features and listen to the community as it grows – then customize and add things in that will make it easier for them to use the site. The web is saturated with communities and users have a lot of choices (though i find the tool being used one of the lower deciding factors)

Chouf1 your point regarding Facebook cloning and trending is well made and perhaps ought to be stressed from time to time I’m less interested in seeing BP and it’s child plugins attempt to simply ape Facebook in every way possible than in seeing it identify and establish simply what social networking is about.

The essence of a community – especially at the outset – is about a great deal of care and nurturing, somewhat less about features than about a place for interaction between members, of good quality content and discussion and that has to be helped along initially and does require a lot of commitment on the part of the site operators.

It is therefore entirely correct to assert that the tool doesn’t make a community and to bear that in mind. BP is a great tool or potentially a great tool, but it is a tool, something that facilitates communities, growing that community into something vibrant with a soul and longevity is where the work begins.

General Site Tips:

1. Try private testing with a focus group (not your designers or developers).

2. Don’t add too many features, determine the level of request and see if they fit with the spirit of the site.

3. Don’t be afraid to make the site live. Just get the site out there and let users provide you feedback. I know clients that test, refine, etc. and it never makes it out the door.

Social Network Tips:

1. Facebook, Twitter, and social networking integration is important. Please love to login with other accounts.

2. Create a way for users or even visitors to easily locate interesting people straight from the homepage.

3. Make sure search is simple, easy to use, and as powerful as possible. Finding connections should be a no-brainer.

4. Social networks grow the best when people can invite other non-users into the network.

5. Social networks also grow quickly when members can share links, media, etc. with those within and outside the network.

6. Give incentives for people to come back to the network. Awarding users for actions (like Foursquare) is an interesting way to do this, although there are plenty of other examples that can fit your particular network.

7. Avoid long registration forms at all costs.

@erich73: did you hear about email ?

@gian-ava

i want to come back to your first question around the “marketing point of view”. I recently searched about “community manager” and found a lot of answers in the marketing sector. Not what i expected, but suddenly i realised that while we’re playing with BP, some marketers with long teeth are building complicated strategies to conquest markets with social tools. To make it brief, for these marketers, a community manager is a kind of “propaganda staffel” leader, if you understand this expression.

If not and to be clear, i asked holly Google and here is what the algorythm god said to me:

marketing & social networks 119 000 000 -> google.fr results

marketing & strategy 89 100 000

marketing & experts 74 800 000

marketing & teacher 48 800 000

marketing & mass media 41 000 000

marketing & professor 33 900 000

marketing & humor 16 300 000

and the best for the end:

marketing usability 5 640 000

and now let us compare with:

buddypress 2 680 000

buddypress and marketing 601 000

so we can finally enlarge to a more generic request as:

marketing & open source 64 400 000

which lies somewhere between “teachers” and “experts”.

This are funny examples to illustrate what you can expect for your question “in terms of marketing”.

View a brief resume here: https://radiowalker.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/buyit1.jpg

(not intended to offend anybody here)

A community is a group of people, unified around a project, a personnality, ideas and a RICH CONTENT. But it is also a forum (in sense of forum romanum) and naturally a politic placeholder, as a process by which groups of people make collective decisions.

So you don’t need our opinion about why and how to build a community. This is your intimate affair. You have the choice and what you decide, you have to assume.

Requesting the recipe does not cook the potatoes. Giving the recipe either.

@gian-ava Perfect timing. I’m in the process of finishing up a BP site and was thinking about this very topic. Definitely appreciate @Dimensionmedia comments. Right now I’m focused on how I’ll be promoting the site and how I can get others involved in spreading the word.

@Erich73 You need to look at the “Invite Anyone by Email too” Plugin: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/invite-anyone-invite-by-email-too-please-help-test That satisfies the #4 and actually was going to be my comment about bringing people in.

This plugin is fully functional and if done right can be a great way to grow a BP site. Although, I think the plugin is still in it’s relative infancy and as it grows will become one of the invaluable plugins for those using BP.

One word of caution using Facebook and Twitter to promote your page. Make sure you have some sort of related posts or links to other content on your site very prominently displayed or else your bounce rate will be off the charts! People will click and sample, but to hook them you will have to be a bit more clever. Making some content hidden is a good idea but it has a tremendous downsides in terms of SEO.

The Facebook/Twitter connect options are vital for growth because as previously stated no one wants to sign up for yet another website.

@techguy,

Honestly, it is quite hard to get a new website off the ground if new members create a Group and actually are not able to invite people to join their group – because they do have literally no friends at that website.

How should somebody already have friends at a website which just started off ?

So the possibility of inviting external people to your Group is quite essential to get a new BP-website started and off the ground.

Not sure how difficult it is to code 5 e-mail-fields in order to give the Group-creator the chance to invite his external friends to join his group ?

Andy ?

Not sure how difficult it is to code 5 e-mail-fields

Actually very easy especially if you don’t mind all sorts of potential nasties happening, on the other hand look at the testing that went on for this plugin as an example of even with what appears a trivial matter or function just how much in reality needs to be thought about and tested, the work Boone did to get to the stage he has with the plugin cost a lot in terms of time and time translates to an implicit cost that in the case of these developers is seldom recuperated.