Transforming a Site into a Community
The Web is the crowded home of several million people, so when you put your website online, it doesn’t just drop into a vacuum. Instead, it takes center stage in front of an audience that’s always interested and often opinionated.
For your site to really fit in with the rest of the Web, you need to interact with your visitors. The idea of dialogue—back-and-forth communication among peers—is hard-wired into the Internet’s DNA. Get it right and people won’t just be talking about you—they’ll be promoting you to friends, getting to know you better, and putting you in the public eye.
To make this magic happen, you need a bit of planning, a willingness to promote yourself (almost to the point of embarrassment), and a smattering of social media skills. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to do all this.
Fostering a Web Community
How do you start transforming your website into a web community? The first trick is to change your perspective, so that you plan your website as a meeting place instead of as just a place to vent your (admittedly brilliant) thoughts. Here are a few tips to help you get in the right frame of mind:
Clearly define the purpose of your site. For example, the description “www.BronteRevival.com is dedicated to bringing Charlotte Bronte fans together to discuss and promote her work” is more community-oriented than “www.BronteRevival.com contains information and criticism of Charlotte Bronte’s work.” The first sentence describes what ...