Organize the content
Well organized content gets easily accessed , so you need to set a content hierarchy. An example can be: community > classification > forum > thread > message. As you start growing your community, you can start with setting the general topic definition and allow your users to show what they want and needs.
There are generally 2 approaches:
- flat structure
- threaded structure
Build high quality content
Most people consider content as the written ones stated on the site or forum. However, there are many elements to describe content. Content includes the following:
- Articles
- Links
- Editorials
- Features
- Reviews
- Documentations
There is a need to focus on setting the tone for the content be it fun or business like. In addition, you also need to identify people who can provide good content:
- employees with expert knowledge
- support personnel
- experts outside your organization
Clarify how you will attract & retain members
You need to consider how do you drive traffic and convert visitors into contributing members. Thereafter you need to convert active & quality visitors to become regular members. You can the following ways to achieve the above:
- set up a sustainable reward mechanism to reward them in a transparent and multi-tier manner
- spotlighting their contributions
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