Protagonize & Community Building @ SocialCamp App Nite

The 10,000 foot view
Who is this guy? And what is Protagonize ?
Basic elements of a successful community
Get it done, and don’t multi-task!
Promoting and marketing your community
Nurturing your community or social network
Trolls, gaming & accidents: dealing with moderation
Open community vs. building inside Facebook

Who are you, and what is Protagonize?
About Protagonize
Produced by Taunt Media ( www.tauntmedia.com )
Went live on Dec. 27, 2007
Custom application with social network elements
Community web site with focus on collaborative interactive fiction writing
Approx. 1,100 registered authors since launch
Supports writing linear or addventure stories
About Nick Bouton
Operates Taunt Media; designed, developed & maintains Protagonize
User Experience Developer at Habañero Consulting Group
Formerly Product Manager and lead developer for OpenRoad’s ThoughtFarmer Intranet product
Personal blog: www.nickbouton.com

What makes a successful community?
A strong concept that you can stand behind and support
Solid implementation & design (doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should work well!)
Focus on user experience and general usability
Be prepared to spend every waking hour working on it
Don’t use technology for its own sake; social networking components should have value to your users
Make sure your site has at least some content at launch

Multi-tasking is the devil
Focus on the task at hand
Build out a functional spec, even if it’s an outline
Develop a feature roadmap and plan for the long haul
Get as much functionality into your mockups or wireframes as possible, and focus on usability, but leave room for post-release additions
Don’t spread yourself too thin
Specify your core components, then design and implement them
Don’t get sidetracked with gold-plating and nice-to-haves until you’re done building out the main core of the site
Filter out features that can wait; getting it out the door sooner in working order is going to be worth more to you in the long run

Community Marketing 101
Dos:
Have content worth reading and/or interacting with
Post previews during development if you’re confident in your design
Spread the word yourself and create grassroots support in your target niche via your blog, message boards, Twitter profile, Facebook page
Personalize communications with sites and blogs you want exposure on
Offer various means to syndicate or share your content easily (link badges, friendly URLs, RSS feeds, external APIs, media kit, etc.)
Diversify your traffic; TechCrunch, Stumbleupon & Digg spikes won’t last
Don’t:
Spam Digg, Reddit, Propeller (etc.) with posts about your site unless you have a solid network of other voters to back you up

Nurturing your community
Your community needs a leader with a strong voice
Communities form around mutual interests and a sense of shared ownership and participation
Contributors need to “own” something on the site: content, profiles, photos, groups, rankings / stats, etc.
Be welcoming: make members feel like they belong
Encourage feedback and cater to your users’ requests as much as possible without losing sight of your roadmap
Allow for user discussion with each other, not just with you

The joys of moderation
Problems are inevitable; how you face them is controllable
Plan for hackers, trolls, gaming or simple mistakes: build tools to help you moderate and monitor content and users
Don’t be too restrictive or heavy-handed with your users, but enforce community guidelines as needed
Don’t be a faceless entity; you need a friendly team member to interact with users on a daily basis
Provide ways for users to self-moderate: user reporting, rating / voting systems, etc.

Roll-your-own vs. the walled garden
Benefits of building on a large social network platform:
Access to a huge user community to draw members from
Access to valuable demographic information of your users
Possibility to link to other sites; user profile portability (OpenID, Google Social Graph API)
Benefits of developing a stand-alone community:
Lack of dependence; not parasitic, no vendor lock-in: users are yours
Access to the rest of the Internet’s population – why limit yourself?
No sandbox: build anything you want, no approvals needed
If they change their API, your site still works (yay!)
Can still use Facebook social ads if you want to gain access to users
Nothing stopping you from building your own FB or OpenSocial app

Links & further reading
External resources:
Bokardo: Social Design by Joshua Porter http://www.bokardo.com
Building an Online Community: Just Add Water ( Matt Haughey ) http://www.digital-web.com/articles/building_an_online_community/
Design for Community ( Derek Powazek ) http://tinyurl.com/3rd6wf
Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook ( Capulet ) http://www.socialmediaready.com/
Social Media @ Alltop http://socialmedia.alltop.com/
Accumulated Web Site Marketing Tips & Tricks ( Nick Bouton ) http://www.nickbouton.com/archives/2008/03/06/accumulated-web-site-marketing-tips-tricks/

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Protagonize & Community Building @ SocialCamp App Nite

by Nick Bouton

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