Building Online Communities Matthew Haughey

Everything is moving online, newspaper
subscriptions fall

Writers, editors, and organizations need
to adapt

This doesn’t seem right .

Give readers community features and
they’ll flock

Follow these steps to build
a successful community

Why community?

Newspapers are a fixture in
the physical community

… but not in the
online world

Small towns: easy to be
the sole source of online info

Large towns: name recognition

Web communities get traffic

More traffic: more readers, and
more revenue possibilities

Digg, reddit, gothamist, blogs

Users expect interactivity online

News doesn’t have to be
one-way

Comfortable with customization

Tyranny of choice

How to build it?

Robust user systems

Incorporate into existing logins

Don’t do this.

Personality in member profiles

Welcome contributions

Highlight the best

Have writers interact as well

Elevate members to writers &
photographers

Embrace the web

Hire web-savvy teams

No barriers to reading

Open the archives, perm. URLs

How do you maintain it?

Moderation that’s fair

Online moderator: full-time job

Online moderator: ombudsman?

Emotions out of decisions

Craft some guidelines

Guidelines, not rules

Deal with troublemakers quickly

Metrics help run a community

Flagging spreads the work out

Favorites/voting for the good

Case Studies

What’s stopping your organization from
building a community of readers?

Everything is moving online, newspaper
subscriptions fall

Add community features and grow
your online audience

A collaborative news site can
please readers and create revenue

Questions? [email_address]