You can have an incredible community, with passionate fans and clever gamification that keep people coming back again and again, but that's not going to matter if people can't find it. Users create all kinds of content, often deep and specific content that’s difficult for marketer or community manager to create, but it's rarely well optimized for being found outside of the community. We’ll look at how you can get better at this, the kinds of processes you should have, the kinds of enhancements should you be making to your CMS and how you can make the most of the small amount of time you have

1. You can’t build a
passionate
community, if no-one
can find you

2. My first 2 5 designs were terrible

3. Eventually they got better

5. ● Get something done
● Similar Circumstances
● Impart Knowledge

6. Getting that right, doesn’t
mean people can find you.

7. World’s most awesome
community

8. How do people find
communities?

9. :)

11. Content doesn’t come from one person
Crowd by James Cridland licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

12. Common
problems for
communities
Common
problems for
all sites
We’ll cover this bit

13. Problems
3 by i_yudai is licensed under creative commons 2.0.

14. Duplicate
Content
Thin
Content
Badly
Optimized
Content

15. Fix duplicate content
Two redheaded twins during the Roodharigendag (Redhead Day) in Breda, Netherlands by Eddy Van 3000 licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

16. There’s a lot of
duplicate
content online.

17. Some of it is
identical

18. In communities the common
problem is similar content.

21. Why is this a problem?

22. Rank increases on these 4 days. Why?

23. There are two different URLs ranking
client/good-resource
client/bad-forum-thread

24. Here good resource is being shown

26. Google is going to need
some help.

27. 1. Moderate existing content
2. Creating Resources
3. Preempting Questions

28. They do overlap a little bit.

29. Moderation
Development Time - None
Personal Time - Large
1

31. Creating Resources
Development Time - None to small
Personal Time - Medium
2

34. ● Combining Knowledge
● Prominently Linked

36. Pre-empting Questions
Development Time: Medium to Large
Personal Time: None
3

38. Duplicate
Content
Thin
Content
Badly
Optimized
Content

39. Fix thin content

40. A tornado approaching Elie, Manitoba. by Justin1569 is licensed under creative commons 3.0.

43. Content that wouldn’t
satisfy a user’s query.

44. Small amounts are just bad pages.
Large amounts can weigh down an
entire site.

47. Where can you find it on
community sites?

48. Threads

49. Automatically generated pages

50. Actually it’s not just 1 page

53. 1. Remove it
2. Hide it from search engines
3. Make it better

54. Remove it
Development Time - None to Small
Personal Time - Medium
1

57. Hide it from search engines
Development Time - None to Small
Personal Time - Medium
2

58. <meta name="robots" content="noindex">

60. bit.ly/see-robots

61. Make it better
Development Time: Small to large
Personal Time: Small to large
3

62. Who would you interview?

63. Which question gets answered?

64. ● Asking users for more detail
● Having events with your best users
● Manually formatting posts

65. Users asking for more detail

66. Taking a community offline

67. Making a post useable

68. ● Asking users for more detail automatically
● Asking specific questions
● Gamification

69. Bringing more people to the conversation

70. Providing ways to find thin content

73. bit.ly/gamification-sprint

74. Duplicate
Content
Thin
Content
Badly
Optimized
Content

75. Optimizing Content

76. The final piece we’ve been
missing out is some basic
optimisation.

77. People are lazy.

82. Title tag
Meta tag
H1
H2

83. 1. Moderation
2. Control Formatting Options

84. Moderation
Development Time - None
Personal Time - Large
1

85. Before: Block now or later?
After: When should you block a cardigan’s
sleeves?

86. Control Formatting Options
Development Time - Large
Personal Time - Small
2

89. Finally a little something extra

93. bit.ly/forumdates-sprint

94. Things you can do this week
Duplicate Content
● Set up a schedule with your moderators for aggregating threads.
● Find the most common 3 topics in your community and make stickied threads.
● Aggregate the 3 most common topics and begin building resources for them.
Thin Content
● Investigate if you can noindex individual threads.
● Work with moderators to identify new thin threads and ask users to fill them out, or encourage
discussion.
● Browse your site with SeeRobots and see if you can find thin pages like profiles which are
indexed.
● Start looking at ways to automate nudging to users to provide more detail, messages, emails,
rewards etc.
Optimizing Content
● Set up a schedule with your moderators to rewrite poor titles.
● Meet your development to discuss the idea of providing a more controlled posting environment.
Bonus Points
● Send your development team the instructions on bit.ly/forum-dates

95. bit.ly/thisweek-sprint

96. Thanks! - @dom_woodman
Ovation by Jason James licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.