I’ve said before that I’ve often referenced the practices of an online hip-hop community to inspire the creative interaction I use with software customers.

Recently I stumbled upon a community management article that does a wonderful job applying design principles from the 1970’s book A Pattern Language to online community building.

This article effectively shows that the same principles that have been used within architecture to create vibrant and effective spaces, can also be applied towards the design of online community spaces that have a focus on their desired user experiences.

Check it out. It’s pretty long, but well worth the read.

Applying “A Pattern Language” To Online Community Design

(I know it’s exciting, but please quiet your applause)

Our primary focus is to explore the make-up of social customer experiences, but we also cover other topics relating to community management and social media.

I’ve already published quite a few posts on there, so stop by and check it out!

If you’re feeling extra adventurous (and lets face it – you are), I also encourage you to subscribe to SocialCX via email or RSS.

Thanks in advance!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming….

Each chat uses a unique hashtag to facilitate scheduled live conversations via twitter. Everyone is free to add to this list,  and when I last looked there were 556 simultaneousness viewing it.

Take a look through to see if there are any topics that are of particular interest to you.

Kudos to @swanwick for getting this list started

From page 95: The Power of Taking First Action:

“Humans understand how favors work. Doing and trading favors is woven into the fabric of our culture. When people are the recipients of a favor, it’s in their nature to want to pay it back.

Doing nice things does make people feel good, but there’s neurology behind it too. We want to pay people back because it is in the nature of a community to do so; it keeps communities strong and protected against the outside world.”

This sentiment couldn’t be more true and is one of my secret weapons when it comes to building community. Taking first action and earning goodwill is one of the best ways of creating the relationships that develop into a loyal and active userbase.

Here are some suggested ways you can take first action with your community members:

• Send an email noting an accomplishment (a year of membership, 100th post etc.)
• Comment on a members personal blog
• Bookmark and review a members content on stumbleupon & delicious
• Public appreciation (helpful employees at company meeting, Follow Friday on Twitter,  User Interview in newsletter)
• Provide a linkedin recommendation to a client or coworker that has helped your community succeed
• Send an old fashion hand written note to a member
• Give a gift to the 100th,1000th, or 10,000th user
• Privately ask one of your active users for their opinion on a pending decision
• Send a quick private message when you see users making a strong contributions
• Send a personal welcome message to a new user and (using their profile info) connect them with another community member who has relevant expertise and/or interests
• And many more… (would love to hear some of your additional suggestions in the comments)

If you’d like to learn more about this and other community engagment techniques - Please join me on 9/15 as I present the online seminar Strengthening Online Communities Through Improved User Engagement.

Check out his most recent slideshare presentation from the 2010 Like Minds Conference

Twitter can be a great tool to use in support of your online community building efforts.

Here are 3 different online communities I’ve seen leverage twitter to facilitate success:

1) Adobe groups

2) The Community Roundtable

The Community Roundtable leverages twitter through the use of an account created specifically for their community @TheCR. I love the variety of ways they use this account to support their efforts

Recruitment

Welcoming new members

3) The Business Exchange

The Business Exchange community uses the twitter account @BXBW to support its Featured User program.  In association with displaying the Featured User on the homepage, they do a tweet encouraging their followers to connect.

As a member of the Business Exchange, I can speak first hand on the value of this program. I had discontinued being active and nearly abandoned my account, and becoming the Featured User provided me with an influx of traffic to my blog and effectively re-engaged me.

Strong online communities are built on strong interactions. Here are some things you can do today to humanize your interactions and strengthen the bond between your community and its members.

1) Leverage Signatures

Often, someone with a username like LakersFan246 will end their post or comment with their real first name.  If this happens begin your response with “Hi Kevin” rather than – “Hi LakersFan246“. your user is showing a subtle sign of trust in the community and will feel good about having that sign engaged.

2) Follow Up on Any Shared Event Information

Many times when people are asking a question from a community, it’s related to a timely event.

(i.e. I’m preparing for a presentation… My son’s birthday party is next week,…I’m training for a marathon.)

Even after the original question is answered, it’s great to follow up with a comment asking how their event turned out. This shows that you are listening and care about the happenings of your members.

3) Highlight Your Newest Users

Add a panel to your community homepage that displays the names and/or avatars of your most recent members. this will (1) help those users feel welcomed and (2) encourage seasoned members to warmly welcome new users into the community.

4) Reach Out and Say Thank You.

This is a trick I’ve used a bunch of times over the years, and to be honest it’s something that doesn’t get done nearly enough.

When you see someone who is making strong contributions – send them a private message thanking them for being a part of your community.

This simple act of appreciation goes a long way and almost always solidify continued engagement from your active users.

5) Interview Your Users:

Perhaps the best way to reward your active user base is to set up a user of the month program, or by a “10 questions with…” series. (here is a good example from the community associated with hip-hop artist Tonedeff.) These actions help expose the commonalities between your users and are great ways to facilitate personal interaction.

What other suggestions do you have for humanizing your community interactions?

Contrary to what you may think, posts that are short and to the point tend to garner the longest Time on Site.  That’s not to say that a long post is never merited, but I often encourage authors to break up long posts into multiple entries.  Though we’d all like to believe that everyone is closely reading every detail in our posts, the fact is that most people will quickly scan through blog content.

Which brings me to my next point…

Break Up Your Content:

By breaking up your content and using formatting variations like italics, bullets, BOLD, and colors, you dramatically increase the chances of grabbing the attention of your readers.

Tip: try the 15 second test with a friend.  Are they able to get the gist of your post through a quick 15 second scan? if not, you may want to make further edits to add clarity.

Use a Blogroll:

A blogroll is a great networking tool that should be leveraged by all bloggers.  I recommend starting off linking to 3 prominent bloggers & 2 peers in your niche.  As you grow, continue adding the names of  frequent commenters,  guest posters, customers and active re-tweeters etc.  This is an easy way to reward those who take the time to engage with you and your blog.

Update Your About Page:

The 1st thing I want to read on an About Page is a 1-2 sentence pitch for why I should care about your blog. 

• Here is an example framework you can use: {blog name} is for {audience} who is looking to {value proposition}.

The 2nd thing I look for is some links to your strongest entries.

• This validates that your blog has quality content, and will increase the likelihood of converting a subscriber.

Have a Subscribe Section at the Top of Every Page.

I recommend having the option to subscribe by RSS, email & Twitter.  Most blogs  include an RSS feed, but often neglect to include these other two options. Even if your readers are a highly technical audience, you will be surprised to see how many of them choose to subscribe by email over all other options (over 33% based on my experience).

Also many people are spending less time in their RSS reader’s in favor of finding new content via their twitter followers.

For Email:  use a tool like Feedburner to create an email subscription option via your RSS feed.
For Twitter: set up a unique account specifically for your blog, and use a tool like TwitterFeed to automatically tweet out your new posts.  This is a one-and-done activity that is well worth the effort.

I have many more points to go into here, but I figured I should take my own advice, be brief, and save them for another post.