November 30, 2010 at 10:32Practical advice for those who want to build a web community Part 2
In view of the fact that there were more positive reviews than negative for my previous post , and I also received a lot of emails with questions in PM (and even VKontakte, ICQ, and there were reviews on the autotourist itself), I decided to continue my writing about how I I did my project, what I encountered on the way of implementation and, in fact, to give advice.
Chapter 4. Where do we sow? Into the content!
Many asked how I gained the initial mass of users, after which the community, in fact, somehow breathed. It was like this: when I just opened the project on one of the free LiveStreet 's CMS (my project CMS) designs, the question immediately arose about attracting an audience to it. But what will the audience come to, not in the same place?
Of course, it will come to some content, and if it is still interesting, then the audience, once having arrived, will come back more than once and, perhaps, will remain among the “core of the audience”. I began to wool various forums, LiveJournal communities in search of reports on road trips and write emails to their authors with requests for permission to repost them from me. 80-90 percent of the authors were only in favor, because their task is and was (when they wrote the reports) - to convey the experience of their trips to as many people as possible. And it was only a plus to them that I posted their reports on my Autotourist . Months passed, as I painstakingly received approval from the authors of repost reports, sobsna, reposted them at home ... Now I have a huge collection of reports about autotravels on my site, and if you are an autotourist, then once in such a "paradise" you will definitely bookmark my site.
Tip 4: if your startup is a thematic community, then content will help you to delay and increase its audience. Let it be not unique, but aggregated, assembled in one place, that is, on your resource.
Chapter 5. And where do the first 100 visitors come from?
This is perhaps one of the most popular questions of the person who technically “muddied” the project, but sitting in front of him and scratching his turnips (here an emoticon, put about the official lowering in the body of the post) ...
As it was in my case. Basically, it all started with my report on that wonderful trip to Scandinavia posted on my personal blog.. There was (by my standards) a large number of enthusiastic reviews on it, after which I decided to create a community where there would be not one writer and N commentators, but N writers and the same N commentators. Well, after the launch of www.avtoturistu.ru , I did a newsletter for my esteemed readers (blog), in which I informed them about the start of a thematic project. Total: 30-40 people came from the blog.
After that, I made a VKontakte group , where I painstakingly invited people with the interests of "road travel", "caravanning" and the like. Accordingly, the group invited them to the site. And again, see Chapter 3 of the previous post. Super megavazhno!
Tip 5:Do not catch everyone in a row with bot scripts (to the VKontakte group or to the community in LiveJournal). Treat your potential audience as the most valuable in your project, communicate with everyone if necessary, be honest and open with everyone, and your first 100 visitors who register on the site will at least comment on existing posts in the community, but as a maximum - they will become writers. By the way, I have a reader / commentator / writer ratio of about 85/10/5 percent, respectively.
Chapter 6. Promotion
Of course, gaining an audience according to the principle described in the previous chapter, of course, no one canceled SEO, SAPE, AdWords, Yandex.Direct, etc. Yes, and, of course, PR !!!
Here is an example of a cool classroom PR to autotourist.ru. There is one more. And here is the Khabrovsky example (I even collected two minus signs; well, not -100). Or here is the video below:
Figures: it took a month in SAPU (now it’s a bit less, because the natural link mass is already quite plentiful) about 2000 rubles. I started using AdWords and Yandex.Direct relatively recently, the order of costs (example of the last month): 15,000 and 3,000 rubles, respectively. Naturally, such investments become available to a single startup only on condition of a good income from advertising. What gives? It gives a lot of targeted visitors, many of which stay on the site for a long time, and someone replenishes the "core audience". My ability to make investments in promotion (monetary opportunity) is employment “for my uncle” (I wrote about this in that part). Accordingly, I sent a certain part of the RFP to the site, but I could have “skipped”. Here is the answer to the question of “finding finance”; it’s some kind of work, some other source of income,
Tip 6: Having a ready-made project and NNuyu amount of money, do not be afraid to invest. Many (and I used to) thought: “Well, this (result of investments) is a crane in the sky, and the money I have in my hands is a stable tit.” Although, two of my good friends, who thought of me on the Internet in principle (first to the blog), which I mentioned in the first part of the post, always convinced me: “Antokha, don’t be afraid to invest! You will be stubborn and persistent - you will certainly achieve your goals and not only what you will return, but also increase the invested money. ” They are right. BUT! No one guarantees that even being a piper, how purposeful and persistent the project will carry at least what mine brings to me. Therefore, of course, any investment is a risk. This must be realized.
I'm tired of writing. If you don’t throw a lot of rotten eggs, then I’ll continue (I’ll give you charts and more numbers). It’s just that I can’t force myself to write differently than my brain tells me, that is, to do a digital calculation and that’s it! Well, I’m writing here, as I would write (and I’m actually writing) an art book and I can’t do this “on assignment”, under tracing paper. All the questions that interest you, I will cover, but I ask, you don’t need it like this: "here, give me one post right, purely in numbers." I can not do that. Thanks to those who are interested, for their interest. Encourages writing further ...
Part 3.
Chapter 4. Where do we sow? Into the content!
Many asked how I gained the initial mass of users, after which the community, in fact, somehow breathed. It was like this: when I just opened the project on one of the free LiveStreet 's CMS (my project CMS) designs, the question immediately arose about attracting an audience to it. But what will the audience come to, not in the same place?
Of course, it will come to some content, and if it is still interesting, then the audience, once having arrived, will come back more than once and, perhaps, will remain among the “core of the audience”. I began to wool various forums, LiveJournal communities in search of reports on road trips and write emails to their authors with requests for permission to repost them from me. 80-90 percent of the authors were only in favor, because their task is and was (when they wrote the reports) - to convey the experience of their trips to as many people as possible. And it was only a plus to them that I posted their reports on my Autotourist . Months passed, as I painstakingly received approval from the authors of repost reports, sobsna, reposted them at home ... Now I have a huge collection of reports about autotravels on my site, and if you are an autotourist, then once in such a "paradise" you will definitely bookmark my site.
Tip 4: if your startup is a thematic community, then content will help you to delay and increase its audience. Let it be not unique, but aggregated, assembled in one place, that is, on your resource.
Chapter 5. And where do the first 100 visitors come from?
This is perhaps one of the most popular questions of the person who technically “muddied” the project, but sitting in front of him and scratching his turnips (here an emoticon, put about the official lowering in the body of the post) ...
As it was in my case. Basically, it all started with my report on that wonderful trip to Scandinavia posted on my personal blog.. There was (by my standards) a large number of enthusiastic reviews on it, after which I decided to create a community where there would be not one writer and N commentators, but N writers and the same N commentators. Well, after the launch of www.avtoturistu.ru , I did a newsletter for my esteemed readers (blog), in which I informed them about the start of a thematic project. Total: 30-40 people came from the blog.
After that, I made a VKontakte group , where I painstakingly invited people with the interests of "road travel", "caravanning" and the like. Accordingly, the group invited them to the site. And again, see Chapter 3 of the previous post. Super megavazhno!
Tip 5:Do not catch everyone in a row with bot scripts (to the VKontakte group or to the community in LiveJournal). Treat your potential audience as the most valuable in your project, communicate with everyone if necessary, be honest and open with everyone, and your first 100 visitors who register on the site will at least comment on existing posts in the community, but as a maximum - they will become writers. By the way, I have a reader / commentator / writer ratio of about 85/10/5 percent, respectively.
Chapter 6. Promotion
Of course, gaining an audience according to the principle described in the previous chapter, of course, no one canceled SEO, SAPE, AdWords, Yandex.Direct, etc. Yes, and, of course, PR !!!
Here is an example of a cool classroom PR to autotourist.ru. There is one more. And here is the Khabrovsky example (I even collected two minus signs; well, not -100). Or here is the video below:
Figures: it took a month in SAPU (now it’s a bit less, because the natural link mass is already quite plentiful) about 2000 rubles. I started using AdWords and Yandex.Direct relatively recently, the order of costs (example of the last month): 15,000 and 3,000 rubles, respectively. Naturally, such investments become available to a single startup only on condition of a good income from advertising. What gives? It gives a lot of targeted visitors, many of which stay on the site for a long time, and someone replenishes the "core audience". My ability to make investments in promotion (monetary opportunity) is employment “for my uncle” (I wrote about this in that part). Accordingly, I sent a certain part of the RFP to the site, but I could have “skipped”. Here is the answer to the question of “finding finance”; it’s some kind of work, some other source of income,
Tip 6: Having a ready-made project and NNuyu amount of money, do not be afraid to invest. Many (and I used to) thought: “Well, this (result of investments) is a crane in the sky, and the money I have in my hands is a stable tit.” Although, two of my good friends, who thought of me on the Internet in principle (first to the blog), which I mentioned in the first part of the post, always convinced me: “Antokha, don’t be afraid to invest! You will be stubborn and persistent - you will certainly achieve your goals and not only what you will return, but also increase the invested money. ” They are right. BUT! No one guarantees that even being a piper, how purposeful and persistent the project will carry at least what mine brings to me. Therefore, of course, any investment is a risk. This must be realized.
I'm tired of writing. If you don’t throw a lot of rotten eggs, then I’ll continue (I’ll give you charts and more numbers). It’s just that I can’t force myself to write differently than my brain tells me, that is, to do a digital calculation and that’s it! Well, I’m writing here, as I would write (and I’m actually writing) an art book and I can’t do this “on assignment”, under tracing paper. All the questions that interest you, I will cover, but I ask, you don’t need it like this: "here, give me one post right, purely in numbers." I can not do that. Thanks to those who are interested, for their interest. Encourages writing further ...
Part 3.