The Lonliness of the Long Distance Internet Worker
In my post about web community building and participation I mentioned making friends and contacts. I think this is an important and much overlooked factor. For people who work online, usually from home, it can be a terribly solitary and lonely existence.
Over the years I have had the good fortune to meet some great people and have made a lot of online friends. Some I have met in person, while a good portion I have only spoken to over the phone.
As I said in the linked article above, I was lucky my early experience of joining an online community was with an established and friendly group of geeks. They showed me the ropes, how to deal with conflicts and how to have a good time just hanging out with like-minded people.
Thinking about it made me realise that perhaps we could all do more to help beginners integrate into our online communities. On my forum I try to welcome every person who joins and foster a friendly atmosphere. Perhaps there is more we can do.
If you have any ideas, or examples of how you have been made welcome to a community, I would love to hear about it in the comments …
Posted on September 14th, 2007 by Chris Garrett in Blogging
Chris, here are a few things that I have found to make the welcome to a new community a pleasant experience:
1. When one or two members of the community seem to be there for greeting new members. Some communities can be rather daunting and having an experienced member to begin a rapport with certainly helps.
2. Politeness towards the new members that may be asking redundant questions. Some people are not very well-versed with online communities. As such, they may ask questions that have been asked and answered numerous times but are not aware of how to find those threads. Instead of older members belittling them with rude comments, a polite pointer to the answer and a suggestion on how to use the search go a long way.
3. It might seem odd but the size of the community can play a role as well. For the larger communities, it can be overwhelming for a new user and it might take longer for them to become acclimated. With smaller communities, I have found that is easier to make new users feel welcome.
Chris,
I love getting your emails about new forum members. Fantastic!!
Although I’m a new blogger (3-4 months), yours is the only forum I’ve joined that emails people when there are new forum members with your comments. That is very cool – to me anyway.
What can the top bloggers do for new forum members? I’m probably asking the impossible but here goes…
In the first month of a new blogger who joins your forum and has been active in the forum for x amount of time or x contributions, the new blogger would get an email at the end of the first month of blogging from the top blogger or one of the top forum members saying, “let us know in forum x how you’re blog is doing as far as receiving comments, subscriptions and links that drive traffic to your site.”
If the newbie is not getting the appropriate amount of comments, subscriptions, and links for a newbie then send some of the forum members to leave good comment on articles they feel are decent or good articles. Try to help the newbie get some “social proofing” going. Do this for the second month and the third.
In addition, maybe a private email from the top blogger or one of the top forum members with some advice – “your blog looks rather busy”, “too much advertising right now”, “come over to the forums more and let’s discuss what could help you out”.
This would propel the newbie to really dig in and get that extra nudge for the first three months.
If the newbie has been providing decent articles and has contributed as a forum member and the passion is there for their work, then drive hoards of traffic to the newbie’s site.
Huge amounts of comments, links and RSS feeds. Even if it’s for one day after you’ve been blogging for 3 months.
Can you imagine if Darren, Yaro, JC, ChrisG, other top bloggers, each took 5 minutes to say to their forum members, “hey, go check this persons blog out and leave a meaningful comment on one of their articles they’ve done in the past 30 days.
Also, reality checks would be good. Can you blog about anything and really make it work? If someone says they want to write a blog post every day about napkins, hoping to drive 30,000 readers in 5 years and make it a full time career, is that reality? Which brings me to, how about discussing blogs with unusual topics that have over 3,000 readers. Note: Watch, someone will email me that somebody’s making $1,000.00 a month writing about napkins everyday.
Provide stats on bloggers who make the most money, have the most traffic, and what topics their blog is about and how long before they became full time bloggers. I know some of this exists out there but these types of case studies or stories really propel newbies.
When I was a budding musician some 30+ years ago, there used to be on stage jam sessions in front of live audiences where young musicians could show up and hope to play one or more tunes with the experienced musicians.
Back then, if you couldn’t cut it for the first 30 seconds or so, the band would stop playing, and tell you to get off the stage, go home and practice. It was brutal. Yet at the same time it was up to you to go home, dig deep and do what you needed to do to get better. Unfortunately, that was the best feedback some folks received back then.
Anyway, I hope this all fits into a comment. Almost a blog post actually.
Thanks for all your blog provides Chris!!
Bill
I’m relatively new to maintaining my own blog and there have been some bloggers recently that have asked “What was your first post?” and even though my blog is only a month old, I’ve posted a link in the comments. Many people have welcomed me and I’ve even had a few offers of help if I need it. That goes a long way in making me feel comfortable asking questions and getting help.
I agree with Derek about just being nice to newcomers. There are some forums that I participate in that are rather rude to people who know less or have less experience than some of the members who have been there longer. I think if everyone has a mission to be encouraging and polite (do unto others!) in what they say, it can increase the desire for people to be a part of the community–they feel good when they are there.
derek and LaurenMarie have very good points. I also like communities that have sections that allow newbies to dip their toe in the water and get to know people easily. Examples are an introduce yourself category, one for technical questions, and a lounge or water cooler area for games or conversation. When the moderators of those sections are also active, accessible and friendly, it is a great help in feeling at home quickly.
Interesting points mentioned by all commenters. I personally think that online communities are more savvy and less patient than “offline” ones. Albeit, I have no idea why that is.
Newbies are often treated with disrespect, even though we all once started out as n00bs, online people tend to ignore that. It’s a shame indeed.
Hi Chris,
I joined your forum today through a link I found in another blog online. I am in the process of trying to build traffic on it and have been reading many of your posts on there. I deffinatly will be trying to take as much from your wisdom as possible. Thanks for creating a community where I can ‘learn the ropes’.
I like meetup.com
I have met about 30 people offline, that are like minded, and we meet about 3-4 times per month.
Some I meet with several times per week.
I think that all the forums´members could integrate in all the social networks as friends. This would allowe to share a lot of knowledge. For example,stumbleupon, facebook, flirck, twitter, etc..
@derek - Agreed on all points. I once heard there was a human limit to the number of contacts we can hold in any community, perhaps it was in “the tipping point”, perhaps that fits with your scale thought?
@Bill - Good ideas, I wonder how well it would scale with thousands of new members? I hope the “pimp my blog” part of my forum helps new bloggers improve.
@LaurenMarie - It can be really hurtful when you are new to a community and the old timers close ranks, I agree welcoming new people and helping them be involved is important.
@Suzanne - Yeah, part of the founders job is finding friendly and helpful moderators that keep the mood of the community going, something I need to embark on!
@Study Guide - I think offline people are more patient because it is harder to be rude to a persons face?
@Bunk - I’m glad you like it, hope it is useful for beginners and old hands
@Mark - That’s cool. I have never used meetup.com but I have tried and failed a couple of times to make it to a meetup organised on flickr
@Valentin - Most of the time when I join a new social site I invite the most active friends from the last one, though I have accounts in many I don’t use them all