I dipped my toe into the waters of online community building back in 2004 when I decided to launch my own web community / forum for the Chevy Trailblazer.  That process lead me to launch several other Chevy related sites and it eventually turned into GM TRUCK CLUB, which is one of the largest Chevy Truck and SUV forums online today.  I’ve recently relaunched Toyota Truck Club and will be putting into place everything that I’ve learned so far into this new community launch.

This year GM Truck Club will get over 2 million visitors (maybe more) and perhaps as many as 20 million pageviews – almost all are Chevy Truck, SUV, Crossover and Van related topics.  How did I get to this point today?  Well, honestly, it’s just like anything else.  Get a plan, find the right tools, learn about and use the most current technology, start building good content and stick with it.

Don’t forget that it will take a while to get running too, so don’t get discouraged if it takes a year or more to really “take off” where the community might run itself.  There is a lot of competition out there, so you have to work hard to build an audience.

Best practices for building a good online community

Passion - You’ve got to start with an idea that you’re passionate about.  It won’t do you any good to start a blog or a forum for a topic that you know nothing about or have no strong interest in.  I’m sure there are plenty of Chess forums out there, and while I enjoy playing from time to time – that’s not my thing so it would be very difficult for me to start one and keep it running.  However, I have been a web marketer and SEO expert for several years now, so keeping this blog going, while a challenge, is something that is fun and rewarding for me.  I like the automotive world and have since I was a kid, so that was a natural and fun area for me to develop a community.

Hint – I actually enjoy a LOT running GM Truck Club and I look forward to posting and interacting with all of the members – this is a big key to the success of the site over the years.

Technical Components – Yes, you do need to know some stuff, at least the basics.  Get a good web host and ask them to help you out as much as possible, most will.  Try to avoid the bare-bones hosts that only cost $5.99 per month because you often will get very little support and they sometimes cut back on features, even blocking some types of scripts from running on the system.

Back in the day, I learned how to hard-code HTML and other web languages just to get by.  Today that’s not as necessary as more then enough CMS (content management systems) exist and are pretty solid overall, but you should learn as much as you can and don’t be afraid to ask questions when you just don’t know someone.  WordPress, vBulletin, phpBB3, Joomla and other packages are all free or cheap and provide you with just about everything that you need on a techincal level.  You do need to know how to safeguard your data.

Protect your database! I’ll say it again, PROTECT-YOUR-DATABASE!  It’s the heart, soul and brain of your community, so don’t let anyone have access to it that you don’t trust 100% – and make certain that it’s backed up and taken off your server DAILY.  Don’t skimp on this and pay your web host or a third-party like mozy to do it even if it’s an extra cost.  You need to protect your files too, but they can be re-downloaded and replaced – but a database failure will destroy your community and you might never get back to where you were.  Also, if one of your competitors gets a copy of your data, there are import tools that can quickly and easily upload your content to their site, including your user base.

Content – You’ve got to keep good and fresh content flowing on a regular basis.  Don’t think that you’re going to have a hot blog if you just post once per month.  DAILY posting are good, but at least post on a schedule perhaps at least 2 or 3 times per week.  Yes, I have seen good blogs that are updated each week at or near the same time, but those are exceptions and often they are much longer editorials or commentaries.  If you’re running a forum, make certain that you follow up with questions within just a few hours of them being posted.  Get your friends involved at first just to help out and don’t be afraid to pay a professional writer to help out with helping you format your first few (or few dozen) articles or posts – professional writers are good, fast and generally inexpensive.

Community Members - Don’t be afraid to give extras to your best users and always keep your eyes out for good moderators from your user base.  I like to run contests every year to give back to the members.  I find some of the best vendors out there and I give away free advertising in exchange for freebies that they ship directly to contest winners.  Don’t neglect your community members!

Members like to know the rules of a site too.  Some allow for an anything-goes mindset, while others are more conservative and have profanity filters and remove objectionable material from the site.  It’s your community and you can find an audience regardless of these types of policies, just make certain to make them known so there are no surprises to site visitors.

Making Money! – Ok, this is the part of the post that people might fixate on.  There really is no magical solution for this.  You need to get an audience first, then you can start to make money.

- Google Adsense is the quickest and easiest way to start earning money – either by a CPM (cost per 1,000 displays of an ad) or CPC (cost-per-click) basis.  Don’t expect to quit your day job running Google Ads, but you could expect to have all of your hosting and software costs covered plus a little profit to fund further development.

- Contextual Ads are another good choice, such as Vibrant Media or Kontera.  They are the little ads that show up in the middle of your content.  My experience with these is that they help to supplement the Google Ads, but they often only make about 20% as much money.  Keep that in mind, they are also pretty easy to install.

- Direct Ads come from vendors that want to run ads directly on your site.  This can be done any number of ways, from simple to very complex.  I currently run my own Ad Server, called OpenX, and do take vendor ads when they come to me.  You will have to own the relationship and its now up to you to collect the money, come to terms on an agreement, change the way that your site operates, run an ad server if you need to show banner or other ads and keep things current.  However, the amount of profit on the ads is 100% instead of splitting with one of the media partners, so it can make much more money for you, if you have the time to manage this as a program.

Summary - Start slow, post good content on a consistent basis, gather a crowd and treat them right, post good and clear site rules and build your community.  It’s not going to happen overnight for most people, but just keep working at it and someday you will have a strong online community you can be proud of.