How Can We Get Back the Magic?

[Michele Martin]

OK my friends, as we head into the third month of the BBB community, it looks like we're starting to lose a little steam. Just wondering what ideas you all have for rejuvenating our community. I've noticed that participation in challenges has been falling off (I'm guilty of this myself), so maybe we need to take a break from those.

**Any other ideas for activities or projects you'd like to work on?
**Questions you want answered?
** Issues you want to discuss?
** Do we need to attract more members?

I'm open to any and all suggestions. . .

[John W. Shaffer]

Hey Michele.

I was online and noticed you just posted this so I thought I would respond right away. I have been very guilty of not participating much myself. My issue has been that of being busy trying to do a number of things. Several of them I have just not given proper attention to. BBB is one of them.

Unfortunately, I don't know if I have good answers to your questions; however, I am very interested in knowing the answers. I recently started a Ning community for local ASTD chapter leaders in Texas and several surrounding states. Although I have gotten several people to join, participation is currently very limited. I hope to learn how to get people involved.

Here is one possible answer to your first question. What if we had people post something they consider a difficult issue they are currently dealing with, preferable related to their blog? Then everyone else could give them suggestions for dealing with the issue. Kind of what you have done here.

[Michele Martin]

Hi John--that's a great idea! Do you have any problems that you've been dealing with lately? If you want to start a forum thread on it let me know and I'll put something up on the front page.

RE: the Ning community for ASTD that you've just set up--I keep wanting to do a blog series on keeping Ning communities going, as I think that the format and idea is great, but know that it takes some serious facilitating to keep things happening. Steve Hargadon has done an awesome job with Classroom 2.0, but I think a big part of his success has been that he's attracted such a huge group of people. If you believe the 1% rule of online participation, then BBB is actually doing pretty well, given the size of our community. We have a significant number of people who participate. It's tough to keep it all going, though. . .

[Christine Martell]

Hi John,
I think it takes commitment on the part of the administrators to participate consistently. I say this for two reasons. This community has died way back since Michele and I have been really busy doing other things. The same thing happened to BlogCascadia which I administer for our local ASTD chapter. When I was traveling, the other authors didn't post.

I think conversation is key to community, so if people post and don't get responses to what they put out, they stop putting forth the effort. It takes a lot of work, especially at the beginning, and you feel like you are talking into the air at times.

[Dottie May]

I'm another that is guilty of not participating. Matter of fact, it's been a long time since I've even signed in. I do enjoy blogging, however, it seems that as school started and my kids' activities increased, my blogging has decreased. Not only that, I was blogging on more personal type stuff like emotions at times, weightloss struggles, etc. My blogging just doesn't seem to have a real focus and I'm not sure what I want to blog about... Additionally, I don't spend too much time visiting other blogs so I know my own doesn't get much traffic especially now since it's been weeks since I've blogged anything. Although I think I'll go over there now and post something.

[Vic Grace]

I read in my Google Reader what every one says but I don't often have anything to share or ask because some of the posts are a bit too technical for me. I think when I joined I was looking for tips along the lines of ProBlogger , or perhaps actual reviews of the site, offering tips on how to improve. A couple of weeks ago I decided to monetize my blog as I had got it to Page Rank 4 but Google put it back to 2 then 9 and now it is back to 2. I don't know if a greater effort with all the ProBlogger tips (which I do continue) is going to work this time. It seems quite exhausting.

[Kate Foy]

Hi Michelle
I'm mindful that I haven't participated much at all, and until I bought my new iMac, had all sorts of technical problems with the Ning platform. However, my 2c worth, based on prior experience with project communities.

I don't have any kind of definitive answer or brilliant ideas, but I would suggest that maybe the lifetime of BBB is coming to an end in its current incarnation. Is this a bit harsh? I don't mean it to be, but then again, perhaps this is in the nature of the way groups and communities gathered around a purpose (in this case 'creating a better blog') get what they need at the staging post, and move on. Perhaps we're experiencing the first move-on; the first round of conversations are exhausted. Will newcomers arrive? Yes, but I think only if we attract them (your last point). I imagine you will remain as house-keeper, inspirer, and staging post attendant; continuity is important. I would hope that from time to time we will all drop back to say 'hi' and report on our journeys out there. As loyal alumnuses, we should be sending people here via direct recommendations to new bloggers (word of blog). Don't be dismayed by this. You're doing a great job.

[Laura Whitehead]

HI Michele
I think Kate's comments are really valid. I do dip in and out when time allows, and was hoping to do Soha's challenge this week, although the person I was interviewing is now ill this week! So mine will be later than planned.

I do like the voyage of learning how to do things better, and this is a useful place to link up with others too when we have questions we want to share. I'm guilty of not following everyone's blogs (I still follow all in the original challenge though) and commenting and praising when we do a good job - which is really important to keep us all going.

I'm doing my reader survey task in December as planned from the original challenge, although over here in ye ole UK, people are very shy of commenting on blogs and use my contact form the most, so discussion is always difficult!

Maybe some challenges to boost reader confidence to participate!

Laura

[Sue Waters]

Hey Michele - know the feeling. Had an interesting conversation with James Farmer (owner of Edublogs) who said that a Ning community may initially start off well but in the long term will always struggle because for one simple reason — “ownership" whereas a personal blog won't struggle with this issue. I did post a reflection on our discussion on my blog and readers comments are really interesting.

I am having similar issues with Etools and Tips for Educators Ning community -- actually Better Blog community is doing a lot better than Etools. I tried the weekly challenges -- for a few weeks but it was not working and one of the members commented to me privately that made him feel pressured. So I decided that the weekly challenges work better for BBB community than Etools. If you compare how BBB community is going against Classroom 2.0 -- then BBB is going considerably better -- Classroom 2.0 has over 4,000 members and forum posting is not much higher than BBB (actually fairly similar). Also while I may not always respond to the postings at BBB community I always read them whereas most times I don't read Classroom 2.0 posts because I am more connected to BBB.

There are two main reasons why I have not taken part recently in the weekly challenges: 1. Have been incredible busy with conferences, work and family life, 2. I already do the tasks mentioned in the challenge or are unable to do the task e.g. poll because my blog platform is not suited to it. Saying that I like the weekly challenges and I like reading how people are going. I also feel disappointed because Vic asked for tips of getting a more global audience and I have not come up with any answers because it has never been an issue for me - it has just happened as a consequence of my activities. Perhaps some others could help with some suggestions.

**Questions you want answered?
Obviously as a facilitator of a Ning community myself I would love to hear from others as to what activities engage them and what they don't like.

[Christine Martell]

Sue,
I read your posts on ownership of communities, and have been thinking about it a lot. I do think you are dead on. Even though I am an administrator on this Ning, I am always aware of it being Michele's baby. Now, I don't even know if she thinks of it that way, or is she wants everyone to feel ownership. So, even my making that assumption is an interesting thing.

I'm not sure how you can facilitate a community taking ownership. I have been trying to do it on the blogs I write, since they all have multiple authors. I suspect I am still seen as the "owner" since I write more of the posts, and control the look and feel.

I get most engaged in communities when I see conversations. When people respond to each other. When suggestions are met with openness, and even more when I see changes based on them. For me, one of the most dynamic thread in this community was the tag line challenge. People put forth ideas, we got suggestions, people made changes.....it really felt like a community to me.

[Michele Martin]

Wow--you guys are giving me a lot to think about here! Not sure what the answers are though because I'm currently brain dead from a 12-hour day with a client and the rest of my week is more of the same. I may not get to dig into all of this until the weekend, but I want to think/discuss more about what to do--if anything. Thank you for all your feedback on this--keep it coming!

[Simon Thomas]

I think this is just fairly typical of a community. You get the early surge of activity and enthusiasm which gradually settles down. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just a community evolving into, hopefully, something that's sustainable. Personally, a couple of things have kept me away, mostly work related stuff that's been sucking up alot of my time (which also means that I've been blogging maybe once a week, tops). Because of this I feel like I'm out of sync with the rest of the community, I haven't done a challenge in ages, and I think one a week is too much for me (especially things like interviews, which can take a while to arrange and then write up). I was also hoping the better blogging blog would have been a goer but like the rest of the community interest seems to have waned all round.

Maybe a self serving challenge getting members to write specifically about this community and encourage new members is the way to go...

[Eklavya]

Well this is the most interesting and introspective discussion on this community I came across. Some common points :
(1) We all are very busy in our professional & personal lives and don't have much time to contribute here.

(2) Some of us want to end this community in it's present avatar.

(3) All of us are looking for ideas to keep it interesting and worthwhile.

I think ending this project is not a solution. We all want to build better blogs and this BBB is one platform to learn and share our knowledge of blogging. No matter how slow or irregular our activities are, as long as there is a desire to keep in touch, members will return again and again. (Look I have returned after a long gap :-)

Regarding this problem of fading enthusiasm, I think we should start something which prompt all of us to comeback at least once in a week. Here is my suggestion :

Let's create a thread about our personal experience. We all are bloggers and through our respective blogs we are expressing opinions on various subject of our liking. Our aim is to build a better and popular blog in our respective niche and for that we all are trying in our own ways to promote it, to improve it etc. So what we all should do is to write at least one post in a week about our personal progress in blogging. We should write that post in our respective blogs and here in a specific thread we should post a link to that post so that other members can read it. This post will be about what we did during the whole week on our blog and in what way our doing so effect our blog. For example suppose I write a post about India and it become quite popular resulting into 100s of visitors to my blog, I'll write about this experience in that BBB specific post. Or suppose I find a new strategy for generating traffic to my blog or any other method which work/not work; I'll write about that in my BBB post.

Just like me, other members will also write a BBB specific post in their respective blogs and then post it's link in the specific thread here. This way we will get a weekly supply of blogging tips from our members which will eventually help in improving our blogs. Further, knowing blogging experience of each other will be a great learning experience and a great puller to come here and read various posts in the thread.

Well this is my suggestion for consideration of all of you.

Regards

Eklavya


Since we will be working in our blogs itself, there should not be any difficulty in posting atleast one BBB related post every week.