By Steve Rosenbaum

In part #1, we talked about traffic and about building a destination to insure traffic and SEO visabiity for your site.

Today,  we're going to talk about the power of social networking- and how you can create value for both you and your visitors by employing the tools and philosophies of social media and community.

When you think about community -  you need to first decide wether you are willing to allow your site to have the core elements of community.  They are a). Membership  b). Participation  and c). Transparency. Each of these elements are essential, but the are a wide variety of ways to implement them.

Membership:

While content sites and destination sites don't need any kind of membership logins, once you start inviting contribution and participation,  you need to have a way of assuring that each member of your site has an identity that can be verified. This can be as complex as a custom membership database with an avatar and member profile,  or as simple as asking for an email address before you let visitors vote or comment.  But the odds are you'll find that once you've established a username and log in,  you'll be able to start creating a community.

Participation:

Once you've determined that your site is going to be a two-way experience, the question is  - how are you going to invite participation? There are a large number of ways to invite engagement. They include:

    - Member Profiles
    - Photo uploads
    - Discussion Boards
    - Member Blogs
    - Member Permission-based communication (friending / following)
    - Live Webcam broadcasting
    - Contests
    - Content Voting
    - Content Review / recommendation

There are a number of software solutions that you can employ to offer these forms of participation.  Depending on the sophisication of your site,  and your development team, you can search out a la carte solutions for blogging, social software, contetsts,  discussion boards,  and photo uploads and galleries.  The only thing to be aware of is that bolting together various solutions,  each with their own log in and membership schema can be a pretty significant task.  While the concept of Single-Sign-On seems straightforward enough,  in reality even open source solutions like Open ID aren't as transparent and simlple as you might expect.  Alternatively,  there are some Social Networking solutions that offer a suite of social media tools, but there too, you may find that feels too cookie-cutter and members will not feel like they're remaining on your site.

Transparency:

This is important.  L9ots of folks confuse community with anarchy.  But that's flat out wrong.  Visitors come to your site because they want a curated experience.  They want your editorial, your quality control,  your voice.  And you have every right to employ those same standards to your community - if you choose to.  That means you can set the tone and the rules around your members participation.  You can define the quality of the discourse,  and you can ban images,  language,  and interactions that you don't want within your community.  Of course, the rule here is transparency. 

So,  set clear tone with community standards.  When someone signs up for to post a comment,  make sure there's a form that sets out what you expect from community members,  and how you will respond if the rules aren't followed. 

Of course, you don't need to edit,  moderate, or review your submissions - and you may find that given your choice of subject matter it's not necessary.  For example,  a site about knitting may find that the folks who stop by,  comment,  and upload are all self-selected enough that the submissions are good quality.  But,  remember this -there's the famous broken window theory.   If you don't look at your boards and spam shows up and you don't clear it - then the message to your visitors is that this space isn't a "Safe, Well-lit place."  If you let a window in your house stay broken,  odds are,  you'll star to see vandals break more windows, or worse. 

How to make community work. 

Start with a clear plan - for membership registration,  participation,  and transparency around the 'vibe' and the rules of your community.  Make sure you've got a voice for your site.  You don't need to blog and moderate yourself,  but you need to have someone who works on your site who's responsible for managing and engaging your community. 

If you're looking for some good examples of how community works - take a look at the guys at Zappos.com.  There's a company that understands that engagement and transparency are key to creating a community around a e-commerce site. The CEO, Tony Hsieh blogs, twitters,  and invites visitors to share stories and feedback. Here's his blog,  worth a read:  http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog />
Another example is Native American Tube  and its founders, Little Bear and Geronimo. In just a few short months they've been able to gather 841 active members who help the sort, find, publish and review videos.  If you go to their site,  you'll see that they've posted clear community standards right at the top of their page. 

It reads, in  part:

"Respect is what we are all about. Please respect everyone who posts videos, if you find a video disrespecting please email me and we will look into it. Always always respect with your comments, treat people as you would want to be treated. Your kind comments are what builds others confidence, and it takes a lot of courage to get in front of the screen and show your talent or voice your opinions."

These guys get it - and it's working.

Certainly community is about tech, but you know there are tons of tools out there to allow contributions.  But I want to leave you with this one clear message - communities can come alive if you set an example around the quality of the participation.  If you do that you're already halfway home. Visitors will arrive,  get a clear sense of a living,  breathing,  vibrant group of like-minded individuals,  and each of them will make your community stronger.