As part of the build-up to news:rewired we want to give you some food for thought before each of our sessions.
So we’ll be posting a collection of tools, links and ideas relevant to each of the subjects up for discussion.
Think of it as a reading list or a starting point for questions on the day.
First up is Building an Online Community from Scratch with Ed Walker, Neil Perkins and Anthony Thornton and some key blog posts from the speakers themselves and other experts:
Useful blog posts
- Ed Walker – “How I set up a community journalism blog for where I live”
- Neil Perkin – Great 10 tips from Neil on MediaTel:
- The community should have a purpose
- Put community at the heart of what you do
- Select the right tools
- Dedicate proper resource
- Understand that your users are not all the same
- Don’t broadcast at your community
- Remember that community members are people
- Share control
- Recognition and reward are important
- Encourage advocacy
- Committee of Concerned Journalists – “Five rules for building a successful online community”
- OJR – “Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organising“
- JD Lasica – slideshow presentation on tools for building online communities.
Resources
- Blaise Grimes-Viort’s website – http://blaisegv.com – online community and social media strategist, who has previously worked for NatMags, Hearst Digital and Chat Moderators.
- Community Spark – http://www.communityspark.com – a website entirely dedicated to online community building.
- FeverBee – http://www.feverbee.com – online community consultant Richard Millington.
- Online Journalism Blog – http://onlinejournalismblog.com/tag/community-editors – a series of interviews conducted with community managers, including some great first-hand tips.
Issues to discuss
- How does setting up a community around interests differ from an online community serving a particular geographic area?
- How can offline be used to support the online community?
- How do you build and sustain interaction?
- What’s the best moderation policy?
- Can online communities be monetised?
- And perhaps crucially – is an online community something you can “create”?
