RELATED CONVERSATIONS:
BLOG ARCHIVES:
- 2012
- 2011
- 2010
- 2009
- 2008
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
Our Online Community
Last week, I went to an "unconference" known as PubMedia Camp hosted by OPB. It was a diverse gathering of people with a wide variety of media-related interests: reporters, bloggers, marketing people and techies of all stripes. After introducing ourselves and munching on the spread of free grub, we set our agendas for break out discussions (true to the unconference model). I attended a session on building online communities and heard a lot of feedback about Think Out Loud's web presence.
People had positive things to say about the tone of discussions on our site. They also offered some constructive suggestions about things we could do to improve our interaction with our existing online community and engage more people in order to grow that community. Here are just a few of the ideas that came my way:
- Give people an option to "opt in" to an email alert list when they sign up to comment on the blog so we can let them know about upcoming events and special shows.
- Create a way to automatically notify people when someone responds directly to their comments.
- Have more meetups so people can talk to each other face-to-face as well as online
- Integrate Twitter and Facebook feeds into our site so people could read them along with the blog.
What would you like to add to this list? How would you like to see the Think Out Loud online community grow?
-
Thanks for your comments. If you have anything you'd like to add about how we could improve the web site, we'd love to hear that too.
-
Reduce barriers for users to share their thoughts. Use an open source ID log in; let users sign in with their twitter or facebook credentials.
Not only does this make content-sharing easier for users, but it also gives readers the ability to know more about the commenter via their twitter or facebook public profile. People that post comments want to be heard and to be noticed and letting them share their public profile (i.e. their passion, their cause) is a great incentive for participation. For readers, the posts take on more depth by letting readers link through to see the commenter's public twitter/facebook profile.
And let the commenter opt in to sharing their comment on their social media site of choice. This extends your conversation, leveraging the social network of the commenter.
The Huffington Post does a really good job of this. Check out some of their comment areas.
And if you do require a TOL user account to post, don't redirect the user back to the home page after logging in! When I clicked the "make a comment" link, it asked me to log in or register. I logged in, and got bumped over to the home page, which left me trying to figure out where it was I was intending to leave the comment.
I attended the pubcamp last week and really enjoyed it. Thanks!
-
The idea was great and suggesting an opt of using and open source Identity would be a lot better. Since almost every sites is using this, it will a good tool to be able to know more about the commenter with their Twitter and even Facebook accounts which is 100% updated, I know. And aside from the fact that members that are part of the discussion will be able to know more about themselves it is also a good tool that it will be shared to other user's of the third party site, on that note, more and more readers will be engaged to the discussion and will be able to share and past it through others.
-
Comments are now closed.
Your question, as I read it, is how can TOL increase it's market share? Personally, I don't think it is links on your web page, that will get you results you want. I believe the conversations onair need to improve in depth and quality.
We all know people in our lives who, when they tell a story, everyone is quiet and listens. We all know people, who with just a few questions, can get us to open up to them. The same holds true for good radio interviewers. There is a magic to it... an art to it... some people are "naturals."