Building Stronger Online Communities Without Losing Your Sanity

Next week I’ll be in Atlanta for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (connect with me there!).  One of the sessions I’m a part of, along with Manny Hernandez, Peggy Duvette, and Christine Egger, hopes to answer the question how you can build strong online communities without losing your sanity.

If you want to build a strong online community, getting the right platform in place is only half the battle, and it’s the easy half. In this peer-led discussion, we’ll share our experiences of online community building and build lists of best practices around recruiting new members and retaining them, increasing participation and moderating your community.

Takeaways:

1.  Examples on how to grow your online community.
2.  Tips for encouraging interaction in your online community.
3.  Examples of successful online community engagement.

We need you!

Here’s the catch: we may be presenting and leading the discussion, but we know you all have some terrific experiences, examples, and stories to share.  So, we have a few ways you can join in (even if you aren’t in Atlanta) and make this session even more valuable for everyone!

  1. Start Sharing Today:  We’ve set up a google document as a shared space for anyone interested in the topic, whether they are in the session with us or not, to post links, resources, examples and more.  Please add to it today, during the session, and after!
  2. Include the Hashtag:  We know that you’ll have lots of things to share and say on this topic (we’re hoping you do!) but want to be sure all those following the session from outside Atlanta can catch it all (and so you can find what everyone else is sharing, too!).  Please use the hashtag #strongbunch for this session!

We are all really looking forward to this discussion and hope that be creating the google doc ahead of time we can let the community build a resource far better than we could have alone.  Please do share your ideas, links, or examples!  Here are our slides if you want a sneak peak at the presentation:

8 thoughts on “Building Stronger Online Communities Without Losing Your Sanity

  1. Wish I could attend, Amy, as my clients (profit & nonprofit) are at that point of wanting to participate in social media to a greater extent but feeling the burden is more than they can handle. Much of it is simply fear of the unknown, but it’s also important to have a plan in place that reflects objectives and available resources.

    1. Thanks, Global Patriot! Wish you could attend as well…maybe next year!

      There will be quite a lot made virtual though. Check out http://www.nten.org/ntc-live for links to watch streamed sessions and speakers and live blog links, etc. I know that the sessions I’m in will be striving to make the conversations as web-accessible in real-time as possible as well.

      Hope to see you next year

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