How to be a successful orkut community owner?

A complete Guide to be a successful community owner- By zazo.

How effortless is to make any online community on orkut? Simply, create as much communities you wish. But how many communities really becomes successfully a community? Well, you might be confused on my question but I am not silly. So read it again…How many communities successfully becomes a community?

Online Community is not what you made it in a few seconds just by naming it, writing “cool” description and putting a flashy Display Picture, it something means more than that, online community is a group of people small or large in numbers sharing their common interest and discussing widely and more deeply that they make a strong bond between each other and attached emotionally by the medium of internet.

Now, after reading the above definition how many of you find your community fits on what is described above? I know, very few communities on orkut is really fit and deserve to be called as a community. But every community owners wants his community to be a perfect and ideal example of a online community, right?

Make your base strong

It’s not so easy and its not even an impossible task to make a successful community, all you need is to keep some basic and very important points in your mind which would be key to a successful community, I made these points in simple easy to remember formula and that is P2KN which means:

• Passion
• Patience
• Knowledge
• Network

P2KN is going to make a basic structure in your mind before starting any community on any subject or a niche. I am going to elaborate the P2KN later but for now let me move to the other part which comes after P2KN, that part is the outside structure of a community which is divided into

Community Makeup

• Name of the Community
• Community Description
• Display Image

This is an outer-makeup of any community which could be the first impression to any new visitor; all 3 areas listed above should be taken too seriously before inviting people to join your community. I will going to write in detail for all 7 listed points above, if you remember P2KN and last three, but before that let me ask you some questions but don’t answer me, answer your own self.

Ask Yourself

• What your community is all about?
• Why someone will join your community?
• Why someone will post in your community?
• What knowledge you have for the subject or niche you have chosen to start a community?

After asking the above question try to find out a fair answers even if you think you are failed in answering because no one will notice you or laugh on you. Just drop the plan of making another un-successful community for sometime or use some bad JS scripts to increase your members. But If you really want to make something what Frank Moore and Michelle Young did than believe me there is no shortcut for success.

So, I prepared the base for you. P2KN, community make-up and 4 questions to your own.

Second step is to understanding more profoundly the steps written in Base above which we call it Operations

Operations

Let’s start from P2KN by taking all points individually so that you can implement it and understand it perfectly. So, here we are

Passion: Craziness is one such word which goes for passion and craziness is also best known for a lover known crazy for that neighboring girl he loves, he knows each and everything about her, her likes, dislikes, her sleeping and waking up time etc etc. So are you crazy for the subject you are intended to start an online community? How much you know about what you are going to start? Take the example of one Sneakerologist who is passionate about sneakers and he knows only sneakers, he is famous in many big sneakers related communities on orkut like Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Puma, Converse. You name it and in next moment sneakerologist will be ready to answer you whatever the price, the location or next upcoming sneakers in market.

Hope I made it very clear and pinched your craziness?

Patience: Most of the community owners thinks this way “we made and they will join” that’s absolutely wrong, no one will join like that nor anyone will be interested in what you made or why you made till you wont prove them your perfection and credibility by your patience. Patience doesn’t mean that “Make and wait till they join” no, I never mean that. But Patience means that don’t expect your community got 1000 in a week and than 5k in next 3 weeks and 100k in a year. Never dream such things if you are not having patience, to show the example of patience I want you to see Indians in Singapore community which was left un-noticed till 1 year of its start but now a very useful community giving support and helpful resource to thousands of immigrants. Keep doing your work according to the target but don’t loose patience, because communities always takes times to become a community.

Knowledge: Be ready to answer any questions related to the subject of your community by those new members, but what if you could not answer them? Do you think every time Google will help you? I want to say only one thing that don’t try to get into the things you don’t know, for an example a IATA students don’t know the capital of Brunei, thanks for my interest in geography that I know its Bandar Seri Begawan but not everyone is intelligent like me lol. Knowledge is important to prove yourself a perfect community owner, if you think that Moderators are the best way than please don’t think that.

Lastly,

Network: You have Passion, Patience and Knowledge but no one in this planet knows you than how you will grow or convince anyone to be a member of your community? I strongly put more weight on this after making a very serious mistake in my life and because of that I faced failure in one of my online venture. Be socially active, be active in other related communities of same niche where you can make good and quality posts and known as an active member with a very decent knowledge, this will probably make your impressive character in front of many, even if not many some will be also a big help when you will start a community of your own. Another way is to ask your close friends to help you running your community by posting good threads everyday. You are the master so use your network accordingly.

Now time to make-up, your community should look great before anybody could decide to join it or not.

Keeping some 3 major areas of make we start from

Name of the Community: That’s the first thing anybody will read it after visiting your community, don’t make your community name a story but make it a powerful words and it should be short, clear and meaningful but short doesn’t mean SMS language because not everyone understands it and most of the internet users simply hate it. Try keeping name related to your subject so that one can understand or get an idea about your community and its objective.

Community Description: Now, that’s a perfect creativity because you are limited to some extent after typing your community description. So try to make it short but understandable and cleanly written everything in points, if possible show your courtesy by either thanking the visitors or by greetings. Don’t use too much of codes that will make it amateurish.

Display Image: That’s the area to be which will be noticed before the name of the community, Community DP will be your representative everywhere on orkut because more the people will join it will show up even in their profiles, so make it very professional and also stylish because you don’t want only certain age group people if your community niche is quiet broad and suitable for everyone. Keep your DP related to your community so that it can give correct message to visitors, sometimes people use a half naked girl’s image for video/computer gaming chat now please make me understand is it perfect?

The last part of the Operations is those 4 questions I asked you to ask yourself. Remember? If tired take a deep breath and have a glass of water, you can do this much for your community, right?

Ok, so let me mash your brain little more

What your community is all about?

Can you answer this?, If you don’t know the objective of your own community what will you show to the members of your community? Ah common you should be up-to-date with everything related to your community, like if its related to books than you should be a reader first than you should know most of the authors and best selling novel this year.

Got me? Hope you did.

Why someone will join your community?

Who has time to join your community and get active into it? Your community has nothing special or you are not paying your members to be active, get something different and do something creative which was never done before you but could be copied by others after you. It’s not a game to make someone join and make him active, you need to make your members addict of your community by adding lots of spice everyday. But don’t make it over spicy or by the time you will blame me.

Why someone will post in your community?

Joining the community is rather easier task than posting in any community, how to make your members post quality posts and hot topics? This needs another 1000 words article but in short I can make you understand that give your members an importance of being a member of your community, be polite and keep yourself cool always because being an owner of the community don’t make you grandpa of your members. First, you should be active in posting new topics everyday and trying to get replies on old topics, your thread should be a request of opinions” “A question” “ a wrong remark” which will possible make a chance of a good reply and as soon as you received 3-4 replies than make your another reply and just go on.

What knowledge you have for the subject or niche you have chosen to start a community?

This Point is discussed before but that is a very important point I again wants to remind you by giving an example of my last interview with Frank Moore, Frank is very active in many of his owned communities or those he moderates but the strange thing was that all his communities either owned or moderated are completely different from each other in theme like Astrology and Peanut Butter freaks, Classical Music and Home Brewing. Naturally my question to frank was that how he could manage so many communities and all different from each other, he said its just because whichever communities he owned or moderates he has knowledge about that particular subject, even not a deep but still some basic knowledge and interest to learn. Many people could learn from it.

So, finally I tried to cover as much points I felt important to help some most needy community owners who thinks that just by running silly scripts to get thousands of members and by over-decorating the description area they will counted as a successful community owners, than please take away this myth. Its not a big thing having 100 and 1000 of communities but its really matters when your 1 community with few 50-100 people have strong bond in themselves which wont break ever and can be an example of Pune Eat Outs(PEO) or Books.

Base and Operations are 2 major and most serious points to take care of while making or thinking of any community. I will come up with more easier and effective points for other related subjects in this very important topic related to orkut users which is “How to be a successful orkut community owner?”

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