Attracting users

There are a lot of empty websites and unread blogs out there. Don’t fall into the old trap of “if you build it, they will come,” because chances are they won’t. Acquiring users is about offering something of real value and making sure that the people who matter hear about it. So once you’ve built the community platform of your dreams, how do you actually get people to visit, use and contribute to it?

The first point should be obvious, but often isn’t: go to where people are already, as Colalife did. Use the tools and communities they use, and choose communications media and technologies to fit the audience, like Genesis and FreqOut. Don’t expect people to change their behaviours for you, design your strategy to fit what they’re doing already. Engage in the conversations, online and offline. Make sure you have a voice anywhere that your target audiences are paying attention to, and that you’re talking in a way that matches their values and assumptions.

Create valuable content: whether it’s your own team generating it or your users, if you have things people want to watch and read then it’s much easier to get people’s attention. Create news: time-specific events, stories and commentaries on public events can get you press and blog coverage, while face-to-face events give people a reason to write about you, and a reason to check out your platform afterwards. Let your users help you promote all this content too: the best commercial sites market themselves by encouraging users to create and share good content themselves. Sites like eBay, YouTube and Twitter rely on individuals promoting the content they’ve created, and so promoting the sites in the process.

Search engines are your main source of large-scale traffic, so don’t neglect them. Tiny changes can make a huge difference, and so can knowing what search terms you want to rank well for. And being in the top three for Google’s key terms is a completely different experience from being in the lower rankings. Getting lots of links to valuable content you and your users have created can be a smart way to push yourself up the Google ranks.

You have a great advantage if your project actually creates change in the real world, because that means it will create great stories that you can tell others. Talk to your users, find out what they’re up to, and tell those stories to encourage more people to join in. Your role in collecting and publishing their actions helps turn their isolated activity into a social movement which others want to be part of – and helps new visitors understand what they are supposed to do.

When people do visit, give them little ways to engage. 1% of registered users will be active; perhaps 5-10% will visit regularly; the rest will just come to watch, or perform one function. And that’s fine. Be realistic, and support each segment. And bring people back, with e-mail updates, recommendations for them, notifications of activity of interest to them. For example, if someone leaves a comment on an article, make sure you notify the author and bring them back into the conversation.