One of the more popular goals online these days, both on magazine sites and on the web at large, is “building community.” The idea is to build a large group of repeat visitors who spend lots of time on your site and view lots of pages (and therefore, of course, ads). There’s also a lot of potential for building your brand and collecting reader data to be used in more creative ways (such as targeted newsletters).
But how do you build these communities? Josh Gordon at Folio has a few ideas, inspired by/borrowed from cio.com. The bottom line? A community is born, not made: you can start a community on your site, but it’s the users who develop it and ultimately decide what goes on. Something to think about if you (or your lawyers) like to control every aspect of your site.