How to Easily Get More Members for Your Niche Community

Niche communities like forums, social networks and even large blogs all start from ground zero with no registered users, visitors or members. Promoting your website and getting people interested enough to join and support your site is a challenge.

I’ve seen many forums and social networks stagnate in growth after a big launch campaign, even if they have attractive site designs or initial promo schemes which appeal to a wide audience.

Community building is an on-going task that requires strategic planning and consistent marketing efforts, even when your community is relatively established.

Instead of creating a couple of new features or revamping your site design, focus instead on the mentality of users. What attracts visitors to your website and makes them want to return? What’s in it for them? And how can you make them want to spread the word about your community or website?

Five Effective Methods to Optimize Your Niche Community

A reader who prefers to be unnamed recently emailed me the following question:

When building a niche community online, how would you approach attracting those first hundred or so people to take a look and hopefully sign up? Along with quality content, how can a web community offer value to the user before that community has a user base?

Communities market themselves when they are well populated. They attract attention. They make people curious. They motivate current users. Getting the first few people to sign up and join your website is really not difficult if you focus on providing ostensible benefits for every potential user.

People are largely self-interested; they visit and use websites regularly to fulfill their personal desires and needs. They are always looking to get something out of the community, be it knowledge, money, relationships or entertainment.

Understanding their interests will help you to better develop a website which is attractive to them. Here are five main ways you can use to appeal to the average user who visits your community:

1. Make them Popular. User ranking lists feed the vanity of users and make them feel important. It encourages users to strive for the coveted top spots. This generally increases participation within the niche community, particularly if you make the ranking list prominent or add external benefits (e.g. prizes) for the top ranking users.

   Make them want to come back and continue building their site profile.




2. Develop Core Supporters. The backbone of every web community is the group users who are the most active. Assimilate these people by acknowledging their contributions and giving them recognition.

   Turn them into voluntary or paid admins. You may already have a hired hand managing your community but nothing beats a group of active users who willingly provide free support, advice and help for new members.




3. Give Something Back. Make a habit of giving something back to the people who actively use your website. Examples of items to offer include premium memberships, revenue-share, monthly prizes, publicity or traffic/links. Visitors should feel that they are getting something back in return for their time spent.




4. Channel an External Goal. Nothing unites a community more than a collective external goal (e.g. save the dolphins, 10K registered users etc.). Set a goal and make your audience feel as if they all part of the process of achieving it.

   This can be done through consistent copy writing which focuses on the collective mindset and a feedback loop which actually acknowledges and responds to user queries. Getting your core supporters to promote your main causes also helps to generate involvement from other members.




5. Enhance Interaction. The best way to make your community attractive is to increase the interaction among existing users. 43 Things is the best example of a community that has succeeded by simply connecting users according to their life goals, interests and aspirations.

   Similarly, you can also use folksonomy to link users according to their interests or profile details. Promote interaction between users and make sure that your site features actively encourage dialogue between users on all levels.

You should also consider setting up a community blog to create content which attracts search engine visitors. Place link baits on these blogs to promote the community on social media websites as well.

Regular traffic is important; the more visitors you attract, the greater potential for growth, particularly if your site has an active and established community of users.

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