Jump to the following topics:

1. What is a community?
2. Advantages and disadvantages.  
3. Techniques for building a community.    

What is a community? It is a website where people meet to share common interests, friendships, trust, loyalty, emotional bonds, and a sense of belonging.

Advantages and disadvantages.

1. Advantages.
   • A community encourages "repeat visits." According to many businesspeople, visitors usually don't make a purchase on their first visit to a website. They will need to return at least once before they buy anything.
   • A community fosters friendships. We can enjoy the friendships, and also the increased revenue; people like to buy from someone whom they know and like.
2. Disadvantages.
   • When we have a large number of repeat visitors in our community, we put more of a demand on our server; thus, the server might be slower for our customers.
   • Some of our visitors will require our time for email responses, etc. If these people are not customers, we might be wasting our time.
   • We will have to spend time on the community's features: the chats, discussion boards, etc.

Techniques for building a community.  

1. We can encourage connections among the people. Our visitors become acquainted with one another through various forums: a discussion board, email discussion list, guestbook, and chat. We develop these connections through these means:
   • We can welcome new people when they enter one of those forums for the first time.
   • We can ask people to tell us about themselves and their interests. These personal questions can be presented in the forums.
   • We can introduce the people to one another. For example, in a chat, we could say, "John, Mary has had that experience; maybe she would like to tell you about it."
   • We can ask the people to invite their friends to the site. Then, when the friends see one another's names in the forums, they will feel a greater sense of familiarity.
2. We can create a friendly, warm environment. This is like a party; we are the host. We exude personality and vibrancy and fun.
3. We can offer new content continually. This new content is another reason for the people to return. And if we use material which has been donated by members, those members will have a bond to this site.
4. We can sponsor activities. In addition to the activities in the forums, we can sponsor games, contests, surveys, group projects, auctions, etc.
5. We can encourage participation in the maintenance and development of the website. We allow opportunities for people to decide the future of the website -- the activities, the information on the pages, the direction of the site's growth, etc. We solicit leaders who can direct projects (e.g., the gathering of information for another page on the site), and volunteers who can oversee chats and special events.
6. We can explicitly refer to the website as a "community." We can use this word in the text and titles of pages. And we can use similar words: home, neighborhood, etc.
7. We create a specific tone for the website. Possible tones include exciting or cozy or warm.