Comments on: Community Bootstrapping: Tools & Strategies To Build A Community On A Budget

By: Controlling The Conversation: Strategies To Get People Talking About What You Want | jasonyormark.com

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:01:11 +0000

[...] Create Community Next you need to consider having a “controlled” community environment in your world. In other words, a community platform that lives on your site. A place that you can offer your customers/audience a place to communicate in addition to external channels. While it’s great and necessary to use the external channels, it’s important to establish yourself as a true community champion by having your own community presence. It also allows you to control the platform, and metrics making it easier to turn those conversations and data into actionable resources. For information on how to build your own community platform inexpensively, check out my previous post on the subject. [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:35:00 +0000

I would have added something of course, but in fact says almost everything..

By: jYO

jYO — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Great points. I think Joomla is a great option, but a steep learning curve for those not having much open source software experience. Plus I feel like their admin UI is really bloated and confusing. They need to simplify that.

I'll have to check out uservoice.

By: jYO

jYO — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:49:00 +0000

True on the Big 3. It may very well be that some businesses find that not all 3 make sense, but to clarify on my point, it's those 3 that a business should focus on in terms of where to start whether it's using all 3 or just a combination of.

Ning does have it's drawbacks, but what I think it offers is the easiest out of the box solution. I think most people don't have the experience, time and knowledge to handle software like Dolphin. I think like Joomla, it requires some user savvy that only time and experience with those platforms can bring. Definitely worth it though for those that can consider it.

By: Albert

Albert — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:07:00 +0000

Yeah, well written..

By: Martin Reed

Martin Reed — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:19:00 +0000

An interesting article. I would disagree slightly with your implication that businesses should target Facebook, Twitter AND Linkedin all at the same time. They have different audiences (especially Linkedin) so you need to consider whether you'll be reaching your target demographic before spending time trying to develop followings there.

I definitely agree that there should be, 'real people acting on behalf of these companies' – one of our members has control of our twitter account and is doing a great job. Genuine conversations, genuine engagement.

For social networking platforms, I would like to add Boonex Dolphin – they are open source, and whilst I haven't used the software yet, I plan to do so in the very near future. I have to admit, I am not a huge fan of Ning – I find the software very restrictive and once your community becomes popular it can get quite expensive.

Your article proves that building community doesn't need huge sums of money. What it needs is time, commitment and passion. Oh, and probably patience and dedication, too!

By: Indiansinuk Indiansinus

Indiansinuk Indiansinus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Comment-part-2
Joomla CMS + 3rd party plugins like Community Builder, Jomsocial are the leading ones in community building platforms out there. Joomla integrates well with phpBB, SMF etc.

Elgg, joomunity and anahitapolis are some other great alternatives out there. Except jomsocial, these all options are free. In paid ones, you have socialengine, dolphin etc which are a great bunch of community softwares out there.

Many more out of box solutions will be landing soon… Putting Joomla+any free community software on bluehost.com is much cheaper and much better solution than ning.com etc.

let me know if someone needs more info about pros and cons of these softwares. Different software suit different needs, The list is actually endless.

have fun building communities guys!
Cheers!

By: Indiansinuk Indiansinus

Indiansinuk Indiansinus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Hi,
That was very well presented information. May I add some more bits to it?

The Pligg link you mentioned is throwing up an error. and I checked out Ideasource as well. Couldn't find the right information there in 3 clicks and 20 secs so browsed away. Well I work for a company who have played around with many community building softwares in last 1.5 yrs. We have tried our hands on almost 7-8 out of 10 popular options out there.

And since you metioned open source segment so I would list some great choices in opensource.

http://uservoice.com/ – is best in the league of idea sourcing services.

End of comment part-1