how do you encourage your members to interact with eachother?

i feel like i need a fire pit on my website, so people can pull up a chair and realize it's okay to interact with eachother.

i think half the issue may be that nobody knows who's going to talk to them, and nobody wants to look a fool for being first.  

what kind of strategies or moduli are effective to fostering interaction between members to build community?

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    • content that forces interaction wich is lacking in UNA. Try mods like "people you may know" or featured users. Other than that its going to get hard for users to interact with each other. Try a Shout Box on Homepage. Create discussions that ask questions and ask what features your users would like to see in the future. 

      • okay. heard.  

        what i mean is getting people to share with eachother about their lives, and be AUTHENTIC.  not just the kind of stuff that happens in a team building activity at work nobody wants to attend, and everyone only goes because there is cake at the end.

        i made the shoutbox prominent, but i think that perhaps well everyone likes to play games for some reason, but i want people to get to know eachother.  :)

        • It is probably all of this social distancing they are pushing on people; can't have people actually talking to each other.

          • Perhaps you should try to drive it.  Make a post "The weekend is here; what are everyone's plans?"  Of course the weekend is over, that is just an example.

            • thats my best hunch too...

              • funny you say that, my facebook feed is amok with people complaining about everything.    its as if people dont understand what they put their focus on is what they get.   its hard at times for everyone to realize that, but i mean ****.   i get a little saltier when i'm tired so i need to not share my whole mind on this one.  :)

                • Sweet juicy content sir. You have to give them value. 

                  • Just what i saw now a days that makes people interact.  Create a barter of items group no money involved as rules just add trade value,  create a market place for 2nd hand / brand new item, current news updates that can trigger members to interact, game live feed etc. 

                    A good tutorial for ur members to navigate the site.

                    • Good question. you could try creating topic-specific groups and placing a Messenger block on them to promote ongoing conversation. Otherwise discussions can be really good, but they do need vigilant moderation. Posts, comments, updates are all quite transient. 

                      • that is essentially the format i've employed already, each group is sorted by high level meta topic "the philosophers corner", "i love dance music", "meet the neighbors", "tech geeks corner", "the screening room", "home coffee roasters/coffee lovers", etc etc.. :)   each has a jot block under the group description and quite prominenly in the main content. then the timeline loads under that and context area for + is above the jot block.

                        this does remind me though where it says "Page:" i need to alter the key to "Group Chat for " GroupIDName  :)  Thats just a key in the polyglot engine, right?  

                        so far nobody is really using the discussions, or the site, although i have new users signing up every day, have written over 3,000 words in the wiki and have a walk through video for unauthenticated on the main FQDN page when you arrive..      so i'm learning something new and just taking it day by day, i can't incentivize people to use something, especially if they're not in the habit of using it yet.   .. these things take time.  :D  

                        thanks Andrew.

                        • interesting.  :D   well, I own willtrade.org willyoutrade.me and www.lettuce.trade  ....   :D   if things go properly with my implementation then there will be satellite sites...  doing this type of thing, or perhaps ill get a super minimalist una site going on one of these as a test and see what people do with it, but the problem then with a bifurcated focus is tech support for one when you've educated a user base on the site you're currently working on...

                          which leads me to another area...  

                          una needs some kind of department where there is a course people can take, and test on once they've taken it, to develop "CMS experts" , who are able to man ticket queues or something, where they can work electively (but not less than xyz hrs a week) to answer problems for users...  and the whole thing is fed by not only this site but can be blended queue with extant una sites by key (signup to prepend your site into the cust service cms queue), and therein the whole thing is intelligently managed with regards to disbursement of payment to the CS agents by a combination of tickets being closed and verifying the thing actually is working on the ticket holders una implementation....

                          this is a big topic im addressing here but this is something that very much needs to be either IN the road map, or actively being implemented.. as evidenced by well, the flow of help! requests not only here, but in general.. its imperative moving forward to grow, ...

                          documentation .. >> ++ ticketing system >> expansion ...

                          cc Andrew Boon Mark P Mark Purser

                          • Do you mean a little like this?

                            • have you seen my site, ACC? :) <3 

                              • there are a dozen and a half ways to do this, but similar, however the main concept was actually creating a CS branch of people who are trained in Una architecture well enough to actually answer and resolve these things, and get paid to do so, versus creating more problems and complexities by incorrect answers or not fully supporting a ticketed ID, and then some.
                                an extant and time proven ticketing system would be far better, i almost worked at a company once doing exclusively this, i dont recall what the software was called, but there is a LOT of it out there.
                                :)

                                • this is a big topic im addressing here but this is something that very much needs to be either IN the road map, or actively being implemented.. as evidenced by well, the flow of help! requests not only here, but in general.. its imperative moving forward to grow, ...

                                  documentation .. >> ++ ticketing system >> expansion ...

                                  I agree, UNA seems to be aiming for customers with little or no tech experience and as such support is imperative. The first place I would start is documentation - I recently tried Jamroom and they have a whole segment of their site dedicated to support! It's logically organised, searchable and clearly written.
                                  I came back to UNA because I felt it was better overall, but that documentation almost swayed me.

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