Hey, dear PeerBoard partners!
In the past, we were focusing mostly on technical/product guides on using PeerBoard and we'll keep investing in these materials to make it easier for you to get the most out of PeerBoard. Now we are starting to write a series of community guides on building successful communities. And I would like to ask for your tips, recipes and recommendations on different techniques you use to build successful communities.
To give you an idea of what type of things we're thinking of, let me bring up some examples. Here're some of the things that I've seen working (and if they worked for you, please elaborate too):
- "Ask me anything" posts where community members are motivated to write their questions and get answers to opinion leaders of the community.
- "Tell a story" posts that give a specific theme/topic and then ask community members to share their stories or takes on this theme, potentially highlighting best stories in a follow-up post.
- "Nominate and vote" posts that suggest members to list a person, a product, a technique, etc. and use likes to vote on it (and thus give good feedback to the commenters).
Note that in all examples above a community leader starts with a post, and it triggers commenting by the members. This seems to me like the best way to break this first barrier to contribute - after writing a comment and getting a positive response, it's much easier psychologically to write a post. But that doesn't mean that this is the only way to provoke a healthy interesting discussion. Other means include:
- Creating pinned posts that suggest specific behavior and post types.
- Creating dedicated post categories that would invoke specific posts (see our Questions, Feedback, Showcases, Tips & Tricks sections in this community). Do any of these work for you too?
- Posting guidelines, header links, and any other directions/guidelines that may promote positive contributions.
We'd really love to hear what works for you. We will include the best suggestions in our upcoming guide and make sure to mention the authors and their communities.
PS: let’s focus this discussion on content tips, not product suggestions. For those, please make separate posts in our Feature Requests section and our team and I will personally reply there.