Building a web community
November 10, 2008 katdp3
One of the most difficult elements, as illustrated in the readings, is getting others to “buy into” your webpage. To attract attention, the right kinds, to whatever topic you choose for your website . It’s always great to create a website that you like, but who cares if no one else does! If you want more and more people to be interested in your resource, marketing, I think, is the trickiest part. Getting the right capability and buying the right software is annoying and tedious (or can be), but creating a final product that not only gets hits but continues to grab attention is the hard part. Starting small by collecting emails is probably the best bet, once your webpage gets off the ground, sophistication can come later through blogs and multiple postings and larger networks. By establishing a healthy and talkative community, history can be generated, developed, shared and enriched. The early stages of establishing a strong community of visitors will be the most difficult; gaining trust, authority and credibility does not come easy. Especially when Cohen advocates getting an email address from visitors. If you have done a good job proving your website has been done well, and contains a good mission, odds are people will not come back. First impressions are huge!
Using the September 11th archive is a great source for ideas. By making the mission clear, the creator information available, and giving viewers the option to get involve to either contribute or preserve history, you can get off on the right foot. The creators of that sight used a traumatic and sensitive issue to engage an audience and enrich/preserve a piece of history. Accessibility, as mentioned in other articles is very important, as well as clarity to get viewers hooked.
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