What to do when you lose interest in your community

At the start of a new com­mu­nity, your hopes and expec­ta­tions are high. You have dreams that your com­mu­nity will rise to the top, and you vow to work as hard as you must to make that dream come true. But over time, that hope can start to fade away and you may lose inter­est. Whether it be a lack of moti­va­tion, or just a sud­den dis­in­ter­est in your community.

It hap­pens to the best of us. Some would pre­fer to get the bur­den of spend­ing count­less hours online work­ing on a web­site with no guar­an­tees of suc­cess off their shoul­ders. Then there are the unfor­tu­nate group of peo­ple who don’t want to lose inter­est, but do. It is some­thing that can be avoided, and in this arti­cle I am going to go over ways to keep your inter­ests and stan­dards high.

Maybe you can’t do it alone — Get some help

Some com­mu­ni­ties take more time and effort than oth­ers do to man­age. Whether it is gen­eral mod­er­a­tion, or just behind the scene site main­te­nance, any help you can get will ulti­mately prove pos­i­tive for you.

Some­times hav­ing another per­son to run the site with you can give you back the moti­va­tion needed to start work­ing at a suc­cess­ful com­mu­nity. I know from past expe­ri­ence that when I hired a new co-admin on a past forum it really helped get my mind set on becom­ing a suc­cess­ful forum.

The best parts of get­ting a help­ing hand are:

• Cuts down your work load. You can split the work 50/50, or assign dif­fer­ent parts of your com­mu­nity to maintain.
• More ideas for improve­ment. One per­son is okay, but how much bet­ter are two or three peo­ple? Any type of brain­storm­ing ses­sions, or some­thing among those lines are great for plan­ning ahead.
• The more knowl­edge, the bet­ter. If you are stumped on how to per­form a spe­cific task, or can’t quite fig­ure out why Inter­net Explorer is mess­ing up your design, ask your part­ner. There’s always a chance they know what’s up.

Do you have any guesses as to what a result of hav­ing a part­ner will be based on the three listed exam­ples above? Yes, you got it less stress on your part. A smaller work load, more ideas to work with and more knowl­edge will mean you will have to think less, work less and know less. Talk about a stress reliever.

What is mak­ing you lose inter­est? Find it, and fix it

With an online com­mu­nity, any­thing can be mak­ing you lose inter­est. Maybe you aren’t get­ting the amount of com­ments you were hop­ing for on a blog, or not enough peo­ple are reg­is­ter­ing on your forum. The best advice I can give you is to not let it get to your head.

A suc­cess­ful web­site takes time, patience, and a hell of a lot of tol­er­ance. If you can’t give time to your web­site, and don’t have patience or enough tol­er­ance to put up with things then that is why you are hav­ing this sud­den lack of interest.

Get­ting rid of distractions

If you’re like me, and thou­sands of other peo­ple out there who run more than one web­site, it can get hard to keep focus on every site. I know that since I started up Kolakube, my other blog UnWrules has got­ten sig­nif­i­cantly less atten­tion. But I take the extra time to man­age both blogs, and I try my best to keep up with con­tent. Lucky for me, UnWrules takes about 30 sec­onds a post, but that is not the case for most multi-bloggers and espe­cially not the case for forum owners.

I am not say­ing to get rid of your other web­sites (because that would defeat the pur­pose this arti­cle!) but I am say­ing to even the time you spend on each site out. If you spend 30 min­utes prepar­ing a post on one blog, then spend 30 min­utes get­ting a post ready on another. You have to find a good time man­age­ment plan between each of your sites, and it will keep you on the ball and interested.

If you have to, expand or down­size your features

This can be a messy thing to do. It is extremely com­mon for com­mu­nity own­ers to cre­ate a larger work­load then they can han­dle by sim­ply want­ing more con­tent that they can han­dle. This is espe­cially com­mon on forums, where you might offer too many ser­vices to han­dle. All of that leads to stress, and stress can lead to you ditch­ing your community.

The greater the ser­vices, or the more qual­ity the services?

You may want a lot of things to do on your forum or blog. But can you han­dle all of them? You shouldn’t want to offer what you can’t pro­vide, but offer what you can pro­vide. Start out small with one thing you are really good at. Then as you get bet­ter at it and fig­ure out a sys­tem of doing things, it’s then you should offer more. By under­stand­ing the sup­ply and demand of your com­mu­nity, you can deter­mine whether or not to keep the num­ber of ser­vices to a min­i­mum, or to just offer more.

When Less is More

On a blog, there are no lim­its as to how many cat­e­gories you can write about. Same goes for a forum. But you shouldn’t start out big, start out small. With lesser cat­e­gories or forums you will have to cover a lot less mate­r­ial but still dish it out at a great pace.

It will also cre­ate larger dis­cus­sions. Your users will not be going all over the place to find some­thing they want to com­ment on, it will all be right there. Of course, the same thing for ser­vices. Once you think you can han­dle more, go for it. Keep in mind of course to intro­duce new dis­cus­sion top­ics at a slow pace so you can adapt to it, and more impor­tantly your read­ers can adapt to it.

Don’t let igno­rance ruin you

There is always some­thing new to learn about your niche. Not every­one knows every­thing. Hell, I bet not even Dar­ren Rowse knows every­thing there is to know about blog­ging, or John Chow not know­ing every­thing there is to know about post­ing ran­dom crap on his blog (sorry you two, but I sub­scribe to both of your blogs so I hope that com­pen­sates ).

Go out there, learn some­thing new. Go to com­peti­tor sites, read around. You will prob­a­bly learn some­thing new from there. You never know what a lit­tle piece of knowl­edge can do for you. It may just be that moti­va­tion you have been need­ing to find all along.

If all else fails, put it up for sale

Your com­mu­nity, regard­less of the size, doesn’t deserve to just be shut down because you can’t put your heart into your web­site any­more. Give it an hon­est chance, and try to sell your web­site to some­one who can put their time into it. While sell­ing it to some­one else doesn’t mean your com­mu­nity will improve, it’s bet­ter than you just leav­ing it to sit there doing nothing.

What should I do before I sell my community?

• You should always come up with a fair price. Take into account all of your expenses (host­ing, licenses, modifications/themes, etc.) and fac­tor them into your price.
• If you for some rea­son have any pri­vate infor­ma­tion (like pass­words to things not related to your com­mu­nity), then remove all those things beforehand.
• Read What’s Your Web Site Worth? by Georgina Laid­law from SitePoint
• Then go to the Site­Point Mar­ket­place and put your site up for sale.

My com­mu­nity doesn’t sell, now what?

Hope­fully you haven’t got­ten to the point where you put your com­mu­nity up for sale. If you have, and you failed to sell your com­mu­nity then you are stuck with it whether you like it or not. You should never have got­ten to this point ever. That just means you planned wrong, and your expec­ta­tions were wrong. If the above tips haven’t helped you get back into focus on your com­mu­nity then you should just ask your­self if start­ing the com­mu­nity was right.

I hope this arti­cle has given you a bet­ter insight on the impor­tance of keep­ing inter­ested in your blog. You always have to remem­ber that suc­cess doesn’t hap­pen over night, it takes time. Giv­ing up on your com­mu­nity will not be worth it.

Go to top