a Web community tailored to your needs. Tap into the great ideas and wealth of talent that your members, clients and customers are waiting to contribute.
- Newsletters: Allow your community to opt in to different targeted newsletters.
- Blogs: Spark discussion and impart vital information by putting your thoughts into a Web log, or blog. Encourage feedback.
- Forums: Create a place where members of your community can raise issues and communicate with each other.
- Podcasting: Get your message out at a convenient time.
- MySpace: Grant members a place to create their Web pages, blogs and photo galleries — all within your portal.
- Drop down Language Selector on all pages
- Multilingual menus, page names and breadcrumbs
- Multilingual versions of the text editor, announcements, links, FAQ and others.
, Howard Dean's presidential campaign manager, shared the following observations on building an online community:
Do not be static.
The Internet is a liquid medium. Don't let your Website be wallpaper.
Your Internet presence should be an organic, flowing, daily dialogue
with your members, back and forth. If you aren't corresponding with
your member by e-mail, if you don't have a blog or forum, if you're not
using your Website to engage the people around you ... then you are
wasting your time on the Net.
Create a commons, a town square,
a place where people can come together to talk about their Ford
Mustangs or their Kodak cameras. Get people involved! This is not
top-down, one-to-many anymore. The Internet is side-to-side,
up-and-down, and many-to-many. Use it that way. It's the dialogue that
counts.
The Net builds communities and brings people together.
It is providing the first significant reversal of trends reported in
Robert Putnam's alarming book Bowling Alone — the isolation of
Americans, the death of participatory politics, and the unraveling of
the fabric of critical social and civic structures. |