5 Reasons that make you an active member on community

Originally published at: 5 Reasons that make you an active member on community – NethServer

Why an average member become an active member? What are his motivations? What has helped him most to be so interested and active? Why is he doing this and what pushed him to move forward?

Since the creation of the NethServer community all those questions have haunted me but I can’t give them the proper answers since understanding what is the trigger the activate the engaging it’s not a trivial problem.

Luckily in the last period I have seen a few members become more enagaged, more motivated to help people and participate to the discussions then I asked to myself “Why not ask them?” maybe they could put me on the right track, therefore here’s the result.

1. Feel welcome

In order to attract active members you need to be known as a welcoming community, create a post for “say hi!” to newcomers and asking them to introduce themself could help. The more time you spend with newcomers when they join, the more likely they will become regular members, as a matter of fact at NethServer Community every Monday we’re used welcoming new members asking who are they, what they’re working on and what brings them to NethServer.

My motivation is that I’m seeing the product as a good one, the community is warm and active, no bashers and I feel welcome - @vhinzsanchez

2. Active community

Would you like to go into an empty restaurant? I don’t think so. At the contrary if you see a long line in front of the entrance, I’m sure that you think “Ehi, cool this place! Let’s give it a try!”

As @richard_millington said Maintain a community active is hard because most social groups have a big retention problem. People join, participate, and leave since they use the group solely as a place to get free advice but it worth spending time on it given that a lot of activity stimulates even more activity.

This community is young and remember me what was the Ubuntu Community in 2004/2005 - @Jim

This active community is no boring one. I feel great to be part of a great (product) community - @vhinzsanchez

I think NethTeam is doing great work for in keeping them engaged by being reactive and factual - @jodumont

The Community is very active and I feel part of it - @GG_jr

3. Receive and give help

A good community is the place where people are not afraid to ask ‘stupid questions’, someone else will learn from every stupid question that you ask. Community is about mutual relations and this means that people help you, so that you help them.

You share your newly gained knowledge, so others can benefit. You get help, and then you help others by replying to their topics.

I try to help others and the community because I like to give and I hope when I’ll need help someone else will give back - I’ll not choose a product where I can’t have quick support from the community - @jodumont

First of all, when I do something, I want to understand! Community help me to understand many things @GG_jr

I also think that my interest in IT has been a factor but despite my limited knowledge, the devs and community has given me a helping hand in dealing with NethServer - @vhinzsanchez

Once I saw how helpful and responsive to questions the community is and how involved the developers are, I knew it was a good place to be - @adam

The community helps me to be more active, because most of the time, I receive a fast and smart answer @jodumont

Believe me when I say that every problem reported here has been atleast attended to by someone - @vhinzsanchez

I haven’t seen such community support before, it’s really quick to respond to the questions and scenarios - @jgjimenezs

My biggest motivation is to be useful to the community. What helped to me? I get pleasure from helping people and it helps me to develop myself, in order to a great variety of peoples use cases - @nas

4. My opinion counts

Listening to your community is extremely important because feedback is great, in our case community makes NethServer better and more successful since we have learned that listening to your people should matter to your business.

The best way to make people feel you’re listening to them is to actually listen to them. It’s only once that you’ve fully listened to a member that they’re willing to listen to you.

As @codinghorror said: “the only thing I’ve ever seen work is getting down deep and dirty in the trenches with your users, communicating with them and cultivating relationships”

My opinion counts as well when chiming-in some ideas - @vhinzsanchez

One of the gorgeous things is that we have the opportunity to talk with Dev team directly. Another one it’s our Hangout meeting, they give us an opportunity for sharing our opinion, improves our internal communication and to see people with whom you work and make a contribution for our great product. I appreciate being a part of that Great Team - @nas

5. Fall in love with the product

In case your community is product-based, product quality matters. You need a good product to attract new members otherwise you have to reply to repeated complaints.

I’m fall in love with Nethserver because the idea is good and it`s what I need, a firewall/gateway with a webgui that can be extensible - @jim

NethServer has been the BEST drop in place system I’ve used thus far - @islipfd19

The product drew me in. It really “sells” itself - @adam

I use CentOS+NethServer with few customers and I considering that fast deployment and low maintenance - @jodumont

Over to you

I’d love to hear your thoughts on reasons to become an active member on community. Is there anything new you picked up in this post you’re going to try? What’s worked for you in the past?

Let me know in the comments. I’m eager to hear your experiences and can’t wait to jump in and join the conversations.

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