#but discord or messaging me is a much faster option for responses | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

idreamoftwilightsparkleroleplay · 2 years ago

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Welcome to the I Dream of Twilight Sparkle roleplaying blog! Here you can interact and get text-only responses in more faster response time as opposed to pick-and-choosing for sprite comics and/or while I’m working on stories for either this blog or over on my other main blog, Geniequestria (Which in itself has a roleplaying sideblog too, over here!)

Perhaps the best part is this allows interactions with characters I’m just not able to put in Sprite comics for much. I expect for the most part in the near future most of my spriting will be for images for Geniequestria. I’m not saying I won’t do any more images for I Dream of Twilight Sparkle (In fact, I can promise that I will have something with at least a few images on the main blog soon enough).

The hope is to have some more active responses, as it seems at the very least the way I had it seems to just be outdated in this day and age. I didn’t want role-plays to overflow the main content that IDOTS has had. The important story stuff is still on the main blog, while most of the community interaction is elsewhere. (I would still appreciate asks being sent over there, but perhaps all the story I've done has made people believe I've shifted it entirely from being an ask blog. Which... in a way is true, It's just I haven't found use for the many asks I still have in the box. It's just that I developed a story that I could follow-up on without the need of asks)

I should at mention a few rules and/or important notes

- This being a more wholesome, mostly show-tone sort of blog. This means no violence/gore or situations of a sexual nature. If you want some of the latter, Geniequestria and it's respective roleplay blog provides more leeway with that. Though even that blog is not meant to go overboard with it.

- If you’re new to my stuff and don’t quite understand many of the lore and differences important to I Dream of Twilight Sparkle. (Cause I know asking people to read all of Secrets of the Dragon’s Tear can be a big ask. I know it’s quite long and I’m sorry something so essential to understand what much of going on is a big read) You can ask me directly whether through Tumblr messages or asking me on my mod blog to try to leviate any confusion. There is also 2 FAQ's, one that was for the early years of the blog, the other for specifically what was revealed in Secrets of the Dragon's Tear

- There is a huge cast of characters you can interact with in this blog. Just about any recurring character you can think of should be possible. Twilight, Spike, Starlight, and Sunset are probably my recommendations as the more central figures of the blog historically (The latter two more recently). But the rest of the mane 6, CMCs (Especially if you ask for their grown-up selves in the time skip) and more are options as well.

However, there are at least 3 that currently aren’t options because… well… they’re trapped in stone in both of the possible timelines currently. That’s Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Zathir. Technically Chrysalis if you count the Post-S9 version, Chrysalis would be exclusive to the timeskip. Though I would wait until Earnest Empathetic Change is over first. Another timeskip exclusive character would be Flurry Heart, as well, of course the Post-S9 version is still simply a baby.

But otherwise most of everyone else, including many spirits (Including such ponies as Applejack’s parents) due to Spirit Summoning being a thing in this universe. Just mention who you want to interact with, whether you want to see the timeskip or mostly shortly after Season 9 and Secrets of the Dragon’s Tear. So have fun!

To get started simply use the ask box to suggest which character you want to speak with. And then whether it's a question or the beginning of an interaction. We can go from there!

P.S. For out of character/planning. You may have the choice of using Tumblr messages, asking me on my mod blog, or we can friend eachother on Discord (Please ask first however!)

#mod post

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ferdas · 5 years ago

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welp. for the forseeable future, i shall be on a semi-hiatus. there’ll be days here or there where i’ll have the time to jump on and reply to things but a lot of stuff is happening all at once so i’m being pulled in a few different directions.

as always, feel free to message me if you want to reach out or i will gladly add you on discord.

#(ooc); i wish you weren't so fucking awkward bud.#my favorite person is back in my life #and with that comes going to see all of his friends and also spending time with him #(i already got him back on the marvel movies and he demanded to watch iron man 2 today #bc tony stark is his favorite)#but also i am starting a new job tomorrow #also starting to look for houses for us and our friend to move into #and gotta deep clean and repair stuff in this apartment #so i will be on as much as possible!#but discord or messaging me is a much faster option for responses

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tdp-fandom · 2 years ago

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Shipping Poll Update

Click here if you haven't voted yet

Hello friends! As of the writing of this post, I've received 103 responses which is amazing! Thank you all so much! A special thank you goes to those who shared the poll - it is thanks to you guys that I got this many responses and I really appreciate it <3

I would like to share some general statistical data so far (the one that doesn't have an impact on the overall results) and address some feedback that I've received. Some graphs

I'm very happy to see that tumblr users have been the most active! You guys rock! Reddit has also been really active and I'm happy to see discord and twitter catching up!

I don't expect a lot of activity from dreamwidth as it's a different kind of website and I barely have any followers there but I'm curious to see how it goes. I ended up not posting anything on instagram because I would need to make images and I currently don't have the spoons for that :c

The age graph is also really cool! I'm very happy to see so many active 31+ people! Almost a quarter! And I'm very grateful to the young adults, who are the main bulk of the participants! I'm also happy to see teen participants express their votes as well c:

That's its for graphs for now - I can't share the rest just yet without the risk of getting the data skewed.

What I'd like to talk about next is your amazing feedback and how a few early participants saved this poll! Read under cut.

Feedback

People Who Have Saved the Poll

I posted the poll at 2 am my time (I had been working late nights on it the entire week because of real life responsibilities taking most of my free time) but decided to stick around for a bit to check if everything was going smoothly and to finish my conversations with friends on discord.

About 7 votes in, I decided to check on the poll and I saw this message in the feedback field:

"I didn`t see Rayla/Callum anywhere. Am I just blind or?"

This person was a life saver! Because although I know I added Rayllum originally, I must've accidentally deleted it and never noticed T-T it really is super easy to accidentally click on an X and delete a row from a multiple choice grid on google forms. Thanks to that person the crisis was averted. And it really would've been a crisis, because Rayllum is the flagship of TDP and getting lots of answers with no opinion on Rayllum would've really hurt the accuracy of the data.

I had also forgotten to add opinion options for some categories in the controversial ships section, which a friend as well as two poll takers notified me about!

Thank you all for the valuable feedback! I don't know what I would do without you.

Other Feedback

A few people mentioned that they weren't sure if it were ok not to tick every ship and I realized I hadn't been clear on that in my instructions. It is absolutely fine to skip whatever you feel like skipping. If there are ships you don't care about so much you don't even want to choose any option for - that is 100% valid and it tells me important information about the ship - you're not just neutral about it, you really do not care about a ship. And if I want to accurately evaluate our fandom's relationship with various ships, this information is also important.

People also commented that there have been too many ships to go through and that's definitely true. I tried to be as thorough as I could by including every possible ship people would have opinions on but the lists ended up being huge. I am planning to change a few things for the season 5 poll. I will probably exclude certain ships that won't do very well on this poll (unless the events in S5 warrant keeping them) and try to rearrange them in a way that can help people go through them faster.

There was a related comment where a person noted that it's not very convenient to scroll back and forth through the four opinion choices on mobile and suggested using just the numbers 1 to 4. That is a very good idea - I will implement this in the next poll.

One person was asking about Breakfast Guards being included in the canon ships. While I didn't get any official confirmations, they were shown almost kissing in the episode where Zubeia visits Katolis so I think that counts as them having some sort of onscreen not strictly platonic relationship.

While I explained the kinds of ships the poll was dealing with as well as the difference between active and passive shipping, I didn't actually explain what I mean by shipping, as one person rightfully pointed out! It's not an easy thing to define but I will try to come up with something for the season 5 poll! So far we can stick to romantic, queerplatonic or nonromantic sexual dynamics.

I used the wrong ship name for Rex Igneous x Avizandum. It should be Zanrex instead of Rexandum and the wonderful @cometchasr explained to why that particular shipname was chosen! He said that Zan was a nickname for Avizandum used a in few fics featuring the former dragon king and it fit very well with how the nickname Zym works. When I don't know a shipname I often just make one up on the spot as a placeholder but I am always happy to hear feedback from actual shippers and I switch to their preferred shipname.

I got so many nice compliments and words of encouragement too! Thank you guys! It means a lot ;__;

I will try to address feedback roughly once a week and keep you all updated on how things are going!

#the dragon prince #tdp shipping poll #tdp shipping poll s4

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neo-shitty · 4 years ago

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All Too Well (23 Minute Version) — Collab Call

An album, 23 boys, and 23 stories to tell.

Introducing the All Too Well (23 Minute Version), a collab call hosted by @/neo-shitty (Me) and co-hosted by @lebrookestore (Brooke).

ABOUT.

The theme, simply put, is Taylor’s album, Red (Taylor’s Version). The songs in the album were written at a very pivotal point in Taylor’s life. It’s a bittersweet mix of tracks that sum up the young adult experience; falling in love in a cafe, feeling paralyzed by time as you struggle to pick up the broken pieces of your heart, and ditching responsibilities to make the most out of being 22.

In this collab, you’re required to pick a song from the tracklist we listed below, pair it with a NCT member of your choice and write a fic inspired by the song!

Sounds interesting? Click below for further details.

RULES AND GUIDELINES.

: ̗̀➛ Please reblog the post if you want to join so we can reach a wider audience and hopefully fill in all the available spots.

: ̗̀➛ First come, first serve. Only one spot is available per member and per song. If both are still available, please send me an ask then wait for my confirmation. Before you send your message, please make sure that you’re committed to delivering the fic. While we can’t do anything if you choose to withdraw, we would highly appreciate it if you inform us beforehand.

In your ask, please include the following: your chosen member, your chosen track, and whether you’d like to be added to the Discord server for faster communication.

: ̗̀➛ All fics must include the following information: pairing, genre, and content warnings if needed. Word count is optional.

: ̗̀➛ In-fic pairings should only be MEMBER X OC or MEMBER X READER ONLY. No member x member. However, you are welcome to feature other members to make up the cast of the story, but the chosen member should remain as the main focus.

: ̗̀➛ We are lenient with the incorporation of the songs in the stories. You are not required to write a scene for each line or verse. You can draw inspiration from a single line, or a particular verse, or just write a story based on your interpretation of the song. Either is fine. And don’t forget to credit Taylor where it’s due.

: ̗̀➛ The story’s genre can vary. While it’s expected that most of the fics will be set in domestic settings and would either be fluff or angst, sub-genres such as horror, action, mystery, etc., are welcome so long as you’re able to correlate it to the song you picked.

: ̗̀➛ Smut fics are allowed for all members except Sungchan, Chenle, and Jisung. For the remaining three, the closest we can allow is suggestive ONLY. Likewise, writers under 18 are not allowed to write smut and overly suggestive scenes in their fics. Tag your fics accordingly.

: ̗̀➛ No timestamps, reactions, headcannons. Entries must be full-length fics. The minimum word count for an entry is at 500 words. There will be no maximum word limit and you’re free to write as much as you want.

: ̗̀➛ Hate speech or any form of bullying directed towards any of the other writers is prohibited. If caught doing such an act, your participation in the collab will immediately be terminated. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. If proven, your participation will be terminated as well.

: ̗̀➛ The deadline of entries will be on December 13, 2022. Both teasers and fics must be dropped on or before the date indicated. A masterlist/compilation of fics will be posted following the first teaser drop.

TRACKLIST.

Disclaimer: We are aware that the original tracklist included 30 songs however we have omitted tracks to keep it at 23 and to avoid repetition of members. Trust us when we tell you that removing each track, aside from the duplicates and Ronan — that we felt was too personal to Taylor, required serious deliberation.

State of Grace — @kdyism | Doyoung

Red — @haikuun | Hendery

Treacherous — @aquamoonchaii | Xiaojun

I Knew You Were Trouble — @yutasthetic | Jaemin

22 — @blossom-rea | Yangyang

I Almost Do — @kkaebsongtypo | Haechan

Stay Stay Stay

The Last Time — @haechphoria | Jeno

Holy Ground — @njmverse | Renjun

Sad Beautiful Tragic —

Everything Has Changed — @gongiz | Winwin

Starlight — @fae-renjun | Mark

Begin Again — @xiaojunsmintchoco | Jungwoo

The Moment I Knew

Come Back Be Here — @/lebrookestore | Taeyong

Girl At Home —

Better Man —

Nothing New

Babe

Message In A Bottle — @neocity-dream | Jisung

Run — @basicallywhiterice | Chenle

The Very First Night — @hachanbaecon | Johnny

All Too Well (10 Min Version) — @latetaektalk | Jaehyun

For further inquiries regarding the collab, feel free to send me an ask.

#nct fics #nct fluff #nct angst #nct smut #nct x reader #collab: all too well (23 minute version)

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ravenbrenna09 · 5 years ago

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Jij Verliest - Chapter One: Clip #5

Note: sorry for the late post. I had to finish editing.

master list previous (Maandag 15:11)

...

Dinsdag 19:47

Being in the middle of a stream meant Robbe was simply talking to himself.

It wasn’t like he was talking to himself. He was always responding to someone in the chat, to viewers who donated, or to direct messages on Discord from his moderators. Whenever he spoke aloud, he would get a response in the chat and it would start an appearingly one-sided conversation. Whenever he was streaming, he tried to talk to everyone in his chat. To the best of his ability, he even tried to respond to the trolls in the chat with a minimum amount of sass.

Whenever he streamed with other people, Robbe always felt like he wasn’t paying attention to the chat enough because he was simply conversing with another streamer, the Broerrrs or Lucas, who would sometimes sit next to him. Streaming solo allowed Robbe to focus on the chat and it allowed him to answer questions and talk to them. Of the two, he generally preferred the latter option. He enjoyed the solitude of being alone with his computer, his game, and three hundred viewers (or closer to five hundred on a good day).

But tonight? He welcomed the distraction his friends provided.

Even if Robbe felt like he was on the edge of sensory overload.

His computer screen was a little too bright. Even with one ear covered by his headphones (so he could still hear Lucas, who sat on his left) and the volume turned down lower, he still felt like Jens and Aaron were shouting in his ear. Each time something new happened—each movement of the chat, each donation, each subscriber and follower—it drew his eye, giving him a moment to focus on it before he moved on to the next item, the next text, the next thing that distracted him from looking at the clock.

As Jens was shouting at Aaron to cover him and Robbe was concentrating on taking down as many people as he could, someone knocked on the bedroom door. Lucas got up to open it and Milan stepped inside the bedroom. The solemn look on his face prompted Robbe to mute the microphone, his character dying in the process, and Jens let out a shout through the speakers that caused all of them to flinch. It was only when Robbe looked up that Milan said, dropping the news like he had scratched his nails across a chalkboard, “He’s here.”

Thomas.

Right.

Robbe swallowed, his shoulders heavy as he tried to keep his mind steady. Suddenly, his fingers felt too big on the controller and he shifted in his seat, saying, “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

Milan nodded.

Lucas sat back down, disbelief in his tone. “Really? He actually showed up?” The sarcasm dripped from his words even as he comically ate a handful of popcorn. He pivoted to Milan. “Are you sure it’s him and not some look-alike imposter? Doesn’t seem like his style.” Before leaving the room, his cousin attempted to send a disapproving look to Lucas but his face betrayed him, twisting into a grin.

“Behave,” Robbe said, sending Lucas a quick look. His friend shrugged before Robbe unmuted the microphone. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling a little tense, and announced, “Sorry about that, guys. Something came up and I have to take a break.” Jens groaned loudly, and Robbe muted him. “But no need to fear, Lucas is going to take over and provide you with some quality commentary for a few minutes.”

“I am?” Lucas asked.

“Yes, you are,” Robbe said, grinning. He unmuted Jens and pulled the bag of popcorn from his roommate’s hands. “But, fair warning, Jens and Lucas have a tendency of making people feel overbearingly single. I have a feeling it’ll only get amplified.”

“Hey!” Jens protested.

“It’s true and you know it.” Robbe placed the bag of popcorn against one of his photos before he shoved the controller into Lucas’s hands. Despite not playing much of Fortnite, Lucas immediately started playing. As Lucas leaned to the camera, trying to get a better look at the screen, Robbe moved to give him more space. Before he got up, he glanced one more time at the chat, which was filling up with fast-moving questions.

Unable to answer them, or admit that he was giving clothes to his ex, he simply repeated, “I’ve got to do something real quick and I’ll be back in a few minutes. Be on your best behavior for Lucas. He’s not as good at multitasking as I am.”

Lucas rolled his eyes and scoffed. Once Robbe scooted his chair back, completely out of the path of the desk, Lucas took over the space that he left. Jens said something witty (and vaguely flirtatious) that caused a faint blush to ghost over Lucas’s cheeks.

As he stepped away from his computer, Robbe steeled his nerves and tried his best to cement the tornado of emotions in his chest. His brain ticked down to its eventual explosion, overrun with emotions and thoughts. Letting out a breath, Robbe grabbed hold of Thomas’s things and pulled the box to his chest. Then, he opened up the door and stepped out. As he shut the door, Lucas let out a string of curses and Robbe chuckled at his friend.

At the end of the hallway, he saw Thomas talking with Zoë at the front door and the mere sight of him brought back the tornado.

It had been over two months since Robbe had last seen Thomas.

One day, Robbe had been racing to school because he slept through his alarms. He had spent the previous night working on an assignment, so he was late in meeting with Yasmina. On his way, he stopped at his normal coffee shop to get a coffee for forgiveness. But, in his haste, Robbe had forgotten that it was their normal coffee shop, right down the street from Thomas’s law firm. As he waited for his order, he was surprised to find Thomas sitting at a table with a handful of coworkers. Once Thomas had seen him, there was no escaping the awkward small talk; about Robbe’s mom, Thomas’s mom, and their work. Once his order was ready, Robbe sprinted out of there faster than he had arrived.

This time, it felt different.

Thomas was dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a crisp button-up shirt. His tie was undone, loose and hanging across his neck, and his hair, normally styled to perfection, was disheveled—like he had run his hands through it several times. It was one of his tells. Thomas was nervous and stressed about work and Robbe hated the fact he still noticed. He had let his stubble grow out a little more and he was smiling kindly at Zoë, who was absent-mindedly listening to him chatter. His presence in the flatshare, right in front of him, caused Robbe’s heart to thump nervously in his ribcage.

Thomas’s eyes, bright and hazel, flickered over to Robbe standing outside his bedroom door with the box in hand, and Robbe couldn’t help feeling his initial instinct to run and hide.

“Hey, Robbe,” he greeted. Robbe swallowed the knot in his throat, barely managing a half-smile as he moved toward them. Zoë sent Robbe a wary look as she moved into the living room, where a theme song was playing. As she passed him, she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Robbe extended the box to Thomas. “Here’s everything that I found that belonged to you.” Thomas nodded, taking it from his hands. As he did, his fingers brushed over Robbe’s and the latter flinched, trying not to seem stiff. He took a step back and shoved his hands into his pockets. Robbe couldn’t tell if the motion had been accidental or on purpose, but it sent an uncomfortable shock through him. Rocking back and forth on his feet, he asked, “Did you happen to find any more of my things in your room?”

Thomas shook his head. “No, I think you managed to get everything.”

“Okay.”

There was a long, drawn-out silence between them. Robbe continued shifting his weight from one foot to the other, wondering how long he would have to stay here before he would be legally able to go back to his bedroom. At least in his stream, his stomach wouldn’t be twisting as his ex stood in front of him, acting like it wasn’t awkward. Once enough time had passed in silence, Robbe opened his mouth to say something about the stream, but Thomas suddenly spoke up. “How are you doing?”

Robbe blinked. “Huh?”

“With school and everything?” Thomas elaborated. When Robbe didn’t answer, he continued, “And your mama? How’s she doing?”

“I’m fine,” Robbe answered, too loudly and too quickly. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “And Mama’s fine. Just some ups and downs, but she’s still on her medications and her job is going well and she’s still seeing her therapist once a week so…” He trailed off. The silence returned between them, as uncomfortable as it was before. For the briefest of moments, Thomas looked like he was about to say something, but Robbe needed to get back to his stream, away from small talk with the man who broke his heart. Before Thomas could speak, Robbe said, “I’ve got to get back to the stream. Lucas is keeping it going right now.”

Thomas’s face twisted in annoyance, his eyebrows furrowed. “Really? Now?”

Robbe’s stomach twisted—but this time, it was anger. He crossed his arms, trying to keep his anger contained in his chest. “Yes, really,” he replied. Robbe hated when Thomas acted like this, like Robbe had done something for the sole purpose of aggravating him. “I’ve been streaming from 18:00 to 21:00 every Tuesday for the past three months. My day off was on Sunday,” he said. “But you were the one that canceled on me, remember?”

Thomas stayed quiet and still, his arms stiff as he clutched at the handles of the box. But Robbe didn’t need to be a genius to know that Thomas was trying not to roll his eyes. That was another tell—one Robbe hated that he could still identify after three months.

“Do I need to show you out?”

Thomas shook his head, moving toward the still-open front door with the box in his hands. “No, I’ll see you later, Robbe.”

“Bye.”

Once Thomas had stepped through the door, Robbe pushed it close and leaned against the wooden frame. As he stood there, his eyes fluttered closed and he stayed there for several moments. Even with the heavy door between them, he could hear the sounds of Thomas’s heavy footsteps, heading in the direction of the elevator.

He was angry.

He had no right to be angry.

Robbe listened to the beep of the elevator, signaling that it had arrived, and the following beep before it descended back down to the lobby, adding more distance between Robbe and Thomas’s silent, barely-contained anger. Robbe let out a breath of relief and sadness, shaky and uncertain as he stood there. He stayed against it for a few more heartbeats, shoving the sadness into the bottle in his chest, struggling to maintain his breath.

Once his breath evened out, Robbe pushed himself off the front door and headed to his bedroom.

As Robbe sat back down in his comfortable desk chair, Lucas willingly relinquished the controller at the end of that match. He ran a hand over Robbe’s shoulder in comfort, seemingly aware of the tension of the silent confrontation. As soon as the next match started back up, Robbe threw himself back into it and back into the stream, keeping an eye on the chat and donations. If his viewers realized he was down, they didn’t make a big deal out of it—and Robbe didn’t feel like calling himself out if no one really noticed.

Lucas rested his head against Robbe’s shoulder and patted his arm. Jens drew him back into making fun of Aaron’s poor Fortnite skills. None of his friends brought up Thomas, the meeting, or asked him to talk about it. And, for that, Robbe was thankful.

next (woensdag)

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siliconwebx · 7 years ago

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Building an Online Community from the Ground Up

Unless you’re a natural social butterfly, building your own online community may sound a little daunting. However, if you plan correctly, you can set up a little section of the internet that you and yours can call home for years to come. In this post we’ll walk you though a few stages you’ll need to navigate in order to see your idea of a community become a reality.

Planning Stages

You cannot just jump head-first into building a community. Sometimes they just kind of organically emerge, but if you’re looking to start a purposeful group, you need a plan. Otherwise, things can get out of hand quickly. Not necessarily in a bad way — you might become the place to be and grow exponentially faster than you expected to. Whatever the case, approaching building your community purposefully is your best bet for success.

1. Why Do You Want to Build a Community?

To start off with, you need to know specifically why you’re building this community. It is very easy to get in over your head and let a project go sideways without a clear vision of why you’re doing it and where it’s going. So think on it, and ask yourself the hard question: how will this community benefit its members?

That’s a hard question to answer. Especially because there are a lot of communities out there already. The internet is a big place. Just look at Reddit with the massive amount of users and categories and subreddits that people participate in. So if you’re going to build a community from the ground up, what will it bring to the table?

As an example, when I started my first podcast, I talked with my partner a lot about this. What even made us start talking about the podcast to begin with was wanting a place to talk with people. We missed the old days of blogging where conversations happened in the comments sections instead of on social media. It didn’t feel as personal or as social to us.

We wanted to talk to people and make friends. It was as simple as that. We wanted to produce content that would bring people together and have a conversation.

So that was our why.

Determine Your ROI:

Just a quick note about running a community. Sometimes you might not make a profit on it. You may be spending money or time on building this up. It can be a lot of work, so you should ask yourself what return you want out of this. This return should be entirely separate from the community goals above.

You may want an increase in emails to blast mail in return for providing a space for folks to congregate. You may be looking to create a route for customer support and brand loyalty to increase. Your company might even be looking to use it as a recruitment tool, finding new talent from people passionate about your brand or project.

Basically, you want to make sure that you aren’t expending resources without getting anything in return. If taken seriously and done right, a community can be a lot of work, so you want to make sure that even if your motives are altruistic and for the good of your audience and users, there is still a return in some way for you.

2. Find a Concept (or Stay on Brand)

Once you know why you’re going to build your community, the next step is making sure you appeal to the right people. As one of my old bosses used to tell me, “you gotta find your schtick.” Basically, what I’m saying is that you need a brand identity. I really liked how this article from Brandisty put it: “Let me be clear: a brand is the relationship between an organization and an audience.”

With that in mind, I am not saying you need a logo or a 4-color palette for your media kit. I’m saying that you need to know what your community is going to represent to its members. At Elegant Themes, for instance, we work to represent style and empowerment for our users. We want people to see or hear the words Divi or Elegant Themes and think to themselves “Oh yeah, their stuff lets me do my job so much easier than before” or “Man, the photos in that latest layout pack are perfect for [Insert Big Client’s Name]’s site.”

Sure, we have beautiful logos and pretty colors, but those are secondary to what is really important: making your life better through excellent design.

Now, if you have a brand already (and you probably do), think about who your users are and what you want to be to them. What purpose will this community serve to them? For you, it will (hopefully) lead to increased revenue, higher brand awareness and reach, and improvements in your products or service. But what good does it do your users to be members?

As an example of that, with my podcast, my partner and I wanted the relationship between our listeners and our show to be that of a matchmaker. We wanted to facilitate people meeting new friends. So if they listened to our podcast, they would have ample opportunity to talk with like-minded people through our community that we worked on building. Same for Elegant Themes — we have a very active comments section here on the blog, a Meetup network of Divi Nation groups, and so on. We strive to make sure that you participating means you get some value that doesn’t come directly from the software itself.

That’s our brand. Now find yours.

3. Craft a Mission Statement

Yes, those dreaded words. Mission Statement. The only two words that can make a committee meeting even more dreadful. But you need one. It doesn’t have to be anything complex (it’s better if it’s not), but you need to get that concept behind your brand identity into writing. That’s all. Mission statements serve the purpose of giving you a cornerstone to look back on and make sure that you’re on track. And if not, you can easily course correct.

4. Where Will Your Community Gather?

Today, there are a ton of options to choose from, and depending on your type of brand or project, some may work better than others. There are really two things you have to keep in mind about this:

Do you want a completely free forum, or do you want to own and control your own platform?

Where does your audience already hang out?

The pros of going for a free forum is that most of the leg-work is done for you. Choosing an option like a Facebook Group is great because so many people already use it (so you show up where they already are), and you can get started in just a few clicks. It takes mere minutes to get Groups up and running on Facebook.

The cons of using an externally hosted platform is that you don’t have any control over it. Not really. You and your community are subject to their ToS and business model and lifespan and so on. However,

Controlling your own platform gives you freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. But it comes at the cost of being yet another account your users have to sign up for. With forums and various membership site plugins for WordPress, you can absolutely go this route. But if you make the process too much of a chore, your community may never get off the ground.

Some Platform Options:

I want to list some of the more popular platforms to grow an online community, and in many cases, creators and brands choose multiples to reach different segments of their audience. For example, some people may spend the majority of their time online with Discord open in the background, but never log into Facebook. Or some people might be hardcore Redditors and Twitter influencers, but avoid group chat platforms altogether.

Discord – A group chat that is aimed at gamers, but robust enough to work for a variety of community types. Very handy if your user base is already using it, as your server could just be added to their list.

Slack – A group chat that many companies use for work, so people very likely already have this one installed. Setting up your own Slack server is free, and communities here thrive during the day since people can participate while looking like they’re hard at work.

Reddit – The largest community on the internet. Basically one giant forum, anyone can set up a subreddit (subforum), which anyone can subscribe to and participate in.

Facebook Groups – You’re probably already a member of a few Facebook groups. These groups can easily go viral, have lots of admin options, and take advantage of a place your people are already likely to be.

Twitter hashtags – Twitter hashtags can also be a community. Often taking the form of a chat (such as #bibchat or #codenewbies), these tend to be regular, moderated discussions that eventually grow into a tag folks use all the time to keep everyone connected.

YouTube comments – Despite their reputation, if you foster a healthy discussion in the comments of your videos, you can build a very active and thriving community there. People’s channels will follow and interact with one another, share playlists, and just generally grow together.

Live streams – If you regularly live stream, you will get a cadre of viewers who tune in. Those people then fill up the chats as you go, talking with you and each other, and then those comments continue after the stream is over. This is generally not the primary location for your community, but it’s a fantastic way to get people to interact and hang out together.

Forums and Message Boards – While on the decline in popularity, forums and message boards are the old standby for internet communities. Totally asynchronous messaging threads are incredibly useful for long, detailed discussions. However, because they are generally entirely separate from other accounts and platforms, people have to make an effort to check the boards to see new updates. If you decide to go this route, there are plenty of WordPress plugins available including bbPress.

Social Media Pages and Profiles – Simply having a Facebook page or a Twitter profile that interacts with other users in and of itself. Look at the Wendy’s Twitter account. Or Zappos. They keep their social media managers interacting with customers constantly, and their responses stay on brand. So people get involved. Again, this won’t be the primary platform, but it can be very important.

5. Lay Down The Law

You have to write down whatever rules and guidelines you want your members to follow. Communities go downhill fast if you have no rules to govern them. Even if they’re as simple as “no self-promotion, hate speech, or personal attacks will be tolerated.”

As the community manager, it’s your job to determine the bounds within which the members stay. They can be as rigid or as lenient as you want, but the important thing is that they exist and are posted for people to see. Well, and that they’re enforced, but we’ll get to that next.

Action Stages

A lot of the planning for a community is academic. You’re thinking and envisioning and trying to make sure all your ducks are in a row. After that, you get to put you feet to the pavement (or maybe fingers to the keyboard) and start dealing with people.

1. Start It Up

Okay, so take steps 1-5 under the planning stages and do them. It’s time to implement your plan. It’s time to start that Facebook Group or launch that Discord server. Take everything that you’ve been thinking about and make it real. It doesn’t matter that your users aren’t aware of it yet. That’s okay. You want to lay claim to your spot.

If you have been planning it for a while, you might have even told them that you were working on this. So long before you start inviting people, plant your flag and get it to waving. The important thing is that no one gets an Under Construction page or a broken URL. Once you start pointing people at where you want them to be, you want them to stay there. So get the forums up and running. Set the permissions and channels in Discord. Upload your emoji to Slack.

Take your idea and make it real.

2. Soft Launch

A soft launch will be your best bet for introducing people to your community. And by soft launch, I mean, not promoting it to the world at large. Just let people organically trickle in. Maybe you invite a handful of people or casually drop a note about it in your podcast or at the end of an email. Maybe even a Join our Community button on your website. But not putting effort into telling people about it.

Why?

Because of bugs and snags and all the thousands of things that could go wrong. You want to be able to work out the kinks before bringing in a boatload of people. If the first impression that people get of your community is that it’s shoddy, you probably won’t get a second one.

Especially if there’s any kind of premium price tag attached. If that’s the case, give a few free memberships or trials to some people to try out and get things rolling. They’ll feel special, it’ll be a soft launch, and you’ll hopefully get some free advertisement for when you do launch officially.

3. Recruit Staff and Assign Roles

Now this is a kind of iffy stage, to be honest. Some people don’t need this step at this point. Everyone will eventually, though. You can handle going solo, trying to build an online community all on your own (I’m thinking of Saron from CodeNewbie, who did it all by her lonesome at first). Some of you already have a staff or group of volunteers. Heck, some of you already have an audience who are clamoring to be more involved with you.

But if you don’t, it’s time to grease some palms. Figuratively, and maybe even literally.

You won’t need much. Just a few people to make sure things run smoothly. You will want people to moderate discussion, generally, and make sure the rules you set up are followed. Even if you start out doing it all by your lonesome, there will be people stepping up to enforce them for you. Even without you asking. These are perfect recruits. Additionally, you can see the people who engage the most and care about the community’s growth and health and ask them if they want to be involved in a greater capacity.

In the end, it’s the caring about the community’s growth and health that matters.

4. Really Launch and Promote Your Tail Off

This is the big moment. Once most of the outstanding bugs are taken care of, you are ready to get this show on the road. You can shout it from the rooftops and let the entire world know that your doors are open and welcoming to anyone who wants to be a part of something special.

And this is where you have to do most of the work. Because you need to get people interested and invested and actually participating in your community. All of your marketing energy will likely be spent going toward your community for a while, and that’s okay. It’ll pay off. (Remember earlier when we talked about your ROI?)

It depends entirely on your project and brand on what channels you promote through, but in general, you want to go overboard. Just to the point where you don’t annoy people.

Running Facebook ads or AdWords campaigns is a popular way to recruit. If you are a community of artists, Instagram ads would be perfect. Send out an email to all your lists. Then a few days later, segment it to those who didn’t open it. Schedule a lot of Tweets and Facebook posts using Hootsuite or Buffer. CoSchedule is another good option.

For the initial launch period, you may want to do a combination of live streams and interact with your audience or customers that way. Promote those personally. Even do giveaways if it’s a premium community. And use Facebook events, even if you’re not on Facebook. It’s hard to believe how much Virtual Launch Parties can help a project’s reach. Or really any virtual event, for that matter.

Maintenance Stage

So you’ve launched. You’re up and running. You have people visiting your community every day, and everything is going even better than you expected. So what now? Well, you maintain it. You keep on doing what works, and maybe throwing some new ideas in the mix to keep things fresh for your customers and audience.

Basically, to maintain a community, you go through most of the steps you did to launch it, just to a lesser degree.

Periodically look at the mission statement and purpose of your community to evaluate whether you are on track with your goals.

Make sure your ROI is on track. Check if you’re putting in enough effort or too much into keeping things going.

Always monitor the users and keep an eye on MVPs. You can never have too many people in your corner. Harvest the talent there for everyone’s gains.

You should also monitor your monitors. Make sure the rules you laid out are still being followed and that the community is still what you meant for it to be.

Continue marketing. You don’t want to go all-out like you did to launch it. To build an online community requires people hearing about it. Maintaining one is about retention and interactivity. But you will still need to keep it in your marketing rotation so it doesn’t become stagnant or insular.

That’s All There Is To It.

And isn’t that enough? If you are going to build an online community, it takes time, effort, and a lot of planning. But when it’s done right, there is really no better element you can add to your brand or company. Positive interaction with your target audience is more valuable than pretty much anything else these days, and there’s not really anything more positive than inviting them to your own space that you made especially for them.

What have your experiences been with building an online community? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Article featured image by O.darka / shutterstock.com

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hydrus · 8 years ago

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Version 274

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Despite a bit of illness, I had a good week overall. I fixed and improved some things and added custom 'open externally' launch paths for files.

colour update

I've improved last week's darkmode colourset addition. First off, the client will now immediately redraw all its custom-coloured elements as soon as any colour change is saved, and second, you can now quickly switch between the default and darkmode coloursets under the help menu!

As a note for Win 10 users, a user helpfully mentioned the place to switch the OS-level system colours to darkmode is under 'High contrast settings', which is more reliable than a regedit hack that is floating around. Switching Windows to 'High contrast black' seems to work well for some users, but others have had more success with third-party custom themes.

I intend to add more custom colours in future!

discord drag-and-drop update

I have also figured out a more safe way to support discord drag-and-drop. If you would like to turn this on, please check it under the BUGFIX section of options->gui. It makes all hydrus file drag and drops discord-compatible (and you don't have to hold down ctrl to make them copy--a 'move' result is safe as far as hydrus is concerned).

It adds a small amount of lag to the initial drag event, so I have limited it to DnDs that involve 10 or fewer files and less than 50MB total size. Let me know if this is a problem.

When this mode is active, the files are only available for upload while the client is running, so if you drop some files onto discord (or anywhere else), close the client, and then confirm the upload discord-side, they will not work.

custom 'open externally' launch paths

When you select 'open externally' on a file, hydrus normally asks your OS to open the file in its default application. Some users have reported this does not always work, or that they would like to overwrite it, so you can now override the path it will use!

Please check it under options->files and trash. You can set different custom launch paths for all mimes.

Actually firing this stuff has been a minor multiplatform headache, so please let me know if your chosen path does not work for your OS. I have improved the error reporting here, so you should see a good traceback if it goes wrong.

full list

the help menu now has an easy on/off check entry for the darkmode colourset

changing any individual colour or the entire colourset will now immediately refresh almost all custom-coloured controls with the new colour

added a BUGFIX option to options->gui to permanently fix all discord file drag-and-drop events (as long as they contain <= 10 files and total < 50MB)

you can now set specific 'open externally' launch paths on a per-mime basis under options->files and trash

improved error reporting on a bad file launch

improved the network engine to recover from and reattempt in-progress response read errors (previously reported as ReadTimeout)

fixed the 'scroll to focused thumbnail' calculations on key events (when hitting up/down arrow key on thumbnail grid, the page wasn't scrolling correctly as needed)

known urls no longer display with the scheme (http or https) in the media viewer top-right summary

known urls in the media viewer top-right summary now tooltip their full url

wrote a new button for editing tag import options. it has a good summary tooltip. it is only in the manage import folder dialog atm, but I will replicate it across the rest of the program in the coming weeks

in some situations, the file import status window will list some timestamp note info for 'already in db' and 'deleted' statuses. see if you like it

the new listctrl will generally give its data to other consumers in ui sorted order (this fixes some stuff like 'copy sources' in the file import status window, which was copying them in random order)

manage tag parents now uses the new listctrl (and is hence now safely sortable)

manage tag sibings now uses the new listctrl (and is hence now safely sortable)

some behind-the-scenes of manage parents/siblings is a bit neater

improved some thumbnail internal media structures to fetch specific media based on hash much much faster, particularly for pages with 10,000+ thumbs. this should speed up large imports and other content update events that can result in thumb redraws

fixed an issue where dismissing a popup message could spawn the entire result of the queue, ignoring the 'show 10 max' rule

completely finished the menu rewrite! all menus now work on the new system

deleted a ton of old and now obselete menu event processing code

some boot/shutdown terminal printing should be more reliable

misc refactoring

misc cleanup

next week

I didn't have time to work on the login and domain engines this week, so I would like to get back to that.

#release

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