Community Sites

The key to successfully monetising a site is first to
promote openness and trust with the target audience

Individuals who have the opportunity to interact through a website are able to potentially cross political and geographical borders in the pursuit of mutual interest or goals – this is known as a community website.

Website technology now makes it easier than ever for groups of people to meet in this virtual environment. Popular Virtual learning environments such as Moodle are becoming a popular teaching and learning tool to bring together distance learners from around the county and the world. Online forums allow for the interactive discussions between interested parties most whom they have never met or will ever likely meet.

Web Communities are of particular interest from a commercial publishing perspective. Encouraging participation of members by allowing them to generate their own content and conversations is good for the overall health of the website. The key to successfully monetising a site is first to promote openness and trust with the target audience.

Consumers don’t wont to be marketed to any more – in your face advertising does not work like it used to. Instead consumers are more likely to be stirred up and informed by natural online conversations and honest article contributions. As a consequence of this search engines are having to wakeup to the power of these so called social media sites – by giving them higher rankings. High rankings means more traffic and more traffic mean more visitors.

Community sites are a natural source of traffic as well as providing a genuine service to the community and the web as a whole. Media Knights encourages an element of community into every site such as allowing comments, free newsletters, free membership etc.