Keeping up with Competition

We have a thread around here discussing whether or not you permit linking to and discussion of competing communities, but let's talk about how you keep up with your competition.

How do you keep the spotlight on your community when your competition is getting some attention? How do you make members want to visit your community and not the others?

 

I usually start bringing out bigger competitions, and better prizes. Like you guys are doing with the vB and IPB licenses.

 

1: Being functional with no advertising. I'm not sure what more I can say - my competition is 'cheap' and they have paid for it, repeatedly.

2: General technical competence. Most communities can't hope to run something like AjaxChat with the same degree of efficacy that I do. Nor do they generally have my programming talent, so while I integrate features like a dice bot and hack a blog into SMF for the hell of it.

3: Humility. I am not better than (most of) my membership. I fully believe this. I apologize when I err, I explain myself when people are confused. I make it a point to treat people cordially, though I am a flawed human and this sometimes slips when I am stressed : / I actively avoid trying to 'steal the women' on my communities, and I don't intentionally flaunt my power, outside of things like April Fools, etc. For this April Fool's my own staff banned me : /

I say intentionally, because when people are very emotionally invested in your community, you have to tread lightly. I've learned the hard way that even joking around can be taken too seriously. I need a way to get my communities to lighten up >_>

 

I think what's important is feedback. I don't ignore threads nor do I turn down something if I don't have a viable reason to turn it down.

 

I don't worry about my competition, I use to get bombarded by them and their members when they decided they couldn't handle a competitor and their members posting spam and crap on my forums...

It kinda backfired on them because when I approached potential sponsors I had extra members and threads/posts which made me look like a more viable option and as a result I have over $3000 of prizes for all of my sporting competitions while they are struggling to find sponsors for any of theres - infact they have none.

 

Always be developing, growing your site, and show 'em what you've been hiding up your sleeve the day your competition makes their big announcement :lol:

E.g., see what's happening now between Microsoft and Google. The day the press release started circulating about Bing, I saw Google Wave in the news the same day. They stole their thunder a little bit.

 

When I noticed I had competition, the first thing I did was work on my SEO. The second thing I did was start planning for a new custom template. Then I went on a posting spree and installed an arcade. Soon I'll be running my own posting/referral competition.

 

I am always working on the website and forums making it all better all the time, I watch what my competitiors are doing, and read their website feedback and suggestions and always aim to do better.

There is only one point i am lacking and that is my graphics im not a real gfx designer and so my site lacks on the forum side!

 

You're not the only one who lacks skill in the graphic design area. :lol:

 

Provide quality content, and keep improving that content, both in quality and quantity which takes hard work. "Build it and they will come".

Treat members as nice as possible and everyone equally.

Check this site for an example

 

I'm glad you think this way of us. I really appreciate it, Abomination.

 

haha it was funny i click the link and get brought back to admin addict lol - i love it haha!

But yeah content is always the way just continue to post content and the flock will come

 

I missed that at first. That's very much appreciated - thank you.

 

Me too - I clicked the link without reading the URL first and was confused for a second. :doh: Thanks for the awesome feedback!

 

The best thing I ever did was visit istockphoto and pick up illustrations there, since I have no graphics talent either

 

Glad you liked the feedback. I really do think this site has much potential and think it will take off, especially if you continue to recruit quality members as opposed to random people that only want to draw attention to their site.


Here is an example of non-quality content. Local newspaper publishes an interesting article from the AP (associated press) and on page 1 it says continued on page _. On page _ there may or may not be the rest of the article, or it might be on another page entirely. If it is continued then often times it just ends, and clearly they are truncating the article. Extremely frustrating and the newspaper is not sure why they are losing subscribers. I called them up and they were not aware of the issue. Apparently they do not read their own newspapers.

 

The industry I entered is all about creativity and what's new, all about the skills too! So I try to be up-to-date design wise and learn new tricks to bring to my customers.

 

If you gave me 75,000 ACTIVE members and about 4,000 a month I may have a shot at catching up to my competitor by the year 2020

 

I've noticed the same thing, but assumed it was a trick to get you to click through to another page, which might have a bunch of ads and the article attribution.

 

It was not on the internet. It is the old fashioned paper newspaper that gets delivered to my home on a daily basis.

I've resorted to quickly scanning the article to see if it makes any sense at all before reading it in depth.