What is the one thing an online community builder shouldn’t do? To complicate entry processes. It sounds obvious – it’s something retailers and hoteliers have known for centuries – but the venom sits in the word ‘complicate’. The trade-offs that must be made are complex by themselves..

Attachment 133I raise this topic to share with you some of the experiences I’ve gained over the last couple of months in building, developing and promoting GBLCG.com. The one all-encompassing objective I worked towards was to make this site an attractive and preferred destination for Facebook Friends who want to exchange and share information that can help them advance their personal and professional objectives.

Because I work best when I can measure my performance against targets I plotted graphed the ‘where I want to be’s’ on an A3-sized sheet and stuck that above my desk. Each week I took stock of my membership and plotted results manually against a target growth line. To my surprise, the lines kept pace, which made me think that I under-rated my targets.

I solved that last weekend by posting a much more challenging graph, which now shows that I am actually under-performing in the Membership Gaining stakes.

This obviously raised the question: How am I going to meet these new and much more challenging targets?

Building An Online Community – Think ‘Simplicity’

This caused me to rethink GBLCG.com’s Registration Process. Initially I set the entry level for aspirant members fairly high as not having to welcome ill-intentional individuals or mere lurkers – people who come to look and take without contributing anything.
To become members, visitors had to complete an online registration form and to respond to two confirmation emails.

Although I assumed this wasn’t a complicated process, reality proved me wrong. Although the process did what it was supposed to do – checking the validity of a registrant’s credentials and identity – its protracted nature discouraged visitors to take the plunge and ride the process out.

Abandoning the registration process all together would move me swiftly to the other side of the trade-off spectrum - one I actually didn’t want to move to at all. Knowing that GBLCG.com gets hammered by between 50 and 100 spammers and hackers weekly – and that the site successfully withstands practically all illegal-entry attempts – I didn’t entertain the thought to simply throw the doors wide open just to increase the site’s membership.

Introducing The TEN SECOND Registration Process

Learning much from other site administrators, as well as from the developers of the CMS software we use to publish GBLCG.com, the solution popped out of the woodwork last night. The solution found is both simple as elegant: put an app between Facebook and GBLCG.com that enables Facebook Friends to register by connecting the two databases that drive each platform.

Rather than asking aspirant members to complete a very secure but somewhat convoluted registration process, why not allowing them use their Facebook details to auto-complete the process?

Believing this to be the solution to our visitor’s registration woes I set out to establish this connection – and its working!

Want To Try It?

If you want to give this new, top-notch addition to GBLCG.com a whirl find the Facebook Connect button on top of this page, as shown in this illustration:
Attachment 132
An Opt In dialogue box appears, which asks you if you’re ok with sharing your Facebook details with us to personalise your presence at GBLCG.com instantly. After clicking ‘Allow’ the box closes – and that’s about all it takes.

What it does:

• Any post or comment you publish here at GBLCG.com will automatically show your name and your Facebook profile pic.
• Henceforward you can use your Facebook inlog credentials to access GBLCG.com [and NO, we will NOT be able to steal those details from you..]
• When you publish a post or comment here at GBLCG.com an entry will automatically appear on your Facebook Wall to show your Friends you’re not sitting still – that you’re actually doing something here..

Go ahead and give the fruits of my labour the recognition it deserves..

That’s it from me for now. Not a bad day’s work I think…

Thanks for reading this – stay well & have a great and successful day..

Raymond

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