Glossy-Neo

Importance of Activity

You may wonder what it is that attracts people to most sites, it isn't just their content (which is important) it is them being active! This doesn't necessarily mean blogging every day and barely ever making content. Of course, that is fine on a blogging or personal site.. but if your site is e.g. a neopets fansite, and you don't update often (i.e. make new content) or are very "active", then your hits are going to suffer!

Isn't There 5 Staff..

I have been to some sites and wondered why there is only one person (not always the owner) who is updating.. Especially when I have had a peek at their "Meet the Staff" page and there is at least 3 or more other staff members apart from the owner! Fair enough if some of them are on hiatus, which can be quite common but it is important that everyone has a go at posting as often as possible.

Sometimes, these inactive staff members don't have an incentive to want to post or actually be active. You may or may not be able to make them want to be active. Do people compliment them on their work? Do they actually know the rules you may have set for them? Have you asked why they haven't been active? Try and figure out why they aren't active, be as nice as you can without overdoing it! You might be able to help them, do they still have an interest for the site or working for it. If not, you might like to ask them if they wanted to quit, try not to just flat out fire them! Of course, sometimes you might just be so fed up with them that you do fire them straight out (I'm not saying this is a good thing!)

If you wanted to, you could have a turn system of a sort where each staff member is to try and post a certain day. Or have staff have turns at posting their updates. Another way could be having them post as soon as they make something or just have someone post every day or two when no one else has! I'm sure you can figure out an effective way of getting everyone to be active, just use your creativity and have fun with it!

A different way to go about it is to have a rule or a submission quota that staff are meant to fulfil ever week or two (try not to ask too much of them, better to have something they spent time on) This way, they will be posting, or should be! Don't be too lenient if your staff just never do what they are meant to, those kind of staff are just a waste of your valuable time and may just want to be staff at our site to "impress" people, not to help your site become popular.

Meaningful Updates

This can be really hard to do but when posting, you should always try and post with something meaningful, even if it is just a small change to the website. It is great to update with something a bit bigger like a new graphic or something but we all can get bogged down with something, such as homework, at some point. Just explain why you haven't updated as much and give a time frame in which you think you should have sorted it out and will return to posting regulary!

As for meaningful, don't just post for the sake of it, always try to have something new. Never say that you are really sorry for not updating for like ever and that you have a stack of stuff to add during the week (even though you have absolutely nothing!) If you are sorry, then make something to make up for the lack of activity.

Never throw something together on the spur of the moment, just so you can update. Take your time in making it, even if you have to post later than what you would like. You will feel better about what you update with and any visitors will surely like it a lot more than if you had made it within 5 minutes. If you are updating, make it good!

When to Update

To me, updating every day is pointless, there really is no need for it. It is hard on you, especially if you start to have less time for it. Also, I don't know about some other people but my parents sometimes don't let me go on the internet unless it is school-related, nor do they like me going on all day, every day. Sure it might be good to have fresh stuff every day but if you give yourself a much more flexible time frame, say, two or three times a week, then you are going to be a lot less stressed out and you can spend a lot more time perfecting new content.

If you have staff members, then it is fine to have one post per day, that above paragraph just applies to one person ^^. Just keep it to one post per day, no one likes to see 10 posts on the same day, that is just way too much! If your post is really and truly important, then edit the latest post, otherwise, save it till the next day.

Feedback

I hope this guide helped you a lot, especially with being active. If you have any questions about this guide or something to do with staying active, please email me. I will be very happy to help you as much as possible!