In my experience with strategizing and managing online communities, the goal of getting users to register proves much easier to obtain than getting people to come back to the site and participate. I think a slick site design and promising benefits can easily pull a user in to register because there is no commitment for them to get involved. So how do we get registered users to participate in online communities without forcing a commitment? I don’t think there is a magic formula.

Everyone here at LevelTen is VERY excited that NationalBreastCancer.org is one of five nominees for Best Charitable/Non-profit sites that "empower and educate people, facilitate civic participation and enable learned pursuits." Working on a community website that educates and gives hope to those affected by breast cancer was incredibly rewarding...and quite challenging at times. Here are a few of the lessons we learned while working on this project:

1) Don't reinvent the community

Despite many objections, Google Page Rank is an inescapable metric in the online community. Two forms of Page Rank exist online: what Google lets you see in the Google Page Rank Toolbar and what your Page Rank actually is in the Google servers. The Google Toolbar PR is seen by many on the Internet as a be-all and end-all in gauging the credibility of a particular site.