Making Friends and Influencing People - Part Two

[Darrin Dickey]

In a previous post, I wrote about the need for extending and building the Passport to History community. I also gave some ideas on how to extend the community membership. Today, I'm going to write a little on building our community. And by "building" I actually refer to building out our social network so that its a destination worth visiting.

The Easy Stuff
We've already got a cool place that provides us several ways to share with the community.
Photos - Did you know that you can share your photos with the community? You can upload them from your computer or you can add them from your Flickr account.Some of the photos you see on the site right now are form my Flickr photo stream. It took me about 2 minutes to add all of my photos and just a couple of minutes more to remove some personal non-history images. Easy!
Video - You can also upload video from your computer or add video from YouTube! The video upload function is just as easy as the photo adding function.
Blogs - Every registered member of Passport to History automatically has their own blog. It can be accessed on your "My Page" link. The newest posts are fed to the community front page for a while. Share something - thoughts, ideas or observations on history. And when you feel compelled to, comment on other blog posts. It fosters conversation. No one appreciates just talking to themselves.
Groups - Join a group on a subject that interests you. Don't see one? Start one!
Build Your Profile - Take some time to build your profile here. Tell us about yourself. It helps others get to know you & can help you find others with similar intersts. Show off some of that personality!

The Bigger Challenge
The bigger challenge here is to find ways to delight & engage the community that aren't pre-made & built in. Here are a couple of ideas that I've already been contemplating.
Featured History Link - Each month we would choose a member and highlight their history-related blog., website, business organization, published book, etc. This not only benefits the featured member, but benefits the community as well by introducing new sites & products.
Sponsor Ravenchase Teams - As a community, we could sponsor a Ravenchase team. Ravenchase uses history as a basis for many of their scavenger hunt clues. We could possibly even work with the Ravenchase people to create a specialized "Passport to History" hunt with some kind of worthwhile prizes.
Scholarship - Offer a high school or college scholarship for something history-related.

As you can see, there are lots of opportunities for building and extending our community, and I've only just scratched the surface.

Do you have ideas I haven't listed here? Add them as comments to this post.