The other day I was visiting with a colleague who was bidding on a project for a Fortune 500 company here in the U.S.A.

The Company wanted my colleague to commit to bringing X amount of users to a particular website for a given amount of money. The hope, apparently, was that when users found this community site they would join and as a result help spread the word when the company launched a new product within a year or so. My colleague mentioned some companies out there, somewhere, that can guarantee a certain number of hits and even registrations for some astronomical amount of money.

Bad idea?

Hits and traffic numbers are NOT directly related with a successful site. Often times I will talk with businesses that have a brand new website but can’t seem to get any traffic and I'll use the analogy of being dropped in the middle of the ocean - much like Gilligan.

Even when an outsider did find Gilligan and his fellow S.S. Minnow castaways – they always seemed to find their way off the island but they never sent anyone back to rescue the castaways. Their only concern was getting off the island as soon as possible.

Googles entire objective is to optimize the experience of the user and therefore indexes the internet based on what previous users have told it about the relevancy of a web site in order to produce only the top recommended, most relevant sites in a search query. Traffic alone does not indicate relevancy and will not garner a coveted top spot in organic Google searches. If a community, or site, has thousands of members but the users don’t consider it to be a relevant, recommended source ( based on how they use the site and links from other blogs, communities, and other sites) then Google will mirror that and not recommend it to subsequent users.  

Furthermore, flies don’t like fly strips – they just get stuck there. Just because people have come to your site and spent a few minutes creating a profile does not mean they love you. To create a community of any value you need to go further than simply setting up a place for people to land. Communities, particularly brand communities do not consist of the 80% of people that use your product or service everyday – instead it’s the diehards, the evangelists – the people that would recommend you. If you give them the tools and a reason they will do that automatically.

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