Jordan Miller

To celebrate Invision Community turning 20-years-old (an eternity in Internet years), I interviewed the company's founding fathers. Ahh the good ol' days. Remember simpler times? This new video interview touches on Invision Community's past, present and future thanks to the invaluable insight from @Charles, @Matt and @Lindy. In our chat together, these gentlemen... Take a nostalgic trip down memory lane and reflect on the company's origins Explain the power of community amidst the social media boom Offer advice for new community leaders on how to grow Share some of the biggest changes to the platform Recant fond memories from the earlier days Reveal a teaser of what's next for Invision Community Noteworthy quotes: Charles: Lindy: Matt: Thoughts on the interview? We'd love to hear from you in the comments! 🎂

Since the dawn of the Internet, forums have remained a dominant force on the worldwide web. Invision Community not only survived the social media boom, we thrived. Our community forum platform is an industry leader and continues to serve thousands of businesses year-round. If community forums are tried and true, then why is the average Internet user bombarded with pleas to follow a brand’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts versus a forum? It's often the case that when decision makers consider building a community, they look to social media tools first and overlook the power an owned community platform has. It's rare to find an instance where exclusively maintaining a social media presence builds a rich and diverse community that shares information and actively help each other. Every smart company should invest in fostering a community through the means of a forum. Without geeking out too hard (I’m about to geek out real hard), allow me to explain why forums harness immense power. Meaningful user generated content I added meaningful because the fabric of social media is also user generated content, however, much of the time it's followers competing for attention or having no interest or knowledge of your brand and its products. One issue with social media is random trolls and people misunderstanding a brand's products or services. That causes a lot of noise or adds little value. This is because community forums focus on the content, whereas social media centers around the individual user. Social media comment sections have become increasingly divisive with tempers easily flared. It can be hard to have a worthwhile conversation. You’re either tossing a comment into the social media campfire, arguing with someone you’ll never meet or double tapping a “like” to show public support. None of which adds value or elevates a brand’s identity. On the other hand, a community forum offers various pathways for meaningful engagement. A library of content Topics build on top of one another and eventually creates a searchable library of content for new users to discover. Easily discoverable Search engines don’t typically respond to your query with social media posts. On the other hand, forum posts are quickly indexed. Invision Community’s latest update 4.6.11 includes IndexNow, which quickly informs search engines about new content changes. This draws in new users with little effort. Belonging Successful forums are inherently niche. Generally, members who participate share overarching commonalities with one another, and where they don’t they have a platform to express otherwise. Social media is too gargantuan to recreate these special connections. Moderation Social media can be powerful, but often spirals into toxicity because these platforms rely on automatic moderation tools. Our community forum has built-in tools for automatic moderation as well as tools for moderators (actual people caring for your community!) to ensure stability. Invision Community's forums in Fluid mode Fosters community Community forums facilitate community building. They are the apparatus for Internet users around the world to instantly connect with one another. Think of community forums like a neighborhood. A construction company (that's you) builds the community, but the community needs residents (your members) to transform the houses into homes. Once the infrastructure is set up, forums can use time to its advantage. Unlike social media, forum content can remain relevant and circulate throughout a community for long periods of time. That’s because ongoing conversations aren’t dependent on complex algorithms that display content based on past engagement. For example, your Instagram explore page shows you similar content based on other content you’ve engaged with in the past. That keeps you stuck in a loop and prevents you from interacting with new content. The algorithm sees you liked X, it shows you more of X, you see X, you engage with more of X and the cycle repeats itself, never allowing yourself to explore A, B, C or literally anything else. Forums display content based on what the community as a whole is interested in (not just the individual). With the Invision Community’s forums application, the member also has the option to decide how they want to consume content (maybe engaging with X is all that member wants, but they have the ability to discover more content outside of what machine learning dictates). Own your community forum Imagine spending years building a following on social media only for it to vanish overnight. Even worse, there’s no point of contact to reach out to to gain an understanding of what happened. That can’t happen when owning your own community forum. Not only do you maintain control, but you… Call the shots You are the decision maker. On social media, there’s no ability to enable, test, try or optimize new ideas / features. Have access to rich reporting Social media offers some insights, but it’s limited. Invision Community’s reporting inside the ACP includes various engagement reporting metrics to help you better understand what’s working (and what isn’t). Can monetize There are roundabout ways to get monetized on social media, however with our community forums application, you have far more flexibility to integrate digital campaigns such as banner ads, affiliate links and paid promotional content. Invision Community's Activity Streams Free market research Save money on market research by tapping into your audience's needs free of charge. Your power users want to tell you about their experience in your community, something big brands without a community pay big money for. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you probably think I have something against social media. To the contrary! Social media is a powerful tool, but most use it as the be-all end-all when it can better serve businesses to encourage new audiences to visit your community (versus attempting to create community directly on a platform you don’t own, control or have any real say in). Owning your own community forum is so immensely powerful, and, despite message boards and forums existing since the early ‘80s, it still feels like a secret. Invision Community’s forums application is the best in the industry. If you have your own community forum, show it off in the comments! Don’t have one yet? Please reach out to us and we’ll get you started.

There’s a fine line between freedom of speech and censorship. Invision Community always aims to empower community leaders with options to encourage an open dialogue within a community, while including barriers for members who choose to ignore the guidelines. Invision Community’s latest release, 4.6.11, includes a simple but powerful new feature to help you shape your community’s tone. It’s called Block Submission. Block submission stops a member’s message from being posted if it includes any word(s) added to your Word Filters list with the “Block Submission” option enabled. Word Filters, a previously existing feature, allows community owners to prohibit profanity in the community. If a member types a word included on the banned words list, the platform will automatically either... Replace the word with something else you set Hold the post for moderation Or, with our new Block Submission feature, notify the member they must amend their post. Located: ACP -> System -> Settings -> Posting -> Word Filters -> Add Word Filter Here is an example: I added the word “hate” to the Word Filters list in the Admin Control Panel and selected the Block Submission option. Now, when a member tries to post the word hate, a message pops up indicating it wasn’t published and why. The member must modify their comment in order for the post to go live. In this scenario, that would look like taking out the word hate. Feel free to change the default warning message (the text located in the orange message bar above) to something better suited for your community - it's located in the Languages settings in your ACP. Why did we create Block Submission? This feature not only helps automatically moderate content, but more importantly, it sets a precedent to members regarding what is (and isn’t) accepted. Gently notifying members that their comment doesn’t align with your community’s guidelines helps maintain the existing culture you’ve worked hard on cultivating, as well as your initiative to keep the language and sentiment positive. Interested in trying our block submission feature out? Please upgrade to 4.6.11! If you don’t have an Invision Community license yet, please reach out to me and I’ll help get you started. Thoughts on our latest feature? Sound off in the comments (just make sure it passes our new vibe check 😉).