Grow your Community

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Here's advice and materials to help you get your community growing

Outreach ideas
People to reach out to
Materials
Read more...

Outreach ideas

Folks in the Tokyo area of Japan working on their LocalWiki initiatives!

Host or attend an edit party. These are fun ways to meet new editors and focus editing around specific topics.
Leave new users a welcome note on their user page. You may even offer to help if they have any questions). You can do this by creating a heading that says something like "Comments" and add your note below.
Use social media. Platforms like like Twitter, Google+, and Facebook are great for sharing interesting entries and finding new editors.
Identify and engage with the most active users. You can even make little awards or badges and put them on their user pages. :]
Make stickers, tshirts, and other swag. Make sure to always carry your stickers, give them out and put them up all over town.
Develop an Activity tab addiction and encourage others to do the same. The Activity page is one of the best ways to see what other folks are working on, discover interesting new content, and get ideas for things to work on.
Print out flyers and post them around town. Make great entries for a particular landmark, print it out, and post it up with sturdy tape.
Make a zine! Create a beautiful little magazine of all your favorite entries, and pass it around to local libraries, archives, community groups, and at events.
Table at local events. Make a presense at community events such as farmers markets, music festivals, and more.
Organize a bikeabout or other outdoor activity. Pick a topic, chose a route, ask people to bring cameras and notebooks, and go discover and document what's out there. Have everyone meet back up to make entries and upload photos of the things they saw.
Make fun propaganda posters. Hang them all around town!
Hold a fundraiser. Use fundraisers as a way to showcase awesome content & LocalWiki's potential in your community.

People to reach out to

Folks interested in local politics or civic activities. These folks will probably be interested in LocalWiki as a transparency and documentation tool. Read more about LocalWiki for civic engagement.
History bloggers and local historical societies. These folks have loads of knowledge and can become extremely valuable contributors! Help organize local history edit parties or offer to help individuals learn how to use the wiki. Read more about LocalWiki for local history.
Local librarians. They can help you research topics for the wiki, connect you with individuals and communities who might be interested in the wiki (like local history societies, or computer or English literacy students). Libraries make excellent locations for meetups and edit parties. Ask if you can put stickers and flyers up in the library. Read more about LocalWiki and libraries.
Local media. Promote neat articles for local media to pick up on. Read more about how journalists use LocalWiki.
Local arts and music community. Local artists and musicians are always looking for more ways to share their work and often have limited presence on the Internet. Create entries for local artists and let them know--they'll be flattered!
The local business community. This can be enhanced with stickers that say "Find us on LocalWiki!".
Other LocalWiki communities. Learn and share best practices throughout this guide, and be sure to ask and answer questions on the Ask the Community page.