Home Energy Pros turns one!

When my first kid turned one, he was barely walking.

When Home Energy Pros turned one it was galloping.

We’re off to a wildly successful start, with almost 1800 members signing up since November 1, 2010 (and 9, or half of one percent-leaving). Folks have joined from every state in the U.S., and 26 other countries.  (Not everyone has added themselves to the maps shown above.) We receive about 400 visits to the site every day, with over 125,000 visits (69,000 unique visitors) and 425,000 page views in the past year. Interestingly, it's the members' profiles that have the most overall page-views, followed by Groups, Forums, Blogs, Photos, Videos, and then Events.

 Here are some stats:

• 289 Blog posts written by members
• 224 Forum posts
• 35 Topical groups created, containing 318 discussion threads
• 1000 Events posted
• 639 Photos posted (and very few of people's dogs)
• 177 Videos posted

Our tracking tools don’t enable us to tally the numbers of comments attached to each post, but I suspect they total in the thousands.

These numbers don’t tell the full story. What is particulary impressive to me is the level of engagement, the quality of material posted by members, and the collegial tone of it all. Far from being dominated by a few loud voices, a large number of members are posting content. The best moments are seeing one member help another troubleshoot an issue or share a hard-won trick of the trade to help another member out. Members are doing fantastically well at keeping commercialism in check.

Tom White, Carol Merkel, and everyone else at Home Energy Magazine have been brilliant partners in this enterprise.  They’ve played a core role in building the network, and seeding it at the outset with great content.  Look for more and more cross linkages with the Home Energy’s own website and their magazine.

Huge kudos go out to Diane Chojnowski, who has risen so wonderfully to the challenge of making the most of the Ning platform underlying Home Energy Pros, greeting each and every new member, troubleshooting the details while providing sage advice on strategic issues.  Kath Straub of Usability.org has been there from the beginning, helping nudge me over the cliff called Social Media. 

We’re always looking for ways to improve.  Do log your suggestions, invite your colleagues to join us, and keep posting!