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Further to my recent posts about joining a yahoogroup and being a member, the information would not be complete without something on being a moderator or owner of a group.

Anyone can start up a yahoogroup for any reason.  You just have to do a search to find out that the topics are so varied and memberships range from 1 or 2 people to thousands of people.  And the activity of these groups can range to only a few messages a month to hundreds of messages in one day.  But the good thing is that this doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time to grow your group and for the activity to develop.

I’ll give you examples of groups I’ve set up to give you some ideas for your own group.

I have a family group that is set to private which means it’s only open to those I invite or add to the group – no-one else can apply to join. So my parents, siblings, nephews and nieces can join in the chatter to one another without having to know everyone’s email address. What I haven’t shared in previous posts is that you can literally send one email and it will go out to a group of however many is in the group. So you can hit reply or send to mygroup@yahoogroups.com and all members of that group will receive your email.

Another group I set up was for a group of women who do fundraising and support each in a closed forum – again no-one can join unless invited or added to the group and generally the group isn’t advertised on the yahoogroups directory.

Some groups I’ve joined are announcement only lists – there isn’t any actual discussion that takes place, just information that is disseminated to the members. So you could choose to set up a group for a newsletter for example and many have.

Most groups I belong to are advertised in the yahoogroups directory and open to anyone to join, although membership is generally approved first and often new members might be moderated until they’ve settled into the culture of the group, or proven they aren’t spammers.

Because some groups are very large and lots of messages come through day and night, list owners can elect to have some members set up as co-moderators and when you log into a group where you can see the members, the owners and moderators are identified by a blue or gold crown next to their yahoo ID in the member’s list of any group.

When you go to set up a new group you are encouraged to search through existing categories first to find a home for your new group at http://groups.yahoo.com/start.    Once you’ve found the right category then you click on ‘Place My Group Here’.  Now you need to decide on a name for your group, if you haven’t already and a shortened version for the email address. For example I created the Virtual Assistants International Group and the shortened version is vaig@yahoogroups.com for the address.  I then gave it a description – don’t worry if you don’t have it all correct as you can update the description later.

You will be advised if the name or address you’ve chosen is available and then you can proceed further to select your yahoo profile to link to the group.

Now, you can start exploring all the facilities available for your group.  I’ll share more in a later post.

Tags: , Forums, Yahoogroups // 3 Comments »