How do you communicate with your members?
 

Do you email them? Do you ask them to email you? Do you have a forum in which you request feedback? Do you call them on the phone? Do you have a porno hotline number in which they can call you and give you their most intimate desires? Do you hold exclusive member parties? Do you post a poll in your members areas, similar to NewEgg on their front page?

A lot of people here claim to have this amazing, almost mind-reading ability of their members... saying "I know my traffic soooo incredibly well... I know exactly what they're looking for. I know exactly what they want. I know exactly what they're thinking." And for the most part I think you are completely full of shit.

How do you have such incredible insight into the desires of your traffic?

Great question! With me, I communicate via email and I have a forum in my members area... I want to start the poll thing real soon... Saw it on ghettogaggers and thought it was cool and engaging...

We have an interactive FAQ with an email form, some forums and a chat room. We will be adding polls soon to tailor our content for our current users as well

You can get a good idea of what your members like and want based on what they click and watch the most. It's pretty much the same as free sites. If a thumbnail with big fake tits is getting a crazy amount of clicks, it's a safe bet that the surfers are looking for big fake tits and you should provide more.

You don't need one-on-one contact. Sure, it's great to get, but it's not the end all.

Telepathy.

Plus a forum, private messaging system, emails. I go to their houses too.

normally webmasters using mass mailers developed by me!

Occasional Polls

Tracking the clicks on what's clicked the most, playing with google Analytics - how's that tool named.. don't know now, but you can browse through the member area checking the how the links are clicked etc.

Forum is not always such a good idea, since there's always someone trolling or sharing negative crap, a certain percentage of your members are always negative assholes (this statistics, after all, works for any population sample that's of representative size).

My hint would be to gather as much customer behavior data as possible with least possible public communication.

I just sent this email to a join I got today. We'll see if I get a response. Most members don't seem to reply.

Chris,
Noticed you joined our site GhettoThugs a little while ago. I was wondering if you could tell me what made you join.

If you could tell me what you think we could improve upon, I would appreciate it! Our job is to make sure our members are getting what they're looking for, and to deliver more of it.

Thanks!

-Noah
GhettoThugs.com

Stats, forums, email, formmail, Twitter, polls, MySpace, xPeeps, SNS, etc.