On Growing Community Online
I’m focusing more and more on social media lately and I’m more and more interested in PR and social media (surprise - if you read my blog you already know this). I still love working with smaller clients when it comes to online PR, especially when I’m consulting (not OrangeSoda work).
Large companies have PR departments that massacre my work. They remove or change the placement of keywords, they make plain things sound complicated. They expect immediate results. They make their press releases so company-centric that it’s boring to everyone but the company and their competitors. And it takes FOREVER to get the job finished, and then get paid. Not all large companies are this way, but it’s more common than in small companies.
Social media and PR are building relationships. Relationships are organic. They don’t take a linear path. It’s like the stock market, you see ups and downs in the short-term but you hope to see an upward trend over time. Like the stock market you probably will if you don’t get out too soon.
How do you measure trust and love? When it comes to building a community, social media is a long-term investment of building relationships. You can think it’s not worth it and be too impatient and stop participating, and not see the results. That’s when you say social media doesn’t work - because it’s not working for you. Businesses who are hierarchical and based on concentrating power and ego have a tough time with this concept. They should just pay for advertising where it’s much more black and white and they can control many aspects.
Right now I’m more focused on building community in my personal life - I miss the friends I had who I shared life with day to day. I moved. Now I don’t see them anymore. I moved to an incredible community that is unfamiliar to me so far. I’m impatient to make new friends. I’m starting to recognize people and feel comfortable chatting but it’s not the same. Eventually I’ll have people who I’m close to, who I see often and talk to often. Who trust me and who I trust. What is the value of that? That is life!
I found this gem that describes how I view the Internet:
The Internet is more than a medium. We believe it is more than a marketplace. The Internet is a community. Much more than some communities based on geographic location, the Internet is a community of real people sharing real experiences in real time.
That is what I have built and have neglected lately - my online community. I’m focusing on an offline community, because I need both and having just moved my offline community based on geography has shifted dramatically. An online community is as real as any offline community. Both happen over time and they evolve over time, just like people do. Blogging and forming an online community has been invaluable to my life and career. Blogs, social networks, and other social media are tools to form or join online communities. And they can be hugely valuable for your business.
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5 Responses to “On Growing Community Online”
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July 25th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Great post! As a fellow advocate for building strong communities on and offline I couldn’t agree with you more. Our lives happen in community with one another for better or worse. I wouldn’t have guessed even 5 years ago that I’d have a community of friends online. I look forward almost on a daily basis to connecting with both my online and offline communities.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
As I get older, i am starting to see the importance of community building in my life. And the truely beautiful part of the internet is that if the type of community that you are looking for doesn’t exist yet, then you have thet freedom to create it!
July 25th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more about the structure of businesses being the biggest roadblock to social media engagement, acceptance and success. This lack of open mindedness is what the newspaper industry is paying for right now in many respects. An institutional aversion to change will ultimately wreak havoc.
As managing editor of an online community that is now in it’s second year, I know that there is value in what the community is doing in that space. Quite honestly, I am tired of hearing that advertisers don’t know what to do with online communities and the risk associated with “unknown content” is just to high to place value on.
From my perspective, it’s the best place you can be. There are real people there, engaging one another on every subject in the book and there’s a tremendous amount of value in that. Now who’s going to convince them?
July 26th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I am just exploring social media and thinking about online communities also. I wonder if there can be a blend between the two. That online communities can be a springboard into offline communities.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Interesting observation you have made about social media. Groundswell also emphasizes this point, and if you are interested in how to use social media for community building and how to listen on the web, then the Media Guerilla has a good post on this here: http://www.mike-manuel.com/blog/2008/07/17/how-to-create-a-social-media-monitoring-strategy/
Also check out my Squidoo page that talks about influencer marketing: http://www.mike-manuel.com/blog/2008/07/17/how-to-create-a-social-media-monitoring-strategy/
This will help you think in terms of how community building is one thing, but how you do it is another!