Building a Community is Not About You – It’s About Them

By on August 7, 2007 in Blog Coach with 3 Comments

Durbin Media has offers a roundup of fantastic Community and Social Media posts from experts in the field. Each worth a read.

Here’s the thing:

  • Want butts in the seats?  Don’t simply build the stadium. The stadium isn’t the draw – and if it is, it’ll get old fast. Ask the Baltimore Orioles.
  • Offer a "sense" of ownership.  I don’t own MyBlogLog, but I have a "sense" of ownership in my profile page.
  • Allow people to connect. You don’t have to be the celebrity. In fact, it’s better if the members are the celebrities. This is one place AOL went haywire. By the time they realized it – it was too late.

If you build community for the sake of the community – you’ll have one.

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Find Your Social Media ROI

I hear it from a lot of business owners: “Where is the ROI with all this Social Media?“ If this is a question you ask yourself, maybe we should work together a bit more. We can work together solo, or via a professional learning community. Find and increase your ROI. There is a “there” there.

About Mike Sansone:

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  • http://brandandmarket.blogspot.com Chris Brown

    Mike:
    Thanks for this post. I never heard of the phrase “astroturfing” before.. and wow, I should have, how’d I miss that.
    And I remember reading YourBlogLog profile before and smiling at the “that” & thinking that sounds like Mike.
    ha ha.
    Blogging has no “silver bullet” — it takes time, creativity, a little bit of techno skill, persistence and the desire to build a community.
    Chris

  • http://www.jasonfpeck.com Jason Peck

    I’d add one other key thing to the community recipe – Fun/common interest. There’s no need to build a community for community’s sake. It has to be fun/appealing to people who share common interests. There has to be value in joining the community, whether it’s meeting new people, getting answers, saving time, all of the above, etc. I will post more about this on my blog.

  • http://blog.giftideahelp.com/ Elizabeth Anderson

    I am trying to build community. When I see Mike about intermediate blogging lessons, I will ask him if changes need to be made to my profile page to build community.

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