A Community of What?

When it comes to what we call Social Media, “community” is the coin of the realm. It’s also a very fickle thing to define, because the ideas, memes, and dreams that knit a community together can be made of very different material. And we’re heading for an even larger generation gap, because the notion of “friend” is becoming more slippery too.

It used to be that a group of friends was easy to spot because of affinity for clothing. Matching bowling shirts and funny-horned lodge hats made things too easy. There are still communities like that online and they won’t go away any time soon — but they might not be the communities you need to reach. A former co-worker on mine stayed with AOL for years simply because she was tied to a genealogy forum there. Too much of her internet identity was tied to being a part of that group, even though her membership there was costing an additional $20/month.

Future communities are going to be even harder to engage, because the incoming generation of the web-enabled isn’t platform dependent. They use browsers, IM, cell-phones, Xboxes, and whatever else comes down the pike to stay connected. And they don’t always use the same network; like birds and bees, they are prone to random migrations. When a few influentials leave and critical mass is reached, the others quickly follow them to the next point.

Down the rabbit hole

From the individual perspective, it gets even more tangled. The community is no longer a single entity. A person connected to one group through a set of common contacts might not belong to several joint communities. The clusters are not neat, and rather look more like synapses randomly anchored to neurons across the way. It’s a spaghetti map, and it’s messy. It’s fickle. In some instances, the prevailing factor might be the time of day a subset of users might be free to congregate or chat online.

It’s an awful lot to log and chart. Some are trying, by aggregating and quantifying “influence” across networks and platforms. They may yet succeed, but you don’t have to chase them down that rabbit hole. The best way to engage the community you need online is to create it. Don’t follow the crowd, be the hub that attracts a crowd. It’s done by sharing and adding value without strings. It might be money-saving tips or advice — or even better, a vehicle that allows your biggest fans to do it for you. It might be special offers or information that isn’t shared anywhere else. Give your potential advocates a reason to come to you, and they will. And they’ll drag their friends.

If this sounds scary, it should. Not everyone is equipped to get in and get their hands dirty and make Social Media work as it can. You’re better off not jumping in until you know what you want to accomplish, because embarrassing early stumbles can cripple your corporate reputation and become a new obstacle.

(Ike Pigott writes regularly at Occam’s RazR)