If you’re here at Curatti, you’re building digital community. All of us here are seeking connection with people we want to be in touch with, whether we’re business owners or marketers or industry peers, or simply exploring the professional possibilities of today’s increased connectivity.
I know for me, as a solopreneur with a publishing world background, a foundational part of building my own online community has been about finding my audience, meeting my fellow writers and entrepreneurs and learning along with them, and identifying industry players to monitor developments in my field.
These people are not all in the same place, so I go to all the places where they congregate — to the bulletin boards where they post and the Twitter chats where they discuss the issues, for instance.
You may recognize that you’re personally on your own similar self-directed path toward online community. You’re at the center, and your network, as you may envision it, radiates out from there. Your network is a place you go.
Now, let’s take a look at your network from the other side.
Consider your network not just as a place you go but also as a place other people come to. How does that look?
How does that look for you, your organization, or something bigger that you’re part of?
What can we each do to make our global network a vibrant place? I think one of the first considerations is how hard or easy we make it to enter.
So, what would be your simple strategy for building a global network of people you want to be connected to? Don’t forget that they probably have a range of digital abilities.
In order to welcome people into your online network, you’ll probably want to have a pervasive, cohesive presence with many online doors.
Right? You can imagine if you or your business or organization just has a Facebook page or a LinkedIn group or a website with no social web outposts and you expect everyone to go to that one spot to find you, you’re asking a lot more than if you have doorways across the web.
Maybe it’s easy for you to open one room somewhere. But you make it difficult for us to join you there if you choose a service not known for its groups functionality. There’s a reason certain services are littered with the skeletons of well-intentioned groups.
It might help to picture your digital strategy as physical space for community to coalesce, with our impetus to move through space being the content and people we see highlighted by you there. Doors leading to rooms with windows into other related rooms of our peers and corridors we can click and go down when we are motivated to pursue what appeals to us. More ways and places to connect to you as our interest grows, as the value becomes clearer.
When you find yourself looking for a simple strategy to connect and start to build closer ties, so you can be ambiently aware of your peers on a consistent basis, so you all can see each other and learn what everyone is up to, so you recognize your commonalities and your opportunities to collaborate, and so you can TAKE ACTION on your shared goals using the cost-effective, labor-saving, reach-amplifying online communication tools available in 2013, ask yourself this.
Simple for whom?
Is your plan simple for you, the community builder? Or is it simple for the community waiting to happen?
Anastasia Ashman
Latest posts by Anastasia Ashman (see all)
- Use Social Context To Connect - February 7, 2014
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- Simple Way To Welcome People Into Your Network: Open Doors - January 22, 2014