Posts tagged as:

online community

What’s A Community Worth?

by Ilana Rabinowitz · September 15, 2011

People are wired to connect.

In fact, studies have shown that one of the most important predictors of a peoples’ health is the quality of their social relationships.

As business people, we tend to think about our connections as an audience, but if we want to be social, that won’t be enough. We need to build a community to assure the long-term health of our business. Businesses, like people, need to nurture relationships in the context of a community. It can make the difference between success and failure when you need it most.

What a community is

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Building Community

by Jason Falls · August 14, 2009

The next time your boss, client or co-worker says, “How do we build a community?” answer them with this:

Invite someone to it.

Ben Thomas, creator of under-the-radar but useful tools like SalaryScout and LeadVine, was listening to London Geek Dinner podcasts one night and caught some inspiration from Lloyd Davis, founder of the Tuttle Club in the United Kingdom. He had an idea to build a community around technology in Louisville, Ky. Ben knew a few folks in town in the developer/programmer community. He also had some friends who were starting to get into this blogging and social media thing. It was the summer of 2006.

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Building On-Line Community Starts Off-Line

by Jason Falls · January 26, 2009

Jason Falls

Jason Falls

Tomorrow I have the honor of co-presenting the topic, “Building On-Line Community,” with Maker’s Mark president and CEO Bill Samuels Jr., to The Conference Board at its 2009 Corporate Imaging and Branding Conference in New York City. It’s a two-fold honor, the first being that I get to share the stage with Mr. Samuels, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working for the past two years. The other is presenting for The Conference Board, a long-standing meeting point for corporate executives and marketers from the Fortune 500 world.

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Research Shows Brands Should Focus On Trust, Conversation

by Jason Falls · October 24, 2008

Brand managers and marketers everywhere are trying to get a grasp on social media, social networking and the social revolution. In the survival of the fittest world of advertising, “fit” now means connected, and not as in, “having an online presence,” but as in, “with consumers in their social world on-line and off-.”

But because the social web is so new, very little qualitative and quantitative research exists that give marketers and brand managers the numeric back-up they need to make decisions. Sure, eMarketer.com kicks ass, and several other companies do good work with small samples and good publicity, but the simple fact remains that because the landscape is new and changes so rapidly, we haven’t quite solved the puzzle of the social web and what it means, or costs, to be involved here.

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We Don’t Need More Social Networks. We Need More Purposed Social Networks.

by Jason Falls · October 15, 2008

As Kat reported last week, Gartner estimates that 50 percent of all social media efforts will fail. She also explains how you can be in the 50 percent that do not, so I would recommend you read her post.

But as we continue to see social media push through growing pains at businesses, large and small, it’s important to remind ourselves what defines success and what premeditates failure. As I commented on Caroline McCarthy’s CNET post highlighting the same Gartner research:

The problem with companies doing social media badly is they are not asking enough questions on the front end and not asking the right questions on the back end.

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So You Want To Run An Online Forum?

by Jason Falls · April 18, 2008

It’s a fair point to say the online tool most responsible for the advent of social media is the forum or message board. Descendants of early bulletin board systems and USENET groups, the forum introduced the concepts of conversation and community to the Internet. As technology blossomed and more sophisticated methods of communications usurped forums as the primary place people played online, the forum seemed to take a back seat.

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Elements Of Social Media Doesn’t Make Your Site Social

by Jason Falls · March 6, 2008

Louisville’s daily newspaper, the Courier-Journal, is readying the launch of a new website. I was invited to preview the beta site and offer some feedback. While what follows is much of that reaction, the mistaken strategies behind the social media elements of the Courier’s new site are a common mistake made by newly designed “social” websites everywhere, including media sites, brand websites and more.

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