Definitions of Community – From the Community
“A group of people living in a particular local area; “the team is drawn from all parts of the community”
“People with whom you interact whether deliberately or not, whether directly or not.”
“A group of people sharing a common interest or working together for a common goal.”
“A group of people with a common connection.”
“I think a community is merely a group of people coinsiding – with or without similar interests.
Interesting that it used to just mean a group of ppl living in the same locale – internet has definitely changed that now it can be people just coexisting on a social network site even if they’ve never met – gotta love globalization through the web; changing the world every minute.”
“Community is the collection of like minded people with a common goal and are dedicated to achieving that goal!”
The Infopreneur – James Richmond
“Interaction and communication between members of a group in which people share a common interest.”
Shane Hudson (me)
Gary Vaynerchuk – Telling It How It Is
Interaction
Gary Vaynerchuk is very passionate about interaction, as am I, and I completely agree with him when he says that it is a conference instead of a community due ot the lack of interaction. In fact, whilst brainstorming ideas for posts to write I came up with this post and decided to write something about community.
The problem with that was that my brainstorm of community had one branch, interaction, which then had over 50 branches come from that. So that should make it clear enough, sure does to me, that a community cannot possibly be a comunity without interaction.
So now we have cleared up what a community is and the importance of interaction, where can you join in with communities?
Where Can You Join A Community?
There are millions of communities around us. Schools, churches, bingo halls, sporting associations and country clubs. So many real life communities exist, yet so do so many online! As quoted above, Jeni Larson (on her way out of the door and saying something like “I will tell you my definition but very very quickly”) spoke some very wise words when she said: “Interesting that it used to just mean a group of ppl living in the same locale – internet has definitely changed that now it can be people just coexisting on a social network site even if they’ve never met – gotta love globalization through the web; changing the world every minute.”
Communities are found everywhere: on blogs, on social networks, on forums, on MSN and Sype… everywhere!
But are they really communities? Most of them are, but blogs generally do not act as communities. Though a lot of them are getting better!
How To Become A Community
So, you have thousands of visitors but no community? Yep, a lot of people are the same. Well if you do actually read these posts then you should already know how to be a community… INTERACT!! As simple as that really. Get to know your visitors, ask them questions, be more personal.. share pictures of yourself and tell your readers what you have been up to.
Also, think of visitors/readers as PEOPLE not just statistics that you see on the pretty Google Analytics graphs!
- Get to know the people that read your blog – not all of them if you have a lot but at least the regulars
- Social Network – let them know about you and show some interest in them
- Ask questions – you can even use the answers in your posts!
- Allow them to ask you questions – as Gary says in the video, he would prefer to do a whole session of Questions and Answers!
What Do You Think?
This is the end of my chatter. Now for yours. What is community? What do you think of Gary’s view on it? Do you think Success Circuit is a community? I try to interact with you but do you interact with EACH OTHER?
Good detail explanation about community. Thanks for it.
Good definition about community and good video of it.