There’s been quite a bit of chatter recently about how many friends - real, organic, squishy ones or screen-based, poking, tweeting ones - anyone can juggle in their lives. Clearly no-one can agree on the figure - estimates come out between 8 and 150 depending on classification and location.
This post is related to the cause of this limitation - TIME. In general, the more friends you try to juggle, the lower the quality of each relationship and the less time you have for each one. In the end, you have to take decisive action and perform a cull to get things to a manageable level.
With this in mind, how many online communities do you think any one person can be an active member of a still derive compelling value from each? No-one knows for sure but I reckon the answer will be pretty low. Just because there are some great social media apps out there, it doesn’t mean we magically have 25 hours in a day.
Joining and taking an active part in a new community may mean a web-user having to allow another part of his ‘active community portfolio’ (hmmm ‘acp’ - I think I’ve just coined a nice one there) to fall away.
So, if you’re going to build a community on your site and under your ownership then you had better be sure that it will be seriously sticky and ‘outpost adoptable’ (Not so catchy but I’ll consider that coined here too!). If you’re not 90% certain and above, then perhaps it would be better to focus your energy and resource into taking an active and meaningful part in the winning communities that are relevant to your niche until you are.
You will hear a counter argument to this being the 90-9-1 rule and how the people who do adopt your community will be developing SEO on your brand’s site. This may be true but if you’re not adding value even the 1% will bugger off somewhere else, leaving your precious in-house resource to try in vain to keep things looking fresh.
Shutting down your own community can be an embarrassing u-turn, so if you do commit be sure you know what you’re committing to and, more importantly, why.
Crush It. This is the new book from Gary Vaynerchuk. If you're a follower of GV already then you may not find anything new, but it's a good roundup of his point of view.
The Cluetrain Manifesto. There are some real 'Aha' moments in this book. Some people have taken their worship of The Cluetrain Manifesto (now a decade old) to ridiculous heights and I'm not one of them, but it's still a good read. Get down and read it like it's 1999. Updated.
Naked Conversations. Contains blogging's 6 pillars and other pearls of wisdom. Loads of case studies and examples that are relevant for anyone planning, or writing, a blog.
