Community is a very rich word that means many different things at the same time. It evokes a powerful set of images which are both highly personal and deeply cultural at the same time. That only makes sense, given how important community is to the social animals that humans are at heart. Yet for all of this, community as a concept is still a hard sell as an guiding principle for businesses sometimes – a concept that I’ve been building my career in social media around. That’s a real shame, and not just because I need the work. The traditional and well understood concept of community is what makes the buzzy new world of social media effective.
Home » 2010 (Page 12)
Yearly Archives: 2010
First Amendment
Nearly every heated argument on the internet between Americans eventually gets to one fundamental point. All it takes is a label of some kind – racist, liberal, nazi, socialist – and within a few messages someone is bound to claim that their First Amendment right to Free Speech is somehow being squashed. This whine is both laughably silly and, like any well-cut joke, deeply reflective on our culture’s basic values.
What does it mean to be oppressed and have your right to Free Speech taken away?
Forget SEO & Write for Humans
“Get to the top of Google and stay there!” The notices spam out to thousands of inboxes, probably including yours. Many people make some kind of living pitching their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods to businesses small and large who hope to make a killing off this internet thingy. But for all the noise and money spent, the vast majority of it is a terrible waste.
Real articles, blogs, or other content are written for humans, not machines. If you forget this, there is no magic formula to undo your mistake.
Dark Issues
It is possible to write about how silly our “politics” has become and never run out of new material. That much has to be obvious by now. But it is still amazing how far from reality the election year chatter has become. Dark Issues have taken the place of any sense of reality and rationalism.
Are we really that scared of what is happening to our nation that we’ll talk about nearly anything else?
Community versus Scene
Any business use of social media ultimately has to form a Community to be successful. That may seem like an overly strong absolute but it is easily justified.
The main difference between social media and traditional media is the interaction between people who use the service – users writing their own content on their own terms. Without interaction the entire medium is nothing more than a traditional outlet where information is pushed. That’s why it is important to separate the difference between a real social media Community and a “Scene”, or a place where the hip gather to show their fashion power and prowess.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 