Should a community be everywhere?

[Carlos Miceli]

Simple question:

Let´s say that we want to build a community, whatever the topic. Should we be everywhere? Should we have a blog, a facebook group, a ning community, twitter about it, and use every other tool we can get our hands on?

Is there a thing like "too much" community presence, online or offline?
If so, where do you recommend to be, and where do you think we should stay out of?

[Richard Millington]

I sort of blogged about this today. I think this is a huge 'it depends' debate.

I think you should have as much community presence as benefits the people you're trying to reach.

[Angela Connor]

This is a tough one. It seems to me that you may need a central location and then branch out letting users know where "else" they can communicate. One of my biggest concerns and what I feel will ultimately come to a head, is the concept of a home base. I mean, think about companies, or news organizations that branch out and start communicating everywhere. They still have a home base. Now, not everyone will need that depending on their goals. So I probably have not helped you one bit with this answer. LOL!
But I hope you get my point. I'd love to discuss this one more and hear what others have to say.

[Mark Schooling]

I agree with Richard when he says "I think this is a huge 'it depends' debate."
I feel however MOST communities would do better with a less is more attitude. Branching out is great for marketing and exposure but bad for the conversation. In general I think it spreads the community too thin - I prefer dense highly targeted communities.

[Amitha]

After reading through your question, two words came to my mind and later I realized Rich has already said it!

IT DEPENDS

This is a common mistake most of the community builders (specially the ones with commercial intentions) do. They shoot everywhere, believing that at least one method will work out. My personal feeling is, you need lot of focus and patience to build a community. If you hit everywhere, expecting to a quick start; what you'll end up in a whole lot of abandoned tools all over the internet. When your potential customers see a Facebook profile which has not updated for months; that's not a good message to pass!

[Tom Ewing]

Aha, but what does it depend ON? ;)

One issue is whether you're actively recruiting members or relying on word of mouth. For WOM I'd say Mark's right - keep it central and keep it simple: if someone hears about your community you need the first place they find to be the one that hooks them in.

For active recruitment, other channels can be useful (I'm guessing - I've never been in a position of actively recruiting members)

And of course if there's another platform which offers functions your community can't but which are relevant, go for it! The pop music community I founded has expanded successfully to a last.fm group - an obvious fit!

The great thing about the variety of social media platforms is that we can all find ones that feel comfortable to us. I've never really liked Facebook, for instance, but I'm hooked on Twitter. So if you don't see the point of a channel but one of your members comes up with an amazing idea for using it, listen to them - they may well just 'get it' more than you do.

[Carlos Miceli]

I agree with this. I think that it dependes ON, feeling comfortable and listening to your members, but IT DOES NOT depend on the type of community, or the industry you are in.
Also, i agree with what Mark says above about the whole "less is more" attitude towards your community expansion. Like Amitha says too, it takes patience.

So, basically,i think that the way you should spread your community depends not in the usefulness, but in the comfortness of the members.

[Tom Harle]

I'm just specifying a new offline community-based group blog that I'll probably then have to build, and I'm having to keep in mind that since I'm building for the community, it's their needs and online habits that I need to tie in with. It will be pointless for me building in functionality for things like Dopplr, Last.fm, and so on, when a lot of people in the community are still in the process of migrating to a social internet mindset at all.

Anyway.

[stacy]

I think it is rather simple. You just need to be where your members already are and where they want to be/where they will participate. So instead of having a blog, facebook, ning, myspace, etc etc etc - just use tools that will actually be a good use of your time, you know?

[Daniel Bassill]

I think that you need to maintain a home base, where you share your own ideas and give people resources they can use if they visit your home base. I have two home bases. One is the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. The other is the Cabrini Connections web site. The CC web site is an entry point for the teens and volunteers and donors who support the single tutor/mentor program we lead in Chicago. The T/MC web site is the entry point for people from more than 200 different tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, as well as people in other cities who are looking for information they can use to support tutor/mentor programs in their own community.

With the home base, we're open 24/365 for anyone who finds the site via a Google search, referral, etc.

However, once a home base exists, then we need to be out in as many other related communities as we can find to share the information we host on our home base and to build awareness so more people go to the home base on their own. As a small non profit, I can't be everywhere on the internet where someone is talking about the issues I'm interested in, thus I'm trying to train my volunteers, students, supporters to take on part of the responsibility of sharing our information in other forums on a regular basis. Faith communities have done this pretty well without the Internet and some are now using the internet in this same way.

We're not looking for a short term interaction, but to engage people who stay involved, and grow their involvement, in many ways, over many years.

[John Robinson]

I agree that a homebase is an important concept, it's rich in SEO and it's important to have a consistent URL people can return to, but I've also been thinking a lot about how you tie the homebase into the wider community building effort.

People are building communities across such a diverse range of platforms now that it's heavily damaging the conversational elements of the community. There's an increasing demand for connecting the various community efforts back to the homebases. I see community building efforts moving towards an integrated approach over the next year or two. I'm really interested by projects like JS-echo which leverage the power of these external communities and make them available on the homesite.

The one true downfall I see with the JS-echo approach is there's no two-way communication between the homebase and the external communities. We're trying to solve this problem at Joyspoon. We give our users a homebase site (or allow others with a home site to hook into our system) and then we have connected the homesite to our remote applications on social networks, mobile devices, desktop clients and websites. This enables community members to stay up to date on the latest community updates and participate in discussions without returning to the home site.

We're just getting ready to do our soft launch so I'd love any feedback you guys have on our approach. I think you have a great conversation and community growing here.

[Marc Siegel]

Hi all,
I realize some parts of this discussion are way old, but it's still relevant.
I agree with Mark Schooling who wrote, "I feel however MOST communities would do better with a less is more attitude. Branching out is great for marketing and exposure but bad for the conversation."

However, Stacy and John of Joyspoon nail it when discussing going out and engaging "your" community wherever they are. Tools can/must help integrate, but the flow of ideas must be two way. If the data only goes one way, (Js-echo?), it is less than a solution. Good luck wth geting Jayspoon there.
Yours, Marc
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcsiegel

[John Robinson]

Great to have new people participating in the discussion! It's still a very important debate.

I made a mistake in my above post, it's JS-kit Echo not JS-echo, sorry for the confusion. I do agree that the two way communication aspect of things is very important though. The more we can bring the content and conversation back together, the better it will be for community building.