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Join a community to market, don’t build one

I’m often contacted by companies that want to build the definitive Internet place to go for information and to communicate for their niche area. The idea is to get everyone to come to your arena to network and communicate. Doesn’t work.

As Josh Hallett posts:

Companies often want to build online communities themselves rather the joining an established one (if one does exist). They think that by building their own community they will have some level of control. That’s not a community, that’s a cult.

Of course with some brands the loyalty their fans show is often compared to a cult. So perhaps a cult is the right type of society.

Online communities are wonderful places to market. But it’s not like you pay an admission fee and walk in the door. Communities exist by virtue of communicating via blogs and monitoring the RSS feeds of blogs and keywords/key phrases via Technorati and NewsGator.

And to think because there is no ‘online town hall’ where everyone is congregating to communicate on your niche you’re going to start one is misguided. Better approach is to look for the people already communicating via blogs.

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  • http://www.kansasfamilylawblog.com Grant Griffiths

    Great post. And so true. Take for example the community that has started which is made up of other family law blogging attorneys. We did nothing formal. All we did was set our RSS feeders to each other, link to each other’s blogs and post and watch the traffic grow. And best of all, when you do this you develop a great relationship with others who think and do some of the same things you do yourself. Blogging is a natural way to develop a community simply because it is a great communication tool.

  • http://www.legalandrew.com Andrew Flusche

    I couldn’t agree more with this post. In a way, this all goes back to the adage: don’t reinvent the wheel. Before trying to build something, especially online, the better choice is to see if someone else already made it. Perhaps you can join in, add your thoughts, and contribute to what already exists.