Online communities change networking as we know it

Connection and online community are key to marketing, per Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro addressing Media Post’s Search Insider Summit.

Lee Odden summarized some of what Gord had to say:

The definition of ‘community’ is changing. It’s gone from what we have in common geographically to communities of ideology. The internet allows communities of interest having nothing to do with geography to exist and thrive. It’s not physical proximity, it’s mind space proximity. People move in and out of communities as they like.

We need to think of search differently. Rather than a box we enter words into to get links back, search is a function that drives connections between communities. Things like personalization and social search are what’s becoming important. Don’t think of it as searching, think of it as connecting.

So true in the case of lawyers. Until now, we networked locally, statewide, and in rare cases, via conferences, nationally. All this networking took time, and in some cases, travel.

Now networking is done online via a community of your target audience (prospective clients and those who influence them) who have similar interests. Does’t matter if members of your target audience are down the street or across the world.

Read their blog posts and news reports in your newsreader. Use Google Blog Search to follow key words and key phrases in your newsreader. And engage in the existing discussion you’ll see. Powerful networking.