Creating a Community around Content

I think the immense popularity of social networks was the driving force of community building and online organizing. The difference however, between an organization that simply uses the Internet and one who uses it well, is to create conversations, engage their audience and solicits feedback – not push messages on them.

Whether an organization wants to or not, they cannot ignore online communities. Personally, I think they should use them to their advantage. In his book, Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations, Clay Shirky explains how social networking sites are revolutionizing the way individuals around the world communicate, form groups and exist within them to influence social and cultural issues.

Among his many compelling observations, Shirky’s assertion “when we change the way we communicate, we change society,” epitomizes how companies, organizations, the media, political figures and even individuals now use the Internet as a tool to build networks around the world and conduct a myriad of activities such as learning and sharing interests, discussing societal issues, communicating information on current events and sharing photos to encourage the free flow of information and ubiquitous communication.

Although a number of news and non-news organizations are now building communities around their content, I wanted to call attention to a few that are successfully engaging their audiences with multimedia tools:

CNN:

The CNN iReport is a great example of a news organization that is building a community around its content. The iReport even helps CNN create content – a feature that, in my opinion, helps strengthen their community. By creating this community of ‘iReporters,’ CNN gives individuals the autonomy to report on their own story. By featuring these stories on the CNN web site and at times on CNN TV, these individuals are automatically part of a community that CNN created.

CNN also collaborates with Facebook – during the election last year, anyone could login to Facebook and stream the debates off of CNN’s Facebook page. This allowed people to share their perspectives on certain issues.

Washingtonian:

One of my favorite magazines and sites – I think the Washingtonian does an excellent job at community building. I am an avid reader/follower of them and I think this is because they really make me feel engaged in their content. Some of their tactics:

Twitter:

· Their Twitter feed is constantly soliciting feedback from followers – they ask questions such as, what is your favorite sandwich in DC?
· They ask people to “ReTweet” their posts for a chance to win tickets to one of their events – a great way to build awareness.
· Posts are not sporadic – they are constantly updated and focus on a number of topics including upcoming events, news, new articles, etc. – so, you’re never bored with the content
· Actively respond to posts from their followers – I LOVE this about them. If someone tweets something like, @washingtonian looking for something fun to do in DC tonight – Washingtonian tweeters will respond with some suggestions!

Facebook:

· The Facebook page is integrated with the Twitter page – a way to get more followers and fans
· Able to mass communicate to their fan base
· With more than 1,000 fans on Facebook – they can gauge the demographic of their readers

The site itself also welcomes comments and feedback to all of their posts. Readers can also submit pictures for photo contests, etc.

Southwest Airlines:

Southwest does a great job of creating a community of loyal followers. Their Twitter feed is constantly updated with information on flights, contests and soliciting feedback. Read one of their latest Tweets:

Live in DC area? 1st 25 to DM me spend SAT night in NYC w/ guest! Flight & hotel on us! Flight is SAT from BWI! Rules: http://bit.ly/2l1IIF

They also frequently Tweet responses to their followers – a great way to create conversations as opposed to pushing messages of promotions, etc.

Southwest has a really great blog that is full of multimedia content to engage their followers. They post a number of pictures to their Flickr page - of destinations they fly to, their employees and their planes. Because they host on Flickr, flyers can also put up their own pictures and add them to the Southwest page.

They also keep a reoccurring poll on their blog that solicits feedback from their blog readers.

The blog features videos and text entries – both feature user comments.