The #1 Way to Build a Community

Nov 4, 2008 blogging, Events

Thanks for coming back. =). Glad to see you. If there's anything I can do for you, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email, or leave a comment, introduce yourself. I'd love to connect with you. Or if you have your own blog, why not let me promote your work?

A group of youth interacting

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Over the weekend I attended a few sessions at Podcamp Singapore and the Digital Media Festival. The one thing that struck me the most was the idea of going where the people are.

At DM Fest, the topic came up when I was talking to someone just after a session about communities. I was asking his opinion about whether it made more sense to use your own logins if you’re trying to build a community, or to try and leverage technologies like OpenID so people can use other accounts to join. The answer was a pretty obvious one.

At Podcamp Singapore, the topic came up in both the sessions I attended. Coleman talked about choosing the right medium – text, audio or video. As you can imagine, one of the main factors discussed was about audience preference.

The other session I attended was by Amsie from Curious Foodie, who shared her journey on blogging. During the session, the discussion went on a very nice (in my opinion) tangent when the owner of fourcardflush, a poker blog, asked for advice on how to build the local online poker community – the poker community in Singapore is largely unseen online. The suggestions? To go out into the offline community, take part in the games, and build from there.

3 very different sessions, with different focuses and applications. But the common general theme is quite prevalent.

The easiest way to build a community is to go where the people are. Don’t just try to pull them to where you are. Go to where they are, join them, and build relationships first. Then do you thing, and they will follow.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under blogging, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • http://fourcardflush.wordpress.com tim young

    thanks for the advice man i found the session pretty helpful

  • http://coolinsights.blogspot.com Walter

    Right on! I think building communities is often the poor second cousin to developing great content, which is sad because of its importance. For me, I feel that the offline activity is definitely just as important than the online correspondences, and could in fact strengthen relationships forged through blogs, forums, emails and IMs.

  • http://derrickkwa.com Derrick Kwa

    No problem, =). Glad you asked the question, it was a really good discussion.

  • http://derrickkwa.com Derrick Kwa

    Yeah, definitely. To quote Cory Doctorow, “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” Yes, great content is important, but the people and interactions are more important. And I agree, offline activity is just as important, which is part of why we brought the Social Media Breakfast to Singapore. It's about relationships, more than anything.

  • http://coolinsights.blogspot.com Walter

    Right on! I think building communities is often the poor second cousin to developing great content, which is sad because of its importance. For me, I feel that the offline activity is definitely just as important than the online correspondences, and could in fact strengthen relationships forged through blogs, forums, emails and IMs.

  • http://countingtheodds.com Derrick Kwa

    No problem, =). Glad you asked the question, it was a really good discussion.

  • http://countingtheodds.com Derrick Kwa

    Yeah, definitely. To quote Cory Doctorow, “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” Yes, great content is important, but the people and interactions are more important. And I agree, offline activity is just as important, which is part of why we brought the Social Media Breakfast to Singapore. It's about relationships, more than anything.

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