Community Only Means Something If You Keep It Warm

A problem I faced the last 2 years was never fully joining any one community as my focus was too split and I was moving into too many directions. 

My meme/theme for this year has been to pair it down and focus. I’m starting to interact more with others versus being a wallflower. It’s definitely helped.

I’m finding that in the social media sphere, relationships can cool quite fast… so it’s important to keep the momentum, and keep them warm, as you say.

. I hate when I double post :(

My personal experience with online community building to-date is that it responds best to strong leadership. Too much consensus seeking tends to bloat it out, erode the buzz and infect it with a generic, me-too feel.

Chris, 

I wonder who took that picture. I have seen how you keep many relationships going and are always there for many others more than I personally could handle. 

I guess so many people confuse the tool for resolving the problem and then they end up blaming the tool because it did not perform as they would like. 

Keeping everything warm is part of the deal and you have been a good example to follow so I can keep my fire going. 

thanks Chris. This is beautifully written and well stated. The tools themselves don’t build communities, it’s the work, the Doing, that establishes and builds communities. The tools are simply platforms that make it a little bit easier. This is a phenomenal post and a great reminder that it does take work. I come across folks all too often that think since I’m on LinkedIn I should be able to find work and/or prospects. Or since I made a Facebook post I am engaging. No, it’s you reaching out caring about your relationship.

Excellent! Thanks Chris.
@EricUngs

Chris-

this is a good post, and more important than most people will understand.  I talk about this subject, and get a lot of nodding heads, but then people go back to forgetting to “Choose People”.  They assume meeting someone once makes them part of their network.  Nope, – meeting someone once makes them someone you have met once.  There is a huge difference between a brief encounter and the cultivation of a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship.  

To create community people must “own the follow up”.  Too many do not have “Follow Through DNA”, so you must take charge if you want to create a connection.

You said “Always keep your circle open, so that you can grow, and invite others into the experience. Closed circles only grow smaller.”  THIS IS THE PART EVERYONE SHOULD PRINT AND CARRY IN THEIR WALLET!!!!

I see lots of people with a good level of success close their doors and claim their is not room for more people.  Like love, there is always room for more people in your life if relationships are a priority.

Nothing is so dissonant to me than the idea of an ‘Online Community’.  How does the screen and keyboard replete with all the ‘richness’ of multimedia  begin to replace the actual interaction of humanity face to face?  The Internet is a massive abstraction, a place where a person can then be anyone they choose to be.  Unreal.  

So many people really act like Google+, Facebook and Twitter is the means to the end.  

I’m no Luddite, I see the impact, benefits and negative aspects of it all – including Social Media, but I  believe that it is way over-subscribed as a massive tool of change, however you may describe it.  It is just a part of it.  Like a newspaper once was.Libya is a prime example, as is Egypt the rest of the ‘Arab Spring’.  And another one is brewing – Occupy Wall Street.  Really, the force, the real power is not in the medium, but in the people participating – physically, in person.  Those who show up – they are the real community, not the majority sitting in the bit-stream.  It is not a community until the flesh and blood come together – physically.  

You don’t need a blog, Twitter, Facebook or what ever massive time waster and resource sucker comes up next – Paul Revere did it with a horse, but that community had already come together, had it not?  Pamphlets, local meeting places and face to face talk built the community Mr Revere could then powerfully tap.In my view, Social Media is a fine tool to to start an avalanche, but with so many kicking their personal pebbles down the slope, it has become a highly fragmented world.  Everyone has a megaphone and is shouting into the streets.  It gets to be a lot of noise, and quite exhausting.

Books will be written condemning our excess in this regard. 

My interest in communities is quite strong.  I see it as merely a tool business can use.  I see it as a way for sharing.  I do not see it as a way to develop close human relationships.  Personal presence is required.  It is not a way to replace the ‘last mile’ in human interaction: the face to face exchange that allows us to engage everything we are. Human.  We require it.Amazon is a good example of what I am talking about.  I’ve been a customer for a long time.  I’ve bought all kinds of things online since they got started.  What cemented them in place for me was the human touch.  Twice I’ve had problems.  Twice I spoke directly with a person – on the telephone – and that is where they cemented me in as a customer.  I buy from them not because it is cheaper, it often is not, I buy from them because the people at Amazon are who they are.  I could get a lot of the things I buy there right across the street, but I choose Amazon because of the personal interaction that was so nice.  
And they could have never done what they did in an email or Twitter for me.Then Mr Bezo’s called me “Customer”. Yeah, that irritated me too.  How stupid.  How inhuman. That kind of thing happens when your window on your customer is a glowing monitor.  They fail to have depth and breadth.  They become a target.   Online Communities? Sure.  Go for it.  But ultimately, the winner will have his humanity up front and ready. So brush your teeth and comb your hair, it matters!

For business people, try this on for size: When someone buys a competitor product, find out why.  Your sales team will not actually know why, and will report something stupefying like ‘price’ or ‘relationship’.  Whatever.  

Call the lost prospect.  Don’t survey them. Tell him you want to chat – no selling. Tell him you’ve failed, and you would like to hear the truth of why.  Better yet, take them to lunch. What you’ll learn is a secret I will not share.  You’ve got to dig that treasure up for yourself.  

You cannot do this kind of deeply satisfying work in the bitstream.

But I type over much.  Thanks for sharing your work.  It makes me think – and more importantly act with my fellow humans.  And that is the real point – right?