The Importance of Seeds

August 20, 2008

When looking at content marketing projects like Digital Nomads, if you get there early, it’s going to look like a bunch of posts by people at Dell. But that’s okay. It’s Dell’s project, and they hope that it grows into something that others will find valuable and build around. They’re planting seeds.

All content projects grow that way. The people who create the project (or those who eventually own the project) must start somewhere with putting something there. Otherwise, it looks horribly empty and barren. If you visit a farm, you don’t want to see a big stretch of brown soil. You want to see lush patches of greenery, promising the harvest that will come next. The same is true of a platform built for content and conversations.

When starting Project Dogfood, I set up several conversation threads, and started the first questions in all of them. I wrote three different topics for each thread, with the hope that people would join up, get involved, and have a conversation. And it worked.

Right now, the project is still heavily tended and seeded by me as community manager. But over time, some of those seeds will take root, will grow, and will become whole, rich crops of delicious information for us to tend, harvest, and celebrate.

Building something from content requires seeds.

What are you doing to help?

Photo credit, starmist1

Article

communitydevelopment, content, contentmarketing, socialmedia

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Comments

Comment by Tim on August 20, 2008 @ 2:44 pm

I think your point is at the heart of any successful communication project. The moniker of “build it and they will come” has never been useful to promote the reason to undertake a communication project. From the simple brochure ware site to something more mammoth - it’s always the content that is the driving force. Good design, efficient project management and crossing the T’s will push it past the rest in areas of stickiness. BUT, ultimately it comes down to imparting knowledge, vision and excitement.

Comment by Sabina Podjed on August 20, 2008 @ 2:48 pm

Thanx for the post. We are doing the same on our beta site. Glad I’ve got a confirmation that we are on the right path.

Comment by John Carson on August 20, 2008 @ 3:02 pm

I set up a social network at the weekend for people who need help: Give hope, not a poke!

I work in this space in my day job, and wanted to do something on the side to balance the good social media karma that others have given me lately.

So far, it’s … er, me … and a friend as members. But I didn’t spend $20 on a hard-earned domain name or $5 on a Ning forwarding option for nothing, dagnammit!

I posted my first legitimate good cause today — giving Toronto’s stolen bikes to the needy — so, as Chris says, the seeds have been planted. And it feels great!

Cheers,
John.

Comment by Star Aasved on August 20, 2008 @ 3:26 pm

The gardening metaphor is well-suited; for us to be able to reap the expected harvest from community, we must start with the humble and small seed. The seeds of inspiring content, on a excellently designed site, well-tended by community management and team members, result in bumper crop of value for the client/company. This is a message that must be delivered to that company looking to dive into the world of social media.

Comment by Webconomist on August 20, 2008 @ 3:56 pm

Great analogy, maybe that’s what it is in Social Media; seeds who inspire gardeners to help the blossoms, who plant other seeds themselves. Soon there is a flower bed growing, eventually a tree takes root, which turns into woods, then to a forest and a whole healthy ecosystem.

Perhaps that is the seed for a new economic model that brings wealth through knowledge and money? Thunking out loud.

Comment by Darek on August 20, 2008 @ 6:16 pm

Chris, I think you’re touching on one of the biggest problems of social media in the times of abundance.

Social networking sites are only then useful when they have an active community. You can create such a community in several ways:
- Find an unfulfilled need and make it your niche (think of Stackoverflow.com)
- Seed and tend, as described in your post
- Pay (like Yelp paying to reviewers)
- …

Can you share other ways for a new community to gain critical mass that you know from experience?

Comment by Ed Nicholson on August 21, 2008 @ 9:28 am

Chris
This is a great metaphor that works on a lot of different levels. As an experienced gardener, I can tell you one rarely gets it right the first time. You overwater/underwater, plant too close, over/under-fertilize. But over time, if you keep at it, you reap a crop.
Thanks for the good gardening advice you provide.

Comment by Scott Dodds on August 21, 2008 @ 2:32 pm

Chris,
I think seeding content is a good idea for sites where content is the key motivation for visitors, like blogs or wikis, but I think that this can be misleading for other kinds of social media. The key driver for my visiting a forum, for example, is not that my question has already been answered (although that is useful), but that there are people there who can answer it. Content in that case is just one piece of evidence of the activity the visitor is really looking for.

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