Television is the biggest threat to your community. There are also lots of productive things that people can do instead of participating in your online community.
If you want to win the battle of your audience’s time, don’t focus upon content. Television, books and other media will always win that battle. Focus on the psychological highs of participating in a community. Emphasize the aspects that television can’t offer. These include:
- Real-time interaction with people.
- An opportunity to have power and feel important within a group.
- Working with others to achieve a goal/mission.
- A place to belong and be appreciated for your knowledge/passion/abilities/beliefs.
Compete where television can’t. Launch activities and stimulate discussions to increase the number of real-time interactions. Offer members opportunities to gain power within the group, set common goals and foster interactions. Encourage members to share their best advice and recommendations.
Here's a question worth asking: is your community, at heart, a waste of time? If you convince people to spend more of their hours there, what's the end result for their overall well-being? Society?
The cognitive surplus that Seth Godin mentions in his post (linked above) is mightily sapped by all of the myriad time-wasting apps that have exploded on online communities like Facebook. People can quickly become addicted to gathering meaningless points under all kinds of guises... and they spend less time with their real-life friends and family, less time actually connecting with old friends online in any meaningful way, and less time launching innovative spare-time projects.
There's money to be made from them, even as their quality of life suffers... and that's enough for a lot of developers. Is it enough for you?
It's worth thinking about.
Posted by: Rob W. | Saturday, 20 March 2010 at 21:35
qqerw
Posted by: دردشة الخليج | Friday, 16 April 2010 at 09:54