Posts Tagged ‘Communities’

Orkut, that oft-forgotten social network owned and operated by Google, is still a huge deal in India and Brazil.  The network never caught on here, but the website has 66 million active users around the world, with 59% of its users in Brazil and 27% in India.  That’s a lot of social networking.  The social [...]

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

This new offering from Lunch.com makes the company’s review community functionality available to sites at no charge. Will the promise of more engagement and exposure – along with revenue potential – temp you to use the Lunch Network?

When trying to determine what to do for your online community, ask yourself what you would do if the same thing happened off-line. Today while speaking at the Boomer Business Summit, we listened to a lot of people ask about managing their online communities. Some were large and others were small but they all had similar questions about how to handle various things happening in their community. One individual asked about highlighting individuals in the community and the rules about reposting their articles on the site.

To the person who asked about highlighting community members and their articles, the solution was simple: ask them for permission. After a series of questions I finally realized that if these people only asked themselves how they would handle a similar issue off of the internet they could easily find a solution. Those that explore online communication as some sort of foreign territory will fail at communicating effectively.

The reality is that the rules for success that apply online are the same ones that exist offline. The only difference is that online, things have become more transparent and your intentions will become more obvious. As Gary Vaynerchuk emphasized yesterday, good people will succeed in this digital world.

So to reiterate my point, when you come across an issue that you need a solution for, first ask yourself how you would handle this issue off line. The same rules apply. That’s the golden rule. Do you agree? Do you think things should be handled differently online?