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Online Communities - are they for me?



It is interesting to explore online communities or groups. I have always been wary about joining such groups, afraid of the unknown. Beyond my own little circle of friends, I have not participated in any online discussions. This week I had to look for a group that I could genuinely stand to gain from and to which I could contribute.

At first I tried the groups on LinkedIn (another first for me this week) and I did put in requests to join two groups, one of which is a group for alumni of the university I graduated from. As of this time, I have not heard back from the administrators of the groups. So I tried to go around the instruction to join public groups versus closed ones - did not get me very far...yet. Maybe they will when they do respond to me.

For purposes of compliance with SMM class requirement, I just jumped in and joined two very different groups: the first was Spark People, an online community that I have actually been following for a while, but mostly as a spectator and not as a participant. The other message board I joined was Ancestry.com. While I had my reservations, I did keep in mind the instruction to look for groups which interested me and from which I could stand to gain something. It took a conscious decision to step out of my comfort zone to throw out something to people I do not know, but looking at the exchanges on these boards, it appears that there is genuine exchange of views at least, even support for each other, and maybe answers to questions that have not been asked all this time. I know that if I keep at it, I will learn a lot from the community members and hopefully share a few thoughts myself, even get an answer to a question that nobody could provide me until now.

I can see now how and why message boards and chat groups can be very useful for social media marketing. It is not difficult to insert yourself into an ongoing conversation, especially if you have genuine interests and intentions. There is much to be learned and a lot of room to share new information - because somebody, somewhere is looking for information you and I can provide. And this can include marketing blurbs.

The experience was both enlightening and uncomfortable. I am willing to give it a go and see where it take me.

Comments

  1. Anne MaFebruary 26, 2018 at 2:30 AM

    Hello Genevieve,
    I totally agree with you, it demands a bit of courage to go out of our comfort zone and start using these groups we're not familiar with. But I think it can always bring us some benefit to be a part of a group: we can see this as acquiring the knowledge we'd read on a book by someone posting a comment under a post. Having access to free information by these groups are a good way of gathering people focusing on a main idea and expanding the community.

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  2. Mira HuMarch 13, 2018 at 1:50 AM

    Hi!

    The two communities you chose to join were very interesting and different. Its very true that its not difficult to insert yourself into a conversation online. All you need to do is to submit a comment! However, it is true that it can be quite uncomfortable to do so because online, once you do so, it is permanent.

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