Tag Archives: media

How To Build Communities in the Networked Age

We live in a time where innovation and developments in technology are radically changing the way we connect, both online and offline. The rules that define the way in which we are creating, building and participating in online communities are being drastically rewritten.

So here’s a ‘how to’ guide for building your own online community in our age of network abundance.

The first step: Learn the difference between audience and community. An audience is one-way, with few opportunities for participation. It’s a passive system based on exposure to information without much else. Community is all about an immersive, two-way, dynamic conversation where interaction is prized above all. A good community builder will know that you have to talk with, not at, your community.

Secondly, it all starts with great content. The online ecosystem affords us the opportunity to share information and knowledge with thousands of people across the globe. So create content that is educational, inspiring and/or entertaining. Design your content to be easily sharable and attention-grabbing. Ensure it is relevant, and valuable.

Weave your own unique voice + personality into your content so that your community can experience authentic, human connection. After all, that’s what it’s all about. Use well-placed humour. Add critique and analysis to ongoing discussions. Be active. Ask questions, answer questions. But keep your content true to you.

online_communities

Image via flickr user .mw under CC licence BY-NC-ND 2.0

Embrace multimedia and test new ways of interaction. Social networking platforms are constantly evolving, with new models appearing all the time. Stay agile: mix your mediums and experiment. Find what feels right for you and your community. Take chances. Reward your risks. Just remember that consistency is key – keep the momentum going by developing a regular posting schedule.

Think of your community members as advocates, rather than numbers. The size of your community is not the defining factor or metric of success: it’s about depth and quality of engagement. Each individual in your community offers a unique occasion for your brand to spread further into new networks.

Go global. Try not to marginalise your content by making it too geographically specific. Send out your feelers all over the world and see how far you can reach. Just remember to track your outputs. Your data will reveal patterns and tell you stories, so make sure you are listening.

Think about whether you want to be a community creator or a community facilitator. If the community you want to create already exists, you’re too late to the party. Either change tact, or jump on board to help the existing movement get to a better place. Positively participate and add value without trying to reinvent the wheel. Most importantly, don’t try to piggyback your way through by merely associating with an established community. Make your impact felt, and use your influence for good.

communities already exist

Image via flickr user Will Lion under CC license BY-NC-ND 2.0

Realise that your online community has got to spread offline at some point. So create and leverage events which allow individuals to meet and network with each other face-to-face. There are some incredibly exciting opportunities for this kind of community-building, such as the British organisation Hiive, which is a networking site for the creative industries where you can join ‘swarms’ of people who share your interests and skill sets. David Garland, a self-confessed ‘mediapreneur’, says:

While a virtual handshake is amazing, nothing quite replaces a real life one”

Provide opportunities for your community members to feel empowered and legitimised. Direct interaction is an excellent example of this, and this is often found in the comments section of blogs and social media posts. Take time to get to know your users, and if there is a particularly engaged member, offer them a chance to participate directly (such as in a guest blog post or similar). User generated content is an amazing bridge between an organisation and a community.

Don’t try to own or control your community. Realise that they have as much agency as you do. On each end of the screen, you are both humans. Communities with this kind of ‘flat’ structure and lack of hierarchy are the ones which blossom the most. They enable relationships of trust and meaningful interactions. As British YouTuber Dodie Clark says:

Treat your followers as your friends, and hopefully they’ll do the same to you.”

Emily Malone is a third-year communications student who is a lover of the digital sphere. You can follow her recent ramblings on Twitter: @_EmilyMalone_

Symposium 05: Network Literacy and Hypertext

Leftover Symposium 04 questions:

  1. Should network literacy be focused on in earlier education?

    • Can it be taught formally? 
      • Yes absolutely, and it should be. Some parts of it are already in practice, but not enough. Arduino is a service which is being used in school to teach children about how to make computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than the average desktop computer.
      • To some extent, you graduate from school being quite disempowered from networks because things have consistently been gatekept for you.
    • What do you think the solution is? Should we let kids teach themselves through doing?
      • Adrian believes the only way you ever learn anything is through doing, and I agree with him. I have, and always will be, a kinaesthetic learner.
      • Kids teach themselves how to do things. The issue is facilitating this in a way that they learn the how and why of things instead of the didactic ‘do this’ and ‘do that’.
      • School systems often take out the ability to think critically, as the architecture of school education is all tailored towards passing exams and getting good scores on essays and projects. You get trained to think that bell curves are natural order, but really they’re an educational ideology/construction. It’s been shown that information retention rates drop off exponentially after this type of learning, so it’s not necessarily a valuable method.

“We unlearn how to ask good questions. Problem with that in an age of distributed expertise, is that if you can’t ask good questions, you can’t find good answers. That’s the world we’re going into. Things are not black and white, it’s very grey and the skills you need to navigate this world are different.” – Adrian Miles

Symposium 05 questions:

  1. How is hypertext relevant to us as media practitioners?

    • Adrian says, how is it not? We deal with structures like that on almost all of our internet usage – such as YouTube (clicking from one video to another), Buzzfeed, news websites, Twitter, etc.
    • Elliott tells us of dual screening mentality which is a rising concern in the media industries, which says: ‘okay, we get your idea, but what’s the second screen going to be showing?’ As in, how are you going to utilise the network affordances by doing more? i.e. online webisodes, podcasts, building communities online, etc. Heritage media are doing this, but only slowly. They use it to shore up their existing model, as opposed to drastically changing it. They think ‘more is better’.
    • There’s a big gap, an opening to step in and properly use non-linear structures in storytelling. Adrian thinks that this is a waste that this isn’t working yet.
    • When moving into digital, content became highly granular (small chunks), and it becomes about the relationship between each other. Temporary relationships. This is how things get meaning, with the infinite multiple relationships between the parts. How we make stuff then had to change, because the end now doesn’t matter. And now the reader/audience power dynamic changes as well. Hypertext realised this.

  2. What predictions about network literacy should we be aware of?

    • Those who are network literate will engage with technology and come out on top better.
    • Media industries are changing drastically. However, history is not linear so we don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a series of accidents.
    • Things to be aware of:
      • Physicality of the network – servers, infrastructure
      • Legal battles which may restrict or create affordances
      • Political battles, legislation, copyright.

  3. What are the consequences of being network illiterate?

    • You will have a reduced capacity to engage or develop appropriate strategies to engage.
    • Your only ability to understand will be through someone else – you will be dependent on them telling you what it means.  Think about what could this mean for creativity; corruption?