I am part of a planning committee for a Scholarship Fund and part of my role is to create an online community for the Fund to serve as a place for people to connect and learn about our fundraising efforts. Starting any community follows a similar set of steps, so I thought I would be the best candidate for the job. The deadline quickly snuck up on me, so while I had intended to use a fairly comprehensive open social platform, I instead decided to simply create a group on Facebook.

Friendly Revelation

As I got into it, I quickly realized the power of using open social tools to create a sense of community and awareness. While Facebook leaves a lot to be desired in terms of customization and control, it has some really great advantages, specifically access and familiarity. As I was putting together group descriptions and starting to seed the initial discussion content, I was already seeing member requests before I had even launched any notices. It just shows the degree to which people are using social networks and particularly how the instant notifications and activity feeds alert people and compel them to act. This instantly made me think critically about how we as a market research community provider should view other social networks and platforms. They are not enemies - they are friends.

Opportunity Knocks

Too many times, people think it is one the other… either integrate into an existing social network (i.e., Facebook, MySpace) or use a stand alone solution. However, as social networks become more ingrained in our lives, the more opportunity we have to link various communities together to help us get our job done. There will always be distinct advantages to having a presence in multiple community initiatives (e.g. corporate Facebook profiles, marketing driven promotional groups, private research communities) and as more and more companies start to dabble in these various types of communities, the larger our opportunities will become.

Play Nicely

The key to working in the community space in the future will be to understand the unique advantages of all these communities and recognizing when they can play together and when they should play apart. I know there are some environmental issues in play here, specifically the turbulent economic environment, that might urge consolidation of community efforts, but there is so much opportunity in playing nicely together. Community is not a single option. Can’t we all just get along?