Building a Strong Community

According to Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image and author of Six Pixels of Separation, Participation and Leadership go hand and hand, and in order to build a strong community, a strong online community you must take a leadership role.

Mitch’s list of things you can do to assist in building a strong community.

* Add your comments and insights to any blog
* Favourite a Technorati blog – www.technorati.com
* Mentioning someone, use their full name and credentials
* Connect on LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com
* Write up recommendations for someone you know
* Add business associates on Facebook
* Review a review for podcasts in iTunes
* Subscribe to blogs with clients or friends
* Speak at industry associations
* Share, share what you doing

In many ways this is about leadership, get out there and do something, everyone in this new space is talking about the same things, sharing, building a community, building trust, and getting started. In his book, I guess Mitch says it best, “This is all about sharing, connecting, and conversations.”

Leadership does equal participation, so, make a commitment to yourself, its time to get started, its time to get involved, get engaged and get moving, otherwise, you and your organization will be left behind.

I guess in simpler terms, its lead, follow or get out of the way.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, May 2010