Rebecca Krause-Hardie

Online Group Cultivation - Search and Conversations

Finding Groups - Finding Stuff

I read this great post (as usual) today from Chris Brogan about Yahoo Groups vs Google Groups.  His point was that if you were looking in one of these sites for a group, that the search functionality of the Google Groups was vastly superior to the Yahoo functionality. When I did a little test of the search I found myself in complete agreement.

This really got me thinking about how critical search functionality is - it  doesn't matter how good something is if you can't find it.  Search results that give me back 20 (or 200) pages of results that I then have to swim through is not very effective.

So why is this so interesting?  Well because I suspect that finding the thing we are looking for is probably the single most difficult thing to do on the web and within our websites.  Welcome SEO.  But what else can we do?

How can we help our audiences find what they are looking for?

How can we optimize our content so it's easier to navigate through?

Conversations

I read Beth's Blog post about

Giving and Receiving Compliments,

and one of the things that caught my eye was:

"Maybe we're getting stuck in the encounter stage.   As  Liz notes in the comments of this post, "All I know is that more time than ever is spent saying “hello,” and less time is spent actually talking."   So, how do you resist the fast friends or friend collecting and get to know people when you don't have huge amounts of time?"

I think this whole discussion had been from perspective of social networking sites where  we busily connect to people in a superficial way, and then that's the end of it.

What's so interesting about this question to me is that in the groups and blog posts that are around specific issues or topics the opposite thing happens.  We jump right in with our ideas and opinions and responses without necessarily really knowing the others in the groups.  Depending on the nature of the group we might get really personal fast, and then over time we really come to know and understand each other. 

It makes me realize the importance of content and the value of  topics of mutual interest to get the conversations started.  I guess that's pretty obvious now that I think about it.

Flicker Photo Holmes gregwake
Flicker Photo Conversation kool_skatkat 

Being an interesting Blogger

Blogging for Community Building
One of the key tools that people use for online community building is blogging. We have this idea that if we build a blog that people will come flocking to our doors to buy tickets and attend performances.  If only it were that simple.

Being an Interested Blogger
I was reading a post today from Problogger about how to be an interesting blogger. The key take away for me in that post was about being interested in what you writing about and what your readers are interested in.  Being interested in your readers.  Are we writing because we love it, or because we are really intrigued with something?

Who is Your Blog Audience?

Audience in the KKL
Originally uploaded by Archangeli

Chris Brogan talks about this in his post today, with the really good point that we need to be clear about who our audience is and stay focused on writing about what they want to hear about.

Who is My Audience?
Well that really got me thinking.  Who am I writing for?  I'm really interested in knowing about how people in the arts are using social media tools.  What works, what doesn't. What can we learn from others using social media? I've mostly been interviewing people in this process.  But I think I need to branch out and try other things as well. I think my audience is people interested in the same things.

What are you looking for?  What interests you?