Being A Local In Virtual Space

July 21, 2009  | 

On Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7877609@N06/2813678955/Let’s say you’ve recently moved to a new city. You’ve got a brand new apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood and your friends and family are now hundreds of miles away.

A few weeks in, the rush of everything being new subsides and you start to feel lonely. No problem, you think. You make friends easily. It’s only a matter of time before you’ve got a bunch of great folks actively calling you to join them to hang out, right? All you have to do is muster the courage to get out of the house and meet people. The only question is, where do you go?

Assuming your goal is to meet people you’d actually want to get to know and build lasting relationships with, would you start by heading straight to the biggest, loudest night club in the city? Or would you head down to the neighborhood bar, cafe or coffee shop, where your neighbors were all hanging out after work? Given the choice between the two, my bet is that you’d chose the latter. So would I.

Starting a blog and being social online for the first time can feel a lot like a move to a new city. It’s lonely at the beginning and it takes a while to build a reputation and develop relationships with people who you like and respect, and who are genuinely interested in you and your content.

How you go about developing relationships online should closely mirror the way that you do it offline. You’ve got to go to a place where people share your passions and interests,  introduce yourself and start a discussion. When deciding where to go, try to pick places the same way that you’d pick a place to hang out offline. Virtual spaces have distinct personalities and atmospheres all their own that reflect the collection of personalities of the community. Huge blogs like TechCrunch and Gizmodo will be just like a massive nightclub – tons of noise and lots of superficial interaction. On the other hand, smaller communities and personal blogs will feel more like a local watering hole – and with fewer people and less noise, you’re more likely to engage in higher quality discussions and build meaningful relationships quickly. If you find one of these spots where you meet people you like that feels like it’s got your kindof  vibe, devote some time to visiting frequently and sticking around and interacting a lot when you do. You’ll find you have a lot more fun, build better relationships, and before long, it’ll be a spot where everybody knows your name.

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  • Good question, Didier. First and foremost, it's important to find places where the posts and discussion are focused and targeted on topics that you're passionate about. The tighter and more focused the niche, the better. Once you find one, surf around some of the most recent posts - and focus your analysis on the comments section - see if the post author is present and active in the comments, and assess what the quality of the discussion is like. If you're starting your search online, alltop.com is a great place to find mid to large sized communities for any given topic. I also like to check out my favorite bloggers' blogrolls (social vetting). I would also recommend going to Meetup.com and finding groups you're interested in that run social events in your local area. The all-time best way to start good conversations is to meet people face to face in the context of the real-life communities they are a part of and then take those conversations online (many of these people have blogs and are active on Twitter etc). Just finding a few people you connect with this way can start you on the right path (ask them where they hang out online, what their favorite blogs are etc...and then join them in discussions across the web).

    Hope this helps...
  • The question is also how do you identify those local spaces ?

    The ones that will offer a friendly place for you to plant your new roots ...
  • What a great analogy.

    I think finding one's community in the virtual world is challenging and people become discouraged and leave too quickly. It’s easy in Facebook because you invite established friends to friend you. In Twitter, people get disheartened quickly and reject it as a social space for community or relationships. They have difficulty finding like-minded people at first.

    When I move to a new community, I start by observing those around me. I observing new coworkers, neighbors, people in a local restaurant and those in local stores and shops. Then, I start to reach out and give. Give my time, my voice in greetings, my smile, my skills, my talents, my energy. I learned early in my life that if I will reach out to others and give, I’m less focused on being alone or in a new community.

    It’s the same with a virtual community. If I give feedback or comments on blogs, offer praise and thanks to others for sharing information, and give links to posts I find I don’t feel so alone. People genuinely appreciate sincerity and acceptance.

    Steffan, you’re a great example of a giver, a relationship builder and someone who adds extra capacity to others in your network. I can say that my life, my thinking, my perspective is significantly better because you’re in my virtual community. Thanks for a great post, once again.
  • I think you'd agree that on the web, we are perpetually joining and leaving communities. Movement between virtual communities is rapid and fluid, so the skills and behaviors you're describing are even more important. Focus on others, as you've pointed out (although it's counter intuitive) is the name of the game. You're another one who really walks the talk (online as well as off, from what I can tell from your most recent blog posts!) and I've been learning from you too. Thanks again for stopping by. I always appreciate having you in the discussion.
  • One more thought on Twitter vs. Facebook - you've accurately pointed out the difference between "bringing your existing network online" (i.e. Facebook) and "creating a new network of relationships" (i.e. Twitter). The former is easy because you're bringing existing relationships into a new medium. People get frustrated with Twitter because it's both a new medium and they have to create new relationships. People tend to reject it too quickly for that reason because they don't know how to use the host of tools that ride on top of the API that make it truly valuable (social graph analysis, search etc). Interestingly, a recent study showed that only 5% of the Twitter community create over 75% of the content, with the top 1% creating the majority of that 75% - a staggering figure. I can almost guarantee that that 5% is the group of people who really know how to use the platform to get a lot out of it and who are out there rapidly creating connections and milking the power of the social graph. The rest are likely just using the platform at it's most basic level.
  • Interesting post; very valid thinking. The web (blogging especially) has grown to such an extent that one must concentrate on a specific niche, and grow their reputation from the ground up.

  • Max - I agree. Focusing on spending time niche sites is a great strategy for building reputation from the ground up.
  • "Let’s say you’ve recently moved to a new city. (check) You’ve got a brand new apartment (check) in an unfamiliar neighborhood (check) and your friends and family are now hundreds of miles away. (check)" :) You got my attention...

    This is one of the strongest points regarding the social web that you've made on this blog. Well done. Also, you actually walk the walk. Well done again.

    When you expressed this "strategy" a few weeks back I've really stayed away from the 'night club' blogs and have visited intelligent individual contributor blogs (yes, you made the cut) and it's been a much better blog reading experience. I've had great conversations recently, mostly all stemming from this type of blog.

    I'd love to hear how others have employed this strategy and how it's worked out.
  • You know, I'm so glad we had that discussion a few weeks ago. I've also been staying away from the big blogs for the past few weeks and focusing my attention back on blogs of friends and my favorite smaller niche sites etc. I've been enjoying blogging so much more ever since making that switch, and the engagement on my own blog has increased as a direct result (which I didn't expect). It's funny how quickly you can get sucked into giving the major outlets your time and attention, and neglect the blogs of your friends - we were both admittedly guilty of that. The lesson here, I think, is that spreading yourself thin across many superficial, noisy communities is no where near as powerful as focus and concentration on a core of friends. A core of 10-20 people who read your stuff constantly and share it when they do has a powerful beacon-blast effect when you post (so long as the content is high value). Especially with social tools like Twitter - 10 people who all have 2000+ followers regularly sharing your content is huge. This is a strong reminder of why Kevin Kelly's "1000 true fans" argument is so true.
  • Word.
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