From the dregs of drafts… I don’t think the advice has really changed and the relevance of the question may even be more than in 2008 when Beth Kanter blogged this. The very fabric of communities and the ideal of community is quite frayed since then.
Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: WeAreMedia Module 5: Nancy White Suggests Asking “Do You Really Need A Community?”
Nancy is making a distinction between “traditional” online communities where there are relationships between people in the community and people connecting together around specific interest area or a Tribe. This module has originally put these together under one definition of “community” with the latter being “loosely-coupled” communities. But thinking we need to re-think this a bit. Off to ponder “Are You in the Tribe?”Maybe the focus on this module should be more “engagement” strategies – and the ways you can do this. If you have a group of people that you don’t want to necessarily interact with one another, but want them to create content — you’d still need an engagement strategy to encourage participation. It would, definitely, as Nancy suggests, impact where and how you might do this.
What do you think?