Blog: Succesful Social Community

 Successful Social Community

Facebook is the social community I use the most so I will speak to it in terms of a succesful social community. Since brands utilize relationships in social communities in order to expand their reach, it is the amount of and type of sharing, socializing and conversation occurring on a platform that they are interested in understanding to get a huge return on their investment.

In my experience, the critical factors that Facebook has, that make it a successful social community, is obviously, as stated above, the role and quality of relationship potential and their formation and continuation. In my personal experience, and note that I am 40, so can only really speak to my specific demographic, I use Facebook to write all my friends. It plays the role that email used to play and particularly because it allows for a visual information element to make people feel more connected to others, as well as a view into what they are sharing, liking and commenting on. I can tell who is engaged with me, who is interested in what i'm doing based on their responses to my posts. As well, I can see if someone has read my messages and not responded, not read them, but been online and are aware of them choosing not to read them, or simply if they are not online at all. That adds another element, more awareness of people's real life comings and goings, and a window perhaps into both their character and social media habbits and also, maybe, a window into their feelings about me (ie. how much I actually matter to them vs. maybe they're just busy). Based on my behaviors, I don't write back to people right away if I dont value the relationship that much. So interesting things happen through messenger in terms of the forming of closer bonds or the creation of conflicts within relationship. This isn't bad actually because it probably helps brands to understand the character of the targets (nodes, us) so that information is probably helpful too in targeted advertising.

Facebook is an enourmas tent for social community so I'll speak to perhaps the community of astrolgers that I am involved with. I cannot say that they (groups) are all successful per se, in the sense that there are not obvious excessive close emotional ties and people sometimes are rude. However, it is successful in that the groups expand and continue and people share and respond, as well as stay, and i'm sure some relationships are formed, I have connected with two other women who share my sun sign, rising sign and moon sighn (they are called the big three, and mine are virgo, pisces and aquarius.)

 

The community is full of people who are all passionate about one thing. People are there to learn and to share their own knowledge. There are very few trolls because it's not a contreversial or political community. The only negative thing that happens as i said, which probably harms the community slightly is that more experienced astrologers tend to be rude to inexperienced ones who post charts and ask for advice. They tell them to go read a book which I think runs counter to the whole point of it. Teaching is helpful in learning!!! Everytime you share knowledge you learn a little bit more yourself. 

Because of the topic, the age group in this community is older and so there is a sense of life experince, allowing more identification with the group. On the topic of degree of openness, it's quite interesting, it is VERY open and that is because of the topic, the specialization. Astrology deals with human relationships, and our own lives and relationship to ourselves. So people tend to share charts and when they do they share their stories. It is interesting and it can really spark the need to respond if one has common chart factors and/or experiences. 

I think the succes of Facebook and in particular my favorite community on it, astrology, is due to it's ability to create communities that center around specializations, and allow for one to identify with the group. The openness that is possible and common, and the sharing factor, so much information is shared, and so much communication happens, in my case mostly in private messages, but not only. Since sharing and interaction are so important in succesful social community, Facebook hits the mark. Obviously.