community site

Setting Up a Community Site: #2 Purpose

July 17, 2008 By Des Walsh

In my previous post in this series on setting up a community site, I summarized the concept of the site I am working on, using the WordFrame platform, as being focused on social media in the geo-political region which includes China, South East Asia and Australasia. The name – Social Media East.

This post is about clarifying the purpose of the site.

The key distinction: the concept is what the site is about, the purpose is what it is for, or what it is trying to achieve.

As with the previous post, this one will be somewhat discursive: rather than simply stating the purpose I have decided to focus on, I explain the thought process that led me there, sharing a couple of the twists, turns and backflips along the way.

That’s not out of any particular fascination with my own thought processes: it’s because I recognize that ideas about the purpose of a site do not always spring, fully formed, from the mind of the site initiator. My sharing the process is intended as an encouragement to others to play around with your initial ideas and not necessarily settle on the first idea that pops up.

Before setting up a community site, other than for, say, an established association or clearly defined, “ready to act” community of interest, It will generally be a good idea, even essential, to do some market research to see what sort of site might be attractive to the people you want to visit the site and participate.

In other words, is there a community in place likely to use the site, or is there evidence that a community can readily be built around the site?

My reading suggests that the process is more likely to be successful when there is a community already in place than if you have to seek to build a community.

But in the case of the planned Social Media East site I am pressing ahead without doing a formal market research exercise. That’s not because I think I have nothing to learn – far from it.

It’s because:

there is clearly a conversation going on already about social media and a sufficient number of people involved to make that a significant conversation
business is switched on enough to the concept of social media to make it a subject worth discussing in a business context
my perception is that the conversation about social media in the USA, Canada and Europe – i.e. “the West” – pays only lip service at best to what is happening with blogging and other forms of social media in China and South East Asia – “the East”
as far as I can see, there is not an online site dedicated to the topic as far as this region is concerned (although there is always the possibility that there is a website I haven’t discovered!)

In short, I believe there is an emerging community of people interested in the subject and already discussing it and where a site dedicated to the subject of social media, with an emphasis on this region, could be useful and attractive.

And where do Australia and New Zealand (“Australasia”) fit in that? My view is that we are, as in various areas of geo-politics and culture, to some degree in the middle, a potential bridge if you will, between West and East. We have, still, a predominantly European or Western culture but we are physically and to some degree culturally located in the broader Asian region – and our fortunes are very much bound up with the fortunes of the Asian region. That give us a particular interest and perspective on the issues.

About here is where I should say that, as I thought about the community aspect, I even toyed with defining the purpose of the site as being focused on community, in the sense that, as “community”=”people”, that was a fundamentally more important topic that social media, which are simply tools for the community. This is another aspect, or broader view of community, as distinct from the narrower concept of “the community of people interested in social media”.

But as I thought about that more, and went through a page or three of mind-mapping, I came back to the fact that I really wanted to have a site focused on social media.

Which I is how I came to a degree of clarity about the purpose I have in mind for the site.

The rough mind map with “Community” as the central idea got the flick and I was back to “Social Media”, then “Social Media East” as the central idea.

So here is my statement of the purpose of Social Media East, a statement which I feel is clear enough to enable me to proceed systematically, although I may well tweak or amend it in the light of experience.

The key purpose of the site, Social Media East, is to provide information, content and conversation about social media, with a focus on the region (“East”).

And as the WordFrame platform comes ready-made with social media tools as well as document management tools, the fulfilment of the purpose will be facilitated by inviting others with an interest in the subject to make their own distinctive contributions.

Further, the WordFrame tools for group and sub-group collaboration will allow the provision of resources for particular groups, for instance regional or subject-focused groups, to have their own “space”. So there is scope for sub-community activity within the broader framework.

There is of course the risk that there will not be a sufficient level of interest to make this a dynamic project. I can live with that. At the very least I will have put together some resources which may prove useful to someone, somewhere, some time.

And I will have the practical experience of setting up and managing a WordFrame site and sharing that experience as I go, which can only be a plus in terms of my ability to relate to and help WordFrame customers.

So now, having established the concept and purpose of the site, in the next post in this series I will look at the people who might be interested in the site, whether as readers (including subscribers) or more active participants.

(Map of Southeast Asia courtesy of Wikitravel, Creative Commons licence.)

Filed Under: China, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Web 2.0 Tagged With: Australasia, China, community, community site, Social Media, South East Asia, WordFrame

Setting Up a Community Site: #1 Concept and Name

July 13, 2008 By Des Walsh

This is the first post in my Setting Up a Community Site series, using the WordFrame platform but applying general principles in the process, so the series will hopefully be of interest to a wider group than just those of us using WordFrame.

As well as touching on those general principles, I will also be sharing some of the thought processes I’ve put myself through and some of the techniques, e.g. mind-mapping, I’ve used for that.

Note that these posts will not be of the 5 Basic Steps…. or 7 Key Things… variety. More of a discursive account of, or a chat, if you will, about a process that I am quite happy to acknowledge was in itself somewhat roundabout. If that’s not your cup of tea, don’t say you have not been warned!

Speaking of discursiveness, it was interesting for me to notice at the end of the process that I was essentially back where I had started. The much-quoted verse by T S Eliot came immediately to mind:

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

That’s not to say that the journey was not worth the effort. Far from it. I feel more comfortable with what I have developed because I know I have been up hill and down dale with various other possibilities.

The mind-mapping has been very helpful in that process, especially in helping me see in a visual display what I realise now I did not really want and getting a feel for what I do want to focus on.

The first step has been to establish, from the various possibilities I’ve thought of, just what my purpose is in setting up the site, for whom it is meant to cater, what the focus of the site will be and what kind and range of content I see it as having.

Putting that another way and more succinctly, before I got into other issues, such as the actual name of the site, design and the choice and availability of a domain name, I saw that I needed to define or at least delineate:

purpose
people
focus
content

And in the circular, iterative pattern of thinking I found myself on in this process, I figured that to handle each of those points effectively, I needed first to clarify my basic concept for the site. From that I would establish the site name or title and the related question of a domain name, then go on to the other issues.

Basic Concept and Name

My original concept was to establish a site which would focus on social media in the geo-political region which includes China, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand (the latter two countries often referred to collectively as Australasia).

For a while, as I thought about this concept, I had some misgivings. Key issues were:

how useful and current is the term “social media” (I know some people in the IT world hate the term)?
how useful and current will the term “social media” be, one or two years from now?
is the real, underlying topic I want to focus on more about “community” and/or “communication” than about “social media” as such?
what is the most appropriate term to encompass the geo-political region, Asia, Asia and Australasia, or is there one?
in defining or delineating a region in this way, in relation to a putative community of interest, am I excluding consideration of developments in other parts of the globe, or discouraging interest by potentially interested people whose focus is however not on my part of the world – and if so are those problems or just considerations?

To try and get some clarity on these issues, I first used some mind-mapping software (I use the designed-for-education tool Inspiration), then tried some mind-mapping on paper. This included a session taking “Community” as the key idea for the site.

Then I realised that for me it’s not just “community”, significant as that is. It’s community about social media and the community of people interested in the topic of social media. It’s also about social media with an emphasis and focus on the part of the world where, as an Australian of Irish heritage I live, i.e. in the Asian region, albeit in a country with a predominantly Western cultural and political framework.

What if I said “Asia Pacific”? Well, that’s ok, but the term includes the West Coast of the USA and Canada as well as the countries I am more interested in focusing on for this project. Interesting, perhaps, but a different frame from the one I want to use.

So what’s a term that is going to reference China, South East Asia and Australasia?

What about “East”?

My initial feeling was that while “East” works, obviously, for China and South East Asia, it is a bit of a stretch to include Australia and New Zealand. My next thought was that as a descriptor attached to “Social Media” it is pretty good for my purposes, and not so specific or culturally weighted as to exclude consideration of developments in Australasia.

And of course everywhere is east of somewhere .

OK, so now we have “Social Media East”.

The more I looked at it, thought about it, thought about how I wanted to use it, the more I liked it.

It was focused enough to enable me to build the site I had in mind, incorporate resources I would like to see available in one place and attract interest both from people in the region and people not resident in the region but nevertheless interested in social media developments in the region.

It was general enough to not have a sense of restricting participation and also able to accommodate a shift in emphasis or focus down the track if that looked like being a good thing to do.

As a firm believer in the principle of owning, wherever possible, the top level domain (.com) for any site name, I checked. Bingo! The name socialmediaeast.com was available. Not any longer, as it’s now registered to my company.

What if the domain had not been available? That’s really a topic for a whole blog post, perhaps at the end of this series if there is any sign of anyone being interested in that.

And the currency and use-by timeframe of “social media”? Well, for me and for many people I know and respect, the term is sufficiently descriptive and widely used enough to work for my purposes. As to the use-by date timeframe for the term, I’m not going to get hung up on the idea that what we now call social media might in year or more from now have some other tag.

Worst case scenario? Change the name. But I’ll cross that bridge if it shows up.

So now I have a concept and a name.

In the next post in this series I’ll elaborate on the Purpose of the site.

In the meantime, comments are, as always, welcome. That could include suggestions as to how I could have got to this point more rapidly and efficiently.

Filed Under: Social Media, Social networking, Web 2.0 Tagged With: Asia, Australasia, China, community site, Social Media, WordFrame

Setting Up a Community Site: Series Introduction

July 12, 2008 By Des Walsh

I’m in the process of establishing a new WordFrame site to do with social media and online communities, with a bias towards the Asian and Australasian contexts. I thought it might be useful for others if I were to document the journey, in outline at least. It should also help me, if for no other reason than to give myself some accountability.

Applying the “first things first” principle, this series of posts will look initially at how I have worked through to a basic concept and purpose for the site. To be frank, I haven’t always done that in the past with setting up sites, including blogs.

There have been occasions when I’ve had what I thought was a good idea, checked to see if I could get a .com domain that fitted and then gone ahead, registered the domain and set up the site, only to find down the road a bit that it would have been smarter to think things through before I jumped in.

This time around my aim is to be more systematic.

Basically, I’m putting myself in the shoes of a WordFrame customer and being a learner. I’m pretty confident that in the process I’ll get some things wrong, or at least won’t get right the first time some things that will be a breeze for other folks.

I’m hoping that, by sticking my neck out and sharing the process of setting up the site, I’ll not only be helping some others with the process of think ing through their own projects in setting up online community sites, but also helping to make myself a more effective solutions provider for WordFrame customers.

A disclaimer is in order. Although I am a WordFrame Premium Partner, this series of posts are not in any way official WordFrame documents.

Also, although I’m using the WordFrame platform, my guess right now is that much of the content will be of general applicability to setting up a site for a community of interest, whatever the platform.

Notice that my aim is to set up a community site, as distinct from wanting to establish a community. I know there is already a worldwide community of people interested in social media, as exemplified by, for instance, the Social Media Club. I know too that there are people interested in how social media works or might work in the Asia/Australasia context and who might just value a site with that focus.

Time will tell.

And if you have something to share – whether positive or cautionary – about setting up an online community site, I would love for you to comment here.

Series