It’s your community, not theirs

You did all the right things building a social community for your site.

Hypothetically, let’s say you used Twitter to build a community of people who are actively interested in what you have to say. Perhaps you even have a thousand followers. Great.

Then Twitter, like so many hot Web ideas of the past, falls out of favor of the social media-consuming public or runs out of cash for lack of a business model (or a buyer).

So, all that work you did building the community up goes down the drain, right?

Wrong.

The people who are following you and conversing with you within a social network are still there, no matter what happens to any individual platform company. If Twitter, as is in this example, goes away, those people, who made that network valuable, are still with you. They still care what you have to say. If Twitter suddenly isn’t there, another platform will fill the void. If you’re paying attention to the Next Big Thing in social media, you’ll be able to start over there. The difference, this time, is you won’t have to start from scratch – you’ll have a community of interested people who will seek you out.

Remember, that community you’ve built is YOUR community, not Twitter’s.

2 comments December 2nd, 2008