Guest Post By Matt Dunlap! Want to guest post too? See the requirements here
 

Long gone are the days of just believing people. I know that sounds harsh, but the truth is, we are a "plugged in" society that can easily check every fact, and fact of a fact with Google, So recently when someone told me how popular their website was in terms of visitors per month,  I immediately responded with, BS.

You might have traffic, but you don't have a community. Without an open form of communication, ie. a blog with a comment section with customer feedback, the website owner will never truly know what their website visitors think about them.

How does this relate to social media? Well if you want to start an online community, you have to be a salesman. You have to convince people to join your community. It might seem like the Internet is filled with share this, like that, and follow me buttons, but the heart of all communities is and idea and transparency around it.

You can't build a community with WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. There are no magic WordPress plugins that instantly grow your site to Facebook staus. You build a community by being the a community member first, and getting people to share with your ideas. More importantly, you build it with your desire to build the community around an idea. Now-a-days, you can grow your community with Twitter, email, or even text messages.

Example, Facebook and Apple

 

Facebook is always getting blogged about for having a messed up privacy policy, but what other company listens to their customers more then Facebook. If there is a member revolt, Facebook listens and tries to find solutions. Of course they will never satisfy hundreds of millions of users, but as long as they react, they will be OK.

Apple, and most notably Steve Jobs, makes decisions that people either love or hate, but they have to make those decisions. They feed off the reaction of their customers, and make changes accordingly. Prime example, iPhone4... It fixes many problems with the older iPhones. They simply cannot build products by crowdsourcing the community, they have to make decisions and stick with them through the good times and bad.

 Facebook has a much easier time making changes when under member revolt, since Apple deals mostly with hardware. But the idea is the same, build a community you believe in, treat the people that like your ideas with the utmosts respect and let the community deal with the neigh sayers.

Your community will be built around your ideas. you own them. People will like them and people will hate them, but as long as you are transparent, honest and respectful, you will grow your community. There are millions of communities out there, nothing is stopping you from starting your own today.

About the Author: Matt has been writing WordPress plugins for years now and has seen many communities come and go.

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