Taking Online Communities into the Real World
Posted by Vovici Blog on Fri, Mar 18, 2011
I'm often asked, "Should you bring your panel community or online community together face-to-face once in awhile?"
Face-to-face meetings can certainly be a wonderful way to strengthen your ties to community members. I know of many advisory councils that host events for their communities for this very reason. If this is for an online community of your largest resellers, for instance, and if they don't view themselves as competitors (maybe because they have different geographies) then an offline meeting would probably be a great idea. A customer community meeting would make sense in similar conditions.
I also know of another online community that has found even greater member loyalty by hosting an annual event. It gives the community something to write about and discuss on the site, plus it strengthens the relationships between community members.
If you have the resources to implement this, it would be great, but most online communities and community panels don't do this today.
In a related question, I've been asked, "What about online formats being so impersonal? Do people ever get sick of it? The web seems so noisy to me, always so many windows open on my computer, etc. It's hard to focus or really connect."
This is certainly another argument in favor of having a face-to-face meeting!
Yes, people do get sick of Internet communications technologies. Right now, there's a small backlash against email (people are declaring email bankruptcy), for instance. I've also seen a backlash against reading on the Web vs. reading a book or magazine. I've seen mailing lists decline and a key social networking site I use become much less frequented.
But at the end of the day I think we will all spend far more time in front of our computers than we ever would have imagined ten years ago. Online communities connect people who have something in common but are far from one another. MeetUp has a great motto: "Use the Internet to get off the Internet!" But, like many, I have hobbies and offline interests that are esoteric enough that there aren't that many offline opportunities near me. And chances are the same will hold for many of the communities your company participates in or builds: online is the best way to meet.
So, supplement an online community with face-to-face meetings, but recognize that these communities will always primarily be about online, virtual connections.