photo credit: gotosira

For part two in my series on building community around your blog, I want to talk about community decentralized – or community that is built on websites that you do not own or control. In the first part, we discussed community that you have by default upon launching your blog.

This relates directly to what Chris Brogan wrote about outposts. In short, Chris spoke about building community through his “outposts” that he maintains at sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. Sites that he doesn’t control. The idea is to offer value at thess sites, but the end game is to bring people back to the home base. In this case, his blog. This is a great way to look at it.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

“There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site.”

These were the words of Anthony Orcini, the principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. They were included in an e-mail he sent to parents at the end of April, urging them to immediately ban their children from using any social network. Lou Young of WCBS has the story and a full copy of the letter. This comes care of my friend James Dasher.

I’m not wholly surprised by this e-mail, but was a little stunned by the wording of it. Personally, I don’t believe that this is the right course of action – not in general and not for all families. Certainly, parents have the right to block their children from using a social network and that may be the right choice for them. However, I question whether that choice should be made due to a forcibly written message by a school principal. I just hope parents don’t read this and make any rash decisions.

photo credit: eleanor.black

With people who are looking to advertise something, specifically, there seems to sometimes be this notion that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Heck, maybe advertising on this community is alright and the post will be met with warm regards. Or, even if it’s not, maybe the staff will miss it and members won’t care. Worst case scenario, the post is removed, you get admonished, but you can still apologize and everyone will be cool. Right? … Right?

photo credit: jcfrog

One question I get asked a lot goes something along the lines of “how will forums keep up with [something]?” or “forums are old hat, why would people use them over [something]?” or “why use forums when you can use [something]?” However will forums survive? Let’s talk about it.

This is Limited Thinking

Forums aren’t going anywhere. Let’s get that out of the way. My great grand kids may well look back at this post and laugh at their crazy great grandfather and his talk of vinyl records, er- I mean forums. But, for as far into the future as I can possibly see, I do not see a time where structured, text based online discussion communities will cease to exist. Unless the internet ceases to exist or, at least, changes very dramatically.

photo credit: Horia Varlan

It’s important to be proactive on matters of content theft and copyright infringement. A large part of this is text quoted from other sources. With some exceptions (public domain works, works by the Federal Government, works released under alternative licenses to copyright, and more), you can’t allow your members to post entire text articles that they did not author or hold no rights to, source or no source.

But, that doesn’t mean that they can’t quote some portions that are properly attributed. Fair use is an exception to copyright that, among many other things and without getting too legally technical, allows you to quote excerpts of someone else’s work with proper attribution. Fair use isn’t a law as much as it is a defense.

photo credit: MPD01605

Not long ago, someone from a very well known, reputable charity spammed one of my communities. I’m not going to mention the name of the charity because it’s not important. I’m not looking to shame them and they are not the point I want to make. It’s not like this is the first time that this has happened. It’s not even a big deal. Spam is spam is spam, for the most part. But, it brought to mind something I wanted to talk about.

When a community doesn’t allow advertising, self promotion, spamming or whatever they call it, generally speaking, those guidelines apply to everyone. Google, Disney, mom and pop, personal blogs, non-profits, charities, whoever. Unless the guidelines specifically make an exception, everyone plays on the very same playing field.

photo credit: AleBonvini

Recently, I was engaged in a conversation on Twitter with someone who couldn’t understand the guidelines that many forums, including mine, have regarding advertising or self promotion. Sue (@SueOnTheWeb) was involved in the conversation, too, as we were both explaining why forums were a tad different from other forms of social media, like microblogging (Twitter), traditional social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook) and so on. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: forums are a different beast.

Different forms of social media require different strategies, different patterns, different levels of engagement, different social norms. Forums are as much if not more diverse, when it comes to this, than any other form of this thing we call social media, which may be more like online community.

Last October, I traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina for ConvergeSouth and the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro. I spoke at the latter, leading a solo session and participating in the day’s opening panel.

Led by Kelby Carr of Type-A Mom, the panel also featured Jared Smith of Charleston Weather, Heather Solos of Home Ec 101 and Anne Fitten-Glenn. It was titled “The Blogging Revolution” and we discussed blogging in general, the responsibility of it, where we saw the medium going and more. We had a great Q&A and discussion with the group that attended. Thank you to Kelby Carr and Dave Slusher for having me.

Unfortunately, we used up my entire camera tape before we ended, so I didn’t get the entire session. However, in the clip below, you can watch the length of the recording.

In addition to Vimeo, the video has also been uploaded to YouTube, in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

photo credit: brownpau

In July, I discussed the Sports Legends Challenge saga a bit and I posted an investigative piece on my personal blog outlining the unethical tactics they used. Suffice to say, it’s spam, spam and more spam. Not just spam, but devious, misleading spam. And tons of it.

But, I got to thinking… let’s say that someone who did this turned to me or even to you and said “please help us clean this up.” What would you do? Where would you start?

I pulled together a panel of friends to help me analyze the situation. They are Brandon Eley, Interactive Director at Kelsey Advertising  & Design, founder of online shoe retailer 2BigFeet.com and co-author of “Online Marketing Inside Out”; Jeremy Wright, CEO at digital strategy agency netmobs, co-founder of b5media and author of “Blog Marketing”; Jason Falls, principal at Social Media Explorer and Martin Reed of community management blog Community Spark and the administrator of the JustChat.co.uk, Female Forum and Soap Forum communities.

The result is an article on my personal site that I hope lays out a strong blueprint that would allow such a company or individual to make an attempt at restoring their brand.

I’d like to know your thoughts, too. What else can or should they do? What would you do different? Please let me know in the comments.

As you may have noticed, the blog has been a little quiet for a couple of weeks. I took a vacation! I’m sorry I didn’t provide more notice. Truthfully, I didn’t expect to be so out of touch. But, I’m back now and I’m tackling the monumental pile of messages and tasks sitting in front of me. Hopefully, I’ll be back on top of things this week.

It’s good to get away (from your online communities) some times and that’s something I’ll be writing more about soon.

Before I hit publish on this post, I wanted to highlight a couple of posts that were made on blogs I monitor, in the time that I was away. First, I enjoyed “Community Netiquette: How to Avoid Stepping on Virtual Toes,” by Jake McKee. It talks about “the basics of conducting yourself properly when engaging on behalf of an organization within the existing Social Web,” something that I certainly enjoy talking about. It’s a wonderful article.

The other post is “The Power of New” by Jason Falls. Jason (like Jake) is a friend and has made the leap from corporate job to business owner. He’s a great guy and I wanted to take this opportunity to wish him the best in this endeavor.