Social media can be confusing feeling like lots of 'new shiny web tools' rather than about building a community. I posted earlier this week that when I coach people I talk about social media is like building a town and want to build on that post today.
In that post I talked about how you would put together ways of creating a community. I want to look specifically at blogging and twitter because I get a lot of questions during my 1:1 online training sessions about why both?
In a community you communicate in various ways. If you think about a local newspaper it covers Q&A, adverts, topical issues, latest news, community news. It is at a specialised level, as in the geography but looks at an array of issues at a higher level which informs the community.
You also have conversations - in the street, on the bus, in shops, on the telephone - that are much more personal and about building a relationship with friends. You may talk about local news but in shorter bites, you may pass on gossip, you take the information down a level. That to me that is twitter.
So if you take the analogy of creating a town. The blog is a more in depth look at your area, twittering are the conversations between the blog entries. You can opt out of one but combined gives you a much richer view of the community and creates that sense of belonging.
