What Community Do You Belong To

A lot of us participate in many different activities.  Maybe you are a person who loves to cook, or watch sports, or knit, or read, or whatever it is that you do for fun, there is a community for you.  Spreading yourself across multiple communities may not be a bad thing, as long as you’re not spreading yourself too thin.  Here are a few tips to manage different communities as the same time.

Be Real

Be the real you across all the different communities.  Share all your experiences.  For instance, my two main communities are the social media and diabetes communities.  Within both of those communities, people know that I am SEO, SMM, SEM diabetic consultant.  That is who I am, so I express that within all communities that I belong to.  Do not go into a community because that is where your customers or potential clients are and pretend to be one of them.  Do not be a fraud because the fall out of that can be bad, real bad.

Be Active

If you are going to join a community, then be active.  It is fine to just sit back and read what everybody else is blogging or talking about, but there comes a point that you will need to start commenting.  If you are new to the community then that is one of the better ways to get noticed because people will begin to see your name coming up in comments and will start to pay more attention to your blog or forum posts once you begin that.  Also, just signing up for a community does you no good.   Plan out a certain schedule, if you can only dedicate one hour a week for that particular community, then so be it, but stay involved.

Be Helpful

One of the worst comments that I hate to see on a blog is, “Good Post.”  That comment is nothing but just trying to leave your name and link in that comment section.  I’ve seen a lot of people actually delete comments like that.  Why was it a good post, or why was it a bad post?  What did you like / dislike most about it?  What do you have to add or change about the post?  These are the type of comments in a community that people are going to respect you by.  You will begin to gain a respect or a following from people from within the community with more detailed comments.

Define Your Community

This may be the most difficult part to do.  Be sure to define what community that it is that you really belong to.  If you are joining the community strictly to look for clients, then you better do some research to find out exactly which community would be yours to enter.  I don’t highly recommend this either.  Entering just because your clients are there when you have no clue what is being discussed in the community may not be the best idea.  One bad comment or move in an active online community can quickly ruin your reputation.
Now, stop reading and get into your communities now!
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