On his blog, Mike Mcbride, links to the new Career Opportunities Community site, but questions why create such a group. This was a great opportunity to think and clarify my reasons and allow me to share them with you. Here is my response. You can see Mike’s original post on his blog.
Mike,
Great thoughts! I am writing down my thoughts off the top of my head, as this is often the way I come up with my best ideas.
Why did I create the Career Opportunities Community site?
First, I tend to try a lot of ideas and see what sticks. It can rise or fall on its own, but at least I tried it.
Next, I see the Career-Op readers as a small affinity group that has one major thing in common — they all read or listen to Career Opportunities. In this case, I don’t need the community to be huge, as long as it can achieve my main goal for the group, which is to facilitate communication between fellow readers/listeners, not necessarily the world as a whole.
I think that sometimes conversations are better held in small groups over large. I see this as similar to national groups that have individual chapters. People might want to talk about big ideas, but are simply more comfortable doing it in a somewhat smaller space, even if that space is still virtual.
I would love for large parts of the world to know about Career Opportunities, so I am on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social sites, but I also want to look to those most loyal supporters and try to do something that serves them in a very close and special way.
I have just come to this idea as I am writing this, but in one way, the Career Opportunities Community site is my Rewards Card, my VIP program, my customer loyalty program. My readers and listeners have shown that they are interested in what I have to say, so I am making an effort to facilitate communication among themselves as well as with me.
Will it fly? No way to know at this point, but I am a firm believer in “Fail Often, Fail Quickly.” (SMILE)
Thanks again for writing this post and linking to the new site!
Douglas
Thanks for the response Douglas, like I said on the blog, as someone who started my own Ning site, for my own reasons, I am curious to see how it works out for you, and how you can use it to both foster interaction with your readers, and differentiate it from other network platforms. You are right about one thing, you do have nothing to lose by giving a shot and seeing what happens!
Good luck with it!