Content is King (and trust must be Queen)

For those of us in the corporate sphere who are having their social networking options shut down by overzealous IT professional and firewalls – an article by Paul Pedruzzi   “Why Social Networks don’t work for businesses” stress the importance of trust and content within social networks to make them functional and identifies organisational issues and barriers which impact on the usefulness of social networking sites within the work context.  I like this quote….

“Once you have the people you trust, all you need is content”.

In observing our online communities, I suspect that for an online community to function effectively it will require these two elements – trust and content.  Trust comes from the relationships between community members which are built up over time and from people having shared values and interests. In addition, Web gurus will always tell us that content is king, and this is also true for online communities. For example if there is no relevant content on the site or useful dialogue in the way of learning conversations within the community, the community will not flourish and will become of less relevance to community members.  Conversely, a content rich and stimulating environment which supports learning conversations and engages community members has more chance of succeeding.  The community I am observing has been established online for nearly ten years – they must be doing something right. I have been observing that trust is an integral part of why members join, participate and continue to follow the advice and recommendations of fellow community members. 

  Gapingvoid.com