Building People-to-People Communities and Networks - Social Media | P2P

Keynote: ‘Building People-to-People Communities and Networks’

Speaker: Chris Brogan
Social Media Leader President, New Marketing Labs Author, Trust Agents
Twitter: @chrisbrogan

@growwithorganic on Building People-to-People Communities and Networks

Chris Brogan’s credentials speak for themselves. Chris coined the phrase ‘trust agent’ and in doing defined how early adopters were behaving and should behave on the web. For me, Chris is a social commentator and philosopher for the next generation – in terms of his ideas I think his ideas are social commentary that that of a Rousseau, Kant, Hegel or Hobbes for our times. In truth, only the future can decide that, but I think he understands the dynamics of now as well as anyone.

Trust Agents: What are they?

If you want to hear about Trust Agents from Chris, visit http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ or read his book. My understanding of a trust agent is that it is someone who is a fully signed up citizen of the new media universe. Trust agents use social media and related digital and web 2.0 tools to build relationships with people. Essentially, they do this by being their good, decent, offline selves: by being honest, open and trustworthy. Being a Trust Agent is about knowing how to act and behave in new media, but still achieving your goals – be that in business or not.

One way that Chris believes Trust Agents act that should be familiar to most people engaged in some form of social media, is to build communities and networks.

If you build it, they will come!

So why would you want a community in the first place? As I have said many times, I believe we are inherently social beings. History tells us that we instinctively look to build communities. Why we do this is a subject of some debate amongst philosophers but most agree that we build communities either out of necessity because life without them is nasty brutish and short, or out of desire because we find we can do more together than in conflict. The digital sphere has proved no different than the offline world. People have formed themselves into communities online using a variety of different tools since the early nineties.

By engaging a community (whether it is one you have built yourself or not) Chris says that you can generate Return on Investment. A community can be a place to generate new business undertake relationship management, cross sell, up sell, educate, refer, support and research. Your customers and clients might not be in the community, but they will have connections as well, and if they look to you as a leader in your community then they are likely to tell others.

So how do I get a community? Being a Trust Agent in a community or Network

Like Minds is like a living breathing case study of how to implement Chris’s work on communities. We are a community that has formed around the Like Minds events organised by co-founders Scott Gould and Drew Ellis. Scott and Drew are Trust Agents.

Chris says if you build a community, don’t lord it over the members because they wont accept it. Instead celebrate them and their successes. The important thing to remember about communities is that you don’t own or control a community, even if you create it. Its not about your goals or product, its about the goals of the members of the community and you pretty much only exist in order to service their ends.

By establishing and understanding the needs of your community, you can start to provide them with solutions and thereby establish trust. This act of giving something is important to Chris Brogan’s approach.

To this end Chris encourages people engaging in community marketing to listen first! This is a critical skill for a social marketer that I find myself coming back to time and time again. In P2P you are taking part in a conversation – if you don’t stop talking people wont talk to you.

Digital Communities are communities of Nomads: Another P2P approach

Chris also notes that communities move from one place to another. They never stay in one place. This is similar to a point I have made in other articles - its not the social media platforms or tools that are important, it is the people.

An Anthropological approach to P2P?

I’m always looking for patterns in the way we are building our online world that remind me of the offline world, and so I love the language that Chris uses and his approach to digital. It strikes me that he takes as anthropological approach to digital marketing, and because it is people centric, I am all for it.

What excites me about Social Media and People to People is that it reminds me of the patterns you see in the offline social world that we all follow instinctively every day. Chris’ lexicology seems to imply that at every level.

Chris Brogan’s ideas create a landscape online that is familiar to everyone and therefore easy to adopt. It is also an landscape where people are encouraged to behave in a generous, helpful, reciprocal and positive manner.

In my article on Jonathan Akwue’s keynote I said that I thought the negative views of social media that are often held by outsiders should act as a call to action to social media insiders to educate people who are not engaged in social media – parents, carers, communities, governments, companies, the state - and tell them that they can engage in the conversation, and why they must.

If Jonathan is telling us why we must do this, Chris I think, tells us how we should say it.

I’m looking forwards to hearing more insights from Chris about building people to people communities at Like Minds. In the mean time, what do you think the forwards thinking organisations are going to be doing next? Do you think community marketing is a valuable model? How does it relate to P2P? Add your comments to this articles and we will add them to the like minds stream.