The 5 main differences between blogs and communities

On January 12th, 2009 Henriette Weber wrote:

During a workshop I did on the 7th of January for In Real Life I actually think I found the main differences between companies implementing blogs, and companies having an online presence in a community. They have a lot of things in common, but still the level of control makes it more likely for companies to have a blog.

- Even though blogs can be transparent, the person ( or company) who creates the blog still has some level of control. They can decide what pictures are going to be up there, they can decide who writes the blog. To some extend they can also control the comments aka. they can delete them.

- When you have created a blogpost you have had your say in some topic - blogs are on/off writing, communities are constant and more of a "flow" experience.

- Blogs are person/company focused - meaning that even though you create a blogpost about something, it will still have some sort of relevance for the blogs scope. Communities are group focused, there is no sort of thing as a community scope - it's different from user to user. You can have a purpose of why you are a part of the community, but you can't give it a scope.

- You are more of a whole person in a community, why ? because the community is not only you, it's also the people who knows you and likes/dislikes you.

- The return on involvement in a community is higher than the return on involvement on a single blog. Likewise, the return on involvement is higher if you make the whole blogosphere into a community you participate in.

- if you strive to be a rockband (and I hope you do) you really need to be in a community to get more return on involvement on everything you do, let the community know what you are doing.

Luckily you can easily integrate your blogging into your community. The less the control, the more the gains, and the more the risk. it's not a question of either/or. it's a question of a supplement - but please make the community priority 1. and the blog priority 2. Everybody should be a part of an active community ( so all you companies getting facebook restricted so your employees can't use it during worktime - very bad idea and very un-rockband-like.

[control, rockbandism, blogs, communities, facebook, return on involvement] [510 comments]