Benefits of Belonging to an Online Community
Benefits of Belonging to an Online Community
? Keep you informed
? Opportunity to share ideas, techniques, and expertise with other Real Estate Professionals
? Serve as a resource – a large audience waiting for your questions when you have a question on any of the community members’ expertise
? Provide a vehicle for creating an online “presence.” Participating in an Online Community will give other real estate professionals around the world an opportunity to learn from your contributions. If you consistently contribute to the Community other members will begin to “know” you based on your postings. You will establish trust and confidence with other Community members and this will lead to referrals.
Characteristics of Online Communities:
? Members have a common interest or passion
? Running conversations on various subjects
? Gives individuals an opportunity to share
? Gives individuals the opportunity to write and reach an audience. Your postings are “published.”
? Frequent posters and “undiscovered talent” emerges
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Virtual Communities give people with similar experiences and interests the opportunity to come together - freed from the restraints of time and space to form meaningful relationships. Members benefit whether they "post" or passively participate as readers of everyone else's posts.
A defining characteristic of virtual communities is Community Created Content. Members of virtual communities derive, over time, more excellent value from Community Created Content than from the more conventional forms of "published" content available on websites. At times the content may bore some, but over time, there is always information of interest to large community members.
Community Created Content is typically produced in "real-time" and relates to the experience of most of the members of the community. No combination of "published" experts can match the collective insight and experience of a community of people who share a passionate interest says NetGain.
Virtual Communities are networks. When you start to connect things (call these points of connection "nodes")...people in the case of the network we refer to as a Virtual Community, interesting things happen.
Metcalfe's Law
Mathematically, the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of its members. In other words, increasing the number of nodes arithmetically will result in an explosion in the value of the network...just adding a few members can dramatically increase the value of the network for all members.
This principle was first noticed by Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of a networking technology known as Ethernet. During the late 1970s, Metcalfe was promoting a combination of Ethernet, Unix, and TCP/IP (internet protocol) as a way to make larger networks out of smaller ones. In 1980 he began to formulate what became known as "Metcalfe's Law," the Value (of a network) equals N (nodes) Squared.
"Nobody is as smart as everybody."
Kevin Kelly. First Editor of Wired Magazine