What is a Trust Community and Why Should You Care?
A conversation simply about Twitter and Facebook is the wrong one to have when discussing social media, even though it’s the one most people are having.
Social media has revolutionized how people connect and communicate. It is now a normal, everyday activity to connect with virtual strangers in real time via the social web – much in the same way you may connect with personal friends and family via the phone or by email. Social media can effectively reach thousands of people through a single action – such as a blog post, activity update on Facebook or Twitter “tweet.”
If you connect online with a group of people who share your interests, such as gardening, motorcycles, football, reading, music or underwater basket weaving, then you are participating in a Trust Community – wherepeople having a common interest interact with one another specifically to discuss and share information on the shared topic.
Usually, in a Trust Community, an Influencer – sort of like the community mayor, may serve one or more roles, such as recruiting new members, holding members to an ethical and courtesy standard, or disseminating the largest volume of information to other members. There may also be more than one Influencer in a Trust Community where roles are shared.
With the latest advances in social networking technologies, people are naturally searching out and finding others within their interest tribes. In absence of the geographical and time constraints that we experienced before the Internet, it is now possible to instantly connect with people on other continents, build reciprocal personal and business relationships and share information and ideas with thousands of people having the same passions and interests.
