Klller Content

"Putting in attachments to Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn . . . but why? We can bandy about all these cool things, but whether or not people are really going to use these is another question. And business people just love to learn lots of new tools. Not."

--Marilyn Pratt, SAP Community Evangelist

For those who missed it, there was a gathering of social networking thought leaders in Zurich last week for the SOMESSO conference. One of the speakers, Marilyn Pratt gave an excellent presentation headlined with the provocative slide: "10 Ways to Kill an Online Community." Dennis Howlett of ZDNet recorded the session and put it on YouTube.

The ten ways are:

• Design in a vacuum
• Add very gadget you can think of
• Drag every warm body you can in
• Resist engaging with participants
• Think size not quality
• Think money not quality
• Think noise not quality
• Think pages not access choices
• Think participating not listening
• Think statistics not value

Although the focus was communities, her lessons apply equally well to anyone looking to market online. At the end of the day, it's not about quantity but quality. I particularly like the point about "gadgets," which as Marilyn says, few business people know how to use anyway.



Like all good speakers, she says things that most people already know are true. It's just a lot easier to push quantity when there is so much of it -- and it's cheap -- than quality.