At the June 24th Social Media Club Niagara meeting we explored the topic of online community building.  So in honor of the great panel we had, who were:

Content came out #1 at last night's panel meeting on building a community. Passion was not far behind. Panelists @Trevor Twining, a drupal community developer; Tiffany Mayer @Eating Niagara, Cathy Berkhout-Bosse @mypelham and Chris Ennest @getoutniagara.

Tiffany Mayer is a journalist with a passion for supporting local farmers and agriculture. She'd written about the 100 mile diet and when cutbacks hit her newspaper, decided to write a blog. She didn't want to write mundane stuff about herself so she started taking weekend trips in the country visit farmers and http://eatingniagara.blogspot.com was the result.

"I started writing about my musings and started with a following of farmers and then gardners"

Tiffany said Twitter has been a great tool for her. She started with one follower and now has more than 1,000.

"It's food and food is about community".

Get Out Niagara's Chris Ennest blogs about outdoorsy things to do in the Niagara Region at www.getoutniagara.com, and he's active on Twitter and Facebook. His passion started with a desire to get out of his house. It's an after hours thing for him and he says he doesn't have a lot of time to write about all his outings and, like Tiffany, he wants to build a community of people to write about their adventures.

"Even if they write one blog post or one tweet they be more vested in it and come back."

Cathy Berkhout-Bosse who is a local real estate broker by day and co-creator of www.mypelham.com in her spare time. She's a year into developing the project. She says it's been a bit of an uphill battle getting local businesses to see the advantage of participating in the internet marketing environment.

"It all started with a shop local, think pelham campaign." Cathy said they soon decided that they should bring all areas of the community together and began connecting with non-profits and other organizations.

"Something that would engage our local Consumers that was more than about shop here."

Trevor Twining who has spent the last decade building Drupal communities said that passion, content and connections are what makes a successful community.

"You need to find something you're passionate about and a few people who are as passionate as you are to be the backbone of your community."

Unique content is key but he pointed out that content can come from anywhere. It could by answering people's questions, creating a faq or getting invloved in other communities with people who are interested in the same thing as you are.

Trevor warned against focussing on the tools.

"Technology doesn't build a community any more than a sewer system builds a city"

The full meeting will be available online on Monday.

Thanks to the City of St. Catharines for providing a microphone and to Heather at Dom's for letting us take over her bar.