So, you have an idea for building an online community. The problem is that your technical capabilities aren’t very strong. In this day and age, however, the lack of technical savvy is no longer a deterrent for creating and maintaining an online community.
You just need to know where to go. Here is a small sampling of some of the sites that can allow you to get up an running without having an advanced degree in Computer Science.
In 1995, as the Internet started gaining popularity, GeoCities 
was founded in an effort to give those burgeoning masses their own Web space for free. Sure, in the beginning, you had to have some HTML
knowledge, but over time, they brought out their Site Builder, and even that wasn’t necessary.
For those of us who had a site (or several) on GeoCities, October 26, 2009 may mark a sad day in our lives, and Yahoo, who purchased GeoCities for an obscene sum of money 10 years ago, finally shut the doors for good.
However, outside of those that used GeoCities, would anyone else have noticed, even cared, for that matter?
Depending on what media report you read, it appears that small businesses, while understanding the importance of having an online presence, are reluctant to go much beyond the traditional Web site. Social media, it would seem, is not a part of the plan.
The most significant indication of this is a Citibank survey of small businesses, three-quarters of which believe that social media, in any form, is not helpful in their overall business plan. And, more recently, less than 10 percent of small businesses are currently using Twitter as a mean to engage consumers.
Years before TOG Solutions was created, I spent some time building communities online for other interests that ranged from reading of college newspapers to hunters seeking cooking advice. This, of course, was at a time when blogging was just getting popular, and all of the current popular social media sites did not exist.
Today, while the idea of online community has grown exponentially, thanks to the light-speed emergence of social media, the concept still remains the same: Build your own online presence in hopes that others like you will join you.
More than a decade ago, I was a professional journalist…for a whole five months. I was was working for a newspaper that shall remain nameless as a full-time “bureau chief,” which, in newspaper-ese, meant that I was the only person in a remote office 30 miles away from HQ, and good luck with that. Mine wasn’t so great, and left with a rather bad taste in my mouth.
I’d like to say that the newspaper industry as a whole has improved since then, but I don’t want to lie to you. Then again, you probably already know how it’s going, if you’ve worked at a newspaper for any stretch of time.
