Share a story – March of Dimes story
Whenever someone asks me ‘who is doing something really interesting with blogging?’ I point them to the March of Dimes’ Share Your Story website. Share is a place for parents whose newly born child is having problems to share their experiences and gain support from a community of people going through similar circumstances.
Nancy White and Lee LeFever have written a case study of Share’s development. Some key points which were reinforced for me in this study include:
- careful attention to community nurturing is the centrepiece—for example, not wishing to over influence the discussion yet wanting to protect the group from misinformation by moderators reading each post.
- listening to the group and adapting the moderator model from mostly hands-off to being interactive and a participant.
- creating the conditions where the community managed itself
- everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler (well said Einstein)
- blogging is a natural online way to collect stories
- stories are powerful
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:
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Another excellent, though forum based website is http://www.essentialbaby.com.au. The same conditions mentioned above exist there and the site is a wonderful support for all issues related to pregnancy and the raising of children. Since I have known of the site they have shifted providers several times to cover the increases in bandwidth demand. The sign that they are doing something very right.