Polymer Studios::Web Consulting

I’ve been grooving on a relatively unknown social media site for a couple months now. Well, at least it’s unknown outside the rarified world of corporate communications. The site, MyRagan.com, is the spawn of Ragan Communications, the company that has put out the weekly Ragan Report newsletter for some 35 years. I remember this yellow 8.5×11 newsletter from my young buck days in Employee Communications at American Express Financial Advisors (now Ameriprise).

Had I given it any thought, I would have assumed that the venerable newsletter and its parent company had gone the way of the dodo. (Sometimes we online folks can be guilty of a touch of arrogance.) But then a friend sent me an invite to join MyRagan and what do you know? The Raganites have made a bid for relevance in a Web 2.0 world and seem to be succeeding.

The site features blogs, groups, message boards, newsfeeds, job postings — just what you might expect from, say, Facebook, only without the silly apps. At this point, the site has about 10,000 members from around the world. That may not seem like critical mass for a social networking site — and perhaps it isn’t, as the message boards are still a bit slow — but it’s a good start. And what discourse there is on the site seems to be of pretty high quality.

And the old newsletter? Not only is it going strong, but there are now several of them, on topics as diverse as Web content and employee communications management. Part of the beauty of a site like MyRagan is that it serves as an efficient net for the newsletter editors to catch interesting ideas and people — fodder for future articles. As the conversation on MyRagan improves, so does the quality and relevance of the newsletters, which then makes them more attractive to potential subscribers, many of whom might be MyRagan members. If this model is successful, it may point the way for other publishers or anyone who offers products or services that have traditionally been distributed offline. As the online community grows, it becomes an intelligence machine, allowing for more relevant and tailored fulfillment (newsletters, plush toys, collectibles, neckties, skateboards, etc.) in the real world.