Small towns connect with online communities

MT. PLEASANT — In the not too distant past, communities received a majority of their information from their neighbors, bulletin boards, and local establishments.

As social media platforms become more commonplace, however, many communities are communicating differently.

In May 2021, Mark Zuckerberg released a statement containing ideals to create global communities through the Facebook platform.

His statement addressed ways to create supportive, safe, informed, civically engaged, and inclusive communities.

Ahead of Zuckerberg’s call to action, however, a Mt. Pleasant area resident, Brenda Smith, sought out to bridge some of these community gaps on her own.

In August 2014, Smith began her journey as an administrator for a community forum on Facebook

Smith created Mt. Pleasant, IA — COMMUNITY EVENTS & INFO group that currently displays the following description:

“Community events and organizations in Mt. Pleasant, IOWA. Everyone please feel free to contribute and post events so we have one place we can come to in order to find out what is happening in our community! :-) Businesses are welcome to share special events or offers.”

“I was looking for some event I knew was going on,” she said.

“Is it on the Chamber of Commerce page? Is it on the Mt. Pleasant page?” Smith described her thought process. “I’d ask in a post and someone would say ‘Oh, that’s on the high school page.’”

“So, there were all these different pages that were posting their different events, but there was no one place where you could just give information for Christmas or things during the summer,” she said. “People just want to go to one place and see what is going on in town.”

“That is exactly what ended up happening,” she said. “A lot of those people just share to the group, now. It is a very convenient, single spot where people can just go and see what is going on.”

Smith has a background in Marketing and utilizes the social media platform for her paid position, so it was only a natural progression to connect her community this way.

“These days, I am more likely to look for a Facebook page for a local business than to go to Google and look for a website,” she said. “That’s where I look for their menus, their hours … you can call directly from there, too.”

These sorts of communities contain more than just information on events, though.

“There is one guy that posts a lot of weather updates,” Smith said. “It is kind of nice to have it right there.”

“It also ended up serving as a bit of a forum,” she said. “There have been times where there has been a thread that has a lot of people commenting and engaging about something.”

“In the old days if someone forgot something on a flyer and didn’t know it, people can ask questions,” Smith explained.

Smith gave an example of a person potentially attaching the incorrect date to a day of the week.

In the virtual communities, someone could then ask the question and the poster could respond more quickly.

“The person could then say ‘Oh! We had a typo,’ and they could fix it and upload a new picture right there,” Smith said. “If you had gone and posted 50 flyers around town, though, that would be a big hassle to go back around.”

“Community members can even just ask each other questions and help each other, too,” She said.

“I lived in New London for 10 years,” Smith said. “I noticed their page has a lot more of a neighborhood feel to it.”

Posts that fill New London Iowa Community Page commonly consist of lost pets, missing packages, questions about trash pickup and other community information.

Recently, Hillsboro Iowa Watch and Talk Facebook group listed winners of their Christmas Lights contest and photos with Santa.

Susan Beard frequently posts updates for day-to-day information pertaining to schools and the city in the Winfield, Iowa Community Bulletin Board.

Smith even currently operates a page for the Washington Community.

Considering how busy Mt. Pleasant’s page keeps her, Smith is currently considering finding an interested party in the Washington are to breathe new life into that community page.

“As we've made our great leaps from tribes to cities to nations, we have always had to build social infrastructure like communities, media and governments for us to thrive and reach the next level,” Zuckerberg wrote in his statement on communities. “At each step we learned how to come together to solve our challenges and accomplish greater things than we could alone. We have done it before and we will do it again.”

“There are many of us who stand for bringing people together and connecting the world,” he said. “I hope we have the focus to take the long view and build the new social infrastructure to create the world we want for generations to come.”

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com