Using social networking sites to build exposure for ones business and then build communities is a great strategy which can result in some really strong long term benefits. It’s little wonder you’ll find a large percentage of fortune 500 companies along with small to mid-sized businesses actively working on Twitter, creating Facebook fan pages, Linkedin groups, uploading YouTube videos and encouraging employees to blog on blogger and other hosted blogging engines. It makes a lot of sense at the earlier stages of social networking and media efforts to start building communities on these sites as each of them is a massive marketplace within themselves. As the social networking program of a company matures, it’s likely to find small pitfalls in this approach of building and interacting with their communities. Why?
Hosted solutions apart, would a company like to build a customer database in another organizations premises? No! A company’s customer database is treated like a closely guarded asset of the company. It has a financial value attached to it as something which can generate future revenue for the business. Is an online community any different? A well developed online community to which you can send out messages to and communicate with is also an asset and also has the same revenue generation potential. Why is it alright to have those scattered around different websites where a business can only have limited control over their administration and very little control over how long they have access to it. What if a company’s 30,000 strong Facebook fan page was to be blocked by a change of policy?
Perhaps it has very little to do with a conscious decision by a company. Building communities on these sites has a clear advantage in terms of popularity and existing traffic already on those sites. To build a similar network independently could take a lot more effort and time but on the bright side, the company has complete administrative control over what it has built over time and it can’t be easily taken away as it may be possible on other websites.
Despite the effort involved, consolidating a business scattered online social network communities into their own website is an angle worth looking at in the long term. Using a social networking software platform such as communifire makes building all the features of a social networking website into a business website simple. What needs to be addressed is how to redirect those very users from other sites and provide them an incentive to keep the same activity levels on the business website.
Despite the difficulties, as the business value of social networking is maturing rapidly, the need to be able to protect valuable communities built on these networks will also grow. The need to have greater control over them than social networking sites allow becomes an important issue. Building these social networks around a business website and consolidating their online audiences will most likely be an important strategy. After all… doesn’t it make good business sense?
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