I recently read an article from Media Bulls eye titled “Three Things About Social Media Every Business Should Know”. The three things listed in the article are Control, Content, and Conversations. While the author makes a compelling case for these three things (I encourage you to read the article), I’d like to add another “C” to this list; Communities. Allow me to break down the list and make my case for adding Communities as an essential piece for businesses in social media:
Content
Content is King and if your company is going to have a presence online, the first place you start with is compelling content. To have an active online presence, your company must give reasons for people to join, get active, and participate. Few of us have the luxury of being a PUMA. The sport lifestyle company’s very name has helped to attract 1.2 million Facebook fans since its launch in early March 2009.
Most of us live in the day-to-day business trenches and fight for attention and to differentiate from our competition. Content is a way to make you stand out from the crowd online. Many businesses have set up a Facebook fan page, and are waiting for their fans to pour in. Most of these businesses are still waiting. If you’re stuck at 300 fans, and trust me (many fan pages would kill just to have that many) then you should start with your content as your lead strategy to attract more fans. Whether it’s with videos, text, compelling pictures, etc. step outside the old marketing mindset of pushing press releases, and start pulling customers to you. Find out what your customers are looking for and give it to them. For better illustration read this. 5 Outstanding Leaders in YouTube Marketing.
Control
The bad news about today’s Internet landscape (Web 2.0) is that control over your brand and message is difficult. Then again, in reality, did you ever really ever have control? As the article points to social media leader, Chris Brogan, “You never had control of your message.” People have always talked about businesses and brands are merely perceptions and emotions individuals feel toward your company or product. The control you once felt, was merely a closed communication bubble lacking the ability for feedback.
People are still talking, but now those conversations are posted online and available for the world to see, and join in. This is in fact, a good thing. It actually helps improve control. Now, with real-time marketing tools and active online monitoring, it’s easier than ever to not only gain an idea of what people are saying, but as they are saying it. So although many perceptions are that Web 2.0 has hurt control and has brands shaking in their boots, I would argue that if it hasn’t increased control, it at least allows you to follow the conversation.
Conversation
The purpose of social media is conversation. Any company diving into social media needs to understand this. If there is nothing behind your logo except for press releases, asking people to pass the word to join your pages, or letting customers know that new products are out…you’re missing the point. The company website can do that. You need a personality behind your avatar photo. So dive into conversations, and create new ones. Thank those that are excited enough to speak to you and about your company. Join those conversations and help if you can, or just comment to let your fans know that there is a real person behind the brand.
Communities:
Here is the compelling reason your business needs its own community. Communities allow for the most control, they host and inspire your content, and they spark conversations. Communities tie everything together. As we stated earlier, control is important, but difficult. While it’s important to be monitoring twitter, Facebook , Blogs, and other places where your customers live online…you would save an extremely large amount of time if you create the tent to house your online circus.
This also leads us into content. To create an active community you’ll need compelling content. But with a community built by your business, you’ll have an easier time creating compelling content because you can just look to see what’s being brought up in your forums. Are people looking for How-To Guides, are they seeking ways to meet other fans at local events? By creating your own communities, your customers will essentially tell you what compelling content they need.
Communities, by nature, spark conversations. By creating forums you create and lead the conversation the way you want. True, places like Twitter and Facebook are creating their own conversations…but jumping into Twitter conversations can often seem intrusive. And Facebook fan pages are a great start, but they’re still on a foreign platform. ESPN has an official fan page, but when doing a search for “ESPN” on Facebook , over 500 options come up. Which one is the official page run by ESPN? To gain total and full control, improve content, and spark conversation, ESPN created their own community titled, Sports Nation.
The case is clear, Control, Content, and Conversation are the three things about social media every business should know…but it’s the Community that ties them all together.
Scott S. Bishop is editor for AxeroPulse.com and a social media and marketing strategist. He is @thescottbishop on Twitter
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