Building Social Media Communities

Its a cliche. We know its a cliche, still we’re going to use it. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? And our answer is yes it makes a lot of noise. But no one is there to react or respond, so it happens and is done.

The same goes for tweets, wall posts, and other social media communications. Your messages till can be communicated, but without building significant or relevant communities, not much is likely to happen. Maybe someone steps over your communication and you get lucky, but thats not much of a strategy.

If you want to effectively communicate you have to speak to someone else other than yourself.

Social Networks

There are thousands of social networks available. At a minimum your should be tapping into the following three:

Facebook

500 million users and growing makes this a place you must figure out how to use to drive business. You can choose to connect through a personal account of a Fan/Like page, but whichever you choose you need friends, fans, or Likes. We’ve found that the advertising platform can be a cost effective way to engage specific demographics.

LinkedIn

Your in business and this is a social business network of over 85 million people. Its a match made in heaven but will require time and work to make it effective. Building connections is a solid way to start but we’ve found that Groups provide a larger reach to tap into potential opportunities.

Twitter

Depending upon your source there are anywhere from 30 million to 100 million members. For well known brands this can be an easy way to push promotions. For the rest of us it will take time to stand out from the clutter. Much of the value we have derived from Twitter has been in the ability to share blog content driving new site visitors and generating sign ups to new blog posts.

Social Content

Content sites such asYouTube, Podcast sites, and even blogs are not designed as social networks, yet they have social communities.  It can be very effective to build subscribers providing a built in audience for your content.  These subscriber watch, comment on, and share your content with their networks.

Groups, Forums, etc.

Groups and Forums are the original social networks closely related to the dial-up bulletin board systems and Usenet networks that were first created starting in the late 1970s.  The earliest web based forums appeared around 1995.

Many forums enjoy a robust community that engages and interacts typically around a narrow topic.

The first true online group, designed purely for social purposes, was arguably the one formed in 1985, before the Web itself was created: a group called the WELL.  Other earlier groups included Tripod and Geocities.  Groups allow members to interact and share content.  Most of the top social networks have incorporated groups into their offerings, but niche specific groups can provide an opportunity to connect with targeted prospects.

Now that you’re building your online communities you are ready to move on to Step 6: Syndicating Your Content Online