Social Media: You Built it; Now What?

Web developers and designers for huge companies and niche sites alike are all jumping on the social media bandwagon, realizing that social networking, user-generated content, video-sharing and Widgets are more than just ways to kill time in the office; they can be incredibly effective in growing and increasing audience engagement.

While it’s easier than ever to create and deploy social media, for many, the effort stops there. Kevin Costner’s famous line in Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come”, does not apply to making these online communities come alive. It’s futile to just dip your toe into the world of social media and hope it works. On the contrary, there needs to be a commitment to making the online community not just exist, but thrive.  Marketing and promotion, programming, and community leadership are some of the factors that must be considered, whether you are a Fortune 500 company looking to extend your brand online, or a creative developer designing a personal site.

To get you on your way, here are nine steps to consider as you embark on your online community journey:

1)    Start by defining your community’s purpose and audience.

www.diynetworks.com

Autobytel’s MyRide community: http://community.skinet.com

6)    Promote your community.

As we mentioned above, just because you’ve built your community doesn’t mean people will come. You’ll need to market your community as you would any other product. This can include raising awareness in your website’s existing audience, reaching out to bloggers and traditional media, creating incentives for people to join through contests and promotions, inviting influential people to become members, and even purchasing advertising.

7)    Encourage active participation.

The most active and passionate members are your community’s lifeblood. Recruit and reward them immediately—it’s as much their community as it is yours. Highlight their contributions wherever possible, and ask for their help and feedback. Contests and promotions are also great for driving ongoing participation – people LOVE to win stuff. Radio stations have done this with great success for decades!

8)    Manage your community with fair-minded consistency.

Part of community management is keeping the site free of trouble-makers and offensive content; as a wise man once said, “every party has a pooper.” The trick is to strike a balance between order and openness. Stay active and lead by example and most people will follow. If you do run into a jerk, speak with them as quickly and as nicely as possible, telling them what they did wrong and why it’s something you don’t allow, but making sure to keep your tone courteous and professional. In the words of these from CaféMom) and invite your members to make suggestions about how to improve them.  Lastly, if you’re building your community around a company website, don’t get defensive when members make negative comments about your products or services. They’re going to do it somewhere, so it might as well be in your community. Allowing them to do it there indicates confidence, which members will respect.

9)    Listen and optimize.

Listen to what your community says, both directly and indirectly. Don’t just pay attention to members’ words (i.e. comments and posts); you should also keep an eye on the highest-rated and most-viewed content to get a better picture of what your members want. Also, have a place in the community where people can talk about the community itself, like a message board (another gem from Mr. Haughey). This is a great opportunity to see what people are thinking and to test out your ideas. Lastly, measure your community’s traffic and statistics from the beginning, so you can judge your progress as you go.

Building a community site can take days, but building a successful, engaged community requires  more effort. Dedicating a little time and focus will make it extremely rewarding for both your company and your community.