Thursday, March 29, 2012

Engaging the community while staying budget-oriented

There  are  well  over  150  million  other  pages,  groups, events,  etc.  to  choose  from.   Online  community  building  has  proven  to  be  an  exceptional  marketing  tool.

There are certain principles to building your own online communities. 

1.  Observe - Visit social media hangouts for Web users on the topics of interest in the industry of the company that wants to start a a social media community.  The automobile brand, Saturn, had branch managers which led the way by tracking conversations among users and industry analusts at other blogs and similar web sites to form the largest active community.

2.  Recruit - Find internet users who want to talk about the industry and recruit them for joining the new social media property.

3.  Evaluate platforms - Decide whether the format should be a blog, vertical search site (reputation aggregator), pure online community, or social work.

4.  Engage - Plan ways to get community members to talk and upload content.

5.  Measure - Identify metrics that will measure the success of the effort.  For example, number of comments posted to the blog.

6.  Promote - Plan ways to advertise and build a buzz in the social media and with reputation aggregators.

7.  Improve - Use the metrics to continuously improve the community.

The HELM Group can assist your company in acquiring the marketing component  only reached by a social community.

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