Seven tips on how to run a successful community.
Social media is getting a lot of buzz and most companies have realized that it must be a part of their internet marketing strategy today.
But if you want to make the most of social networking and ‘word of mouse’ you have to understand what it takes to build a community.
In Robin Good’s recent post in MasterNewMedia that covers the pitfalls of social software, he refers to a post by Matt Haughey on building community.
Matt makes the point that building community is a challenge.
If you’re building a community you have to love what you’re doing and be the best member of it. It takes great care and patience to create a space others will share and you have to nurture it and reward your best contributors. It’s a decidedly human endeavor with few, if any, technical shortcuts.
Flickr is one of the most successful online content sharing sites. Here is a comment from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.
“A lot of our success came from George (Oates), the lead designer, and Caterina (Fake). Both of them spent a lot of time in the early days greeting individual users as they came in, encouraging them and leaving comments on their photos. There was a lot of dialogue between the people who were developing Flickr and their users to get feedback on how they wanted Flickr to develop. That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too.”
Matt’s Seven Tips on how to build a community apply not only to developers building large social websites. Take a look at how you could apply this information to your online marketing strategy in the social media environment.
Savvy companies and organizations realize there are communities interested in their product, service, cause or idea and they’re eager to gather them into a social meeting place online.
All it takes is the know how to build a community and nurture the conversations.
See Also
- Social Media Optimization
Top executives are waking up to the need for including social media and community building in their Internet marketing and PR strategy.
