Week 6: Online Communities
I’ve recently been assigned to read chapters 4 and 5 in the Social Organization, discuss effective principles on online community building with social media and provide examples and links to illustrate. Furthermore, after completing the Hootsuite/Podium module 4, I will discuss what I learned about growing an online community and how these principles apply to the client I am working with on the client project.
While reading the Social Organization, I noticed many effective principles on online community building with social media. For instance, the lesson in the book that talked about knowing where community collaboration is more likely to deliver value made me think about the 3 Rs in Hootsuite. The 3 R’s are relevance, reach, and resonance. These must all be accounted for when deciding what platforms to focus on depending on your organization’s industry and target audience. The book also discusses that the number of overall followers to an organization is irrelevant if new content is not engaging or user-friendly. To make engaging posts, organizations must first fully understand their followers. They must answer questions such as who are the target participants.
• What’s in it for the participants?
• What is the focus of their collaboration?
If an organization does not first answer these questions, there following will likely erode and engagement will suffer as a consequence. Organizations need to be more proactive and less reactive in building successful social communities.
A great example of this is the Madden 20 game. Madden uses a rating adjuster program to update player’s ratings weekly to keep the game relevant, reachable, and resonance for the participants. Please reference the link below: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25527115/best-job-world-life-madden-nfl-ratings-adjuster
Furthermore, I learned a lot about growing an online community and how these principles apply to the client I am working with on the client project. I learned how to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Below is a summary of each section.
Regularly search hashtags relative to a company
Monitor keywords, follow and engage users that use hashtags
Rally community to have a conversation in real-time to solidify new followers
Online relationships offline – to gain prospects, vendors, partners
Responding and acknowledging others on tweets
Deescalate a negative situation
To connect with friends and family – keep in mind when leveraging Facebook
Demonstrate customer care and relationship building
Scan brand page, content pages to answer questions
Interactions will bring news feed stories to be seen more
Public (centered around a certain theme, may require heavy moderation), closed, secret groups
Use events to build buzz and connect with those ahead of time – send invite-only to relevant members
Skews towards professional development
Grow their professional network, keep up-to-date on developments in their industry, explore their career prospects, develop a personal brand
LinkedIn groups – seasoned practitioners to share expertise with you
Community manager (like Facebook), moderate discussions to ensure there are people to add to your community
Send as announcement = sent to everyone in a group
Tag specific people if you know they have relevant information to contribute
Three-step cycle – find community, engage, boost visibility
Search for content relating to your brand, tag photos tagged in your location
Search for companies and influencers and like/comment on their followers to gain more of a following
Keep track of those who continuously engage in your posts
Push notifications on influencers
Frequently feature customers on your feed to show you appreciate your support
Activity tab that surfaces content by people you follow – if they go to yours it shows on activity
Ask people if you can tag those taken a picture of at an event
Mentioning fellow influencers in posts
Add geotags for those who frequent the area
Collaborators – similar interests/values? how will it benefit you and them?
Engage in healthy debate, delete hostile or abusive comments
Take time to connect, take suggestions into consideration
Engage top fans in videos, contests, giveaways
Unique Snap Code – put them on products to sell to automatically add you as a friend
Add Friends – share username
ghostcodes app – feature your Snap based on the business interest
Send reaction snaps via their snap story
Community Metrics to Measure
Community growth (track size of following and rate of growth, quality matters more than amount community has, spot-check method to analyze users for deeper insights/activity of members), engagement (high-quality communities tend to be more engaged, count amount of interaction on posts, check-ins, analyze discussions that take place, ask attendees about how they heard about you), brand love (track following metrics, positive testimonials created, brand advocate roles, amount of user-generated content, third-party blog posts)
Tracked and reported in regular intervals
Community Measurement Data to Work
Evaluate effectiveness – growth, and engagement to assess
Growth related activities – influence outreach programs, increase growth with visibility
If lacking – not talking about or sharing information your customers truly care about
Study other online communities in your community
Study well-engaged channels to build momentum by duplicating success
Building community id building relationships over time
Bradley, Anthony J., and Mark P. McDonald. The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees. Harvard Business Review Press, 2011.