Everyone now knows that Social Media can really boost your brand marketing if you build a social media online community.

First you need an excellent product(s) that you really believe in.  Your customers are not going to become passionate about a mediocre product, and those who will join your online community are your raving fans.  If you don’t have an excellent product you don’t have raving fans, without raving fans you are fighting an uphill battle when using social media.

If you start with solid products social media becomes a much easier and more powerful tool.  Also a relevant community becomes and engaged community.  So “First Things First”, start with a solid product which you can build a community of raving fans around.

Also if you don’t believe in your product(s) 100%, don’t expect your customers to.

Most companies don’t know what their social community wants.

Is it more important to post the content that best supports your brand or ask the social community what is most important to them?  The answer is yes, both. Read More→

Jakob Nielsen published an article in 2006 explaining encouraging your community to contribute, more than 4 Internet years we are still discussing this.  Jakob’s concept has been named Participation Inequality or the 90-9-1 rule.

The concept of Participation Inequality shows us that the large majority (90%) of a social community only consume the content being generated by the minority of the community.  9% of the community intermittently contributes content and 1% is heavy contributors. Read More→

Nothing says authentic like User Generated Content when it comes to building your community.  The challenge for most companies is moving away from generating the majority of the content to allowing the community to generate the content.  The thought of doing this scares most Chief Marketing Officers.

In a truly open and authentic community the people have a voice, of course if content has a very inappropriate message or use of language it needs to be removed. Read More→

How important is it to have a large Facebook fan count?   Unfortunately we can’t judge your success by fan count only, so we cannot answer this question without knowing more.

When analyzing your community through any Social Network you need to understand your community and what their level of participation is, for example what are your “Participation Inequality” percentages?  If you are not familiar with this term I will write a post shortly to discuss further.  Each social network has different metrics, your challenge as the owner of a brand Social Community is knowing what the metrics for your industry are and what your numbers are compared with the top performing companies in your industry. Read More→

We get this question all the time.  How quickly can I build a Social Community and grow my brand through it?

The truth is usually not as quickly as people expect, of course each brand is different.  Sure we have great Social Media tools available today but the tool is only as good as the person using it.  Building quality communities is about developing deliberate and meaningful relationships.  Between you and your community members, and between each other.  How quickly can you build meaningful relationships?  A truly engaged community cannot be bought, it needs to be earned. Read More→

We have all experienced superficial friendships or relationships.  They naturally occur when there is not a reason to develop a deeper relationship.

When building your Social Community it is critical to build a level of trust between your community members and your company.  If they do not trust you they will leave, not participate and not recommend your community/products to their friends.  The following quote “The one thing that changes everything “, from the book The Speed of Trust is a great reminder. Read More→

We will use the 80 & 20 numbers for the purpose of this article.  Say 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customer.  The 20% is loyal fans of your products/services and are placing larger or more orders than the other 80% of your customers.

Your most loyal customers are your ambassadors and will tell their friends and colleagues, that is great but how many people is that?  If you build a Social Community and gives your ambassadors a voice in a Social Media Community how many people will they reach now?  How much is the user generated content from your ambassadors going to cost you?  Not much if you continue to provide quality product/service and keep your customers happy.  Modern Social Media and Networking have enabled a few to communicate too many more than ever. Read More→

We all make recommendations to our friends and family, this is just our social nature to support those close to us (in our tribe).

My neighbor is shopping for a new set of golf clubs so I tell him about these Ping clubs I bought last year and how they improved my game.  Because my neighbor trusts me he purchases a new set of Ping clubs.  Does my neighbor trust me more than an ad for Ping clubs he saw in a magazine, you bet he does.  Review the amazing results of the following Nielsen study.  The % of trust from friends and family and online posts is amazing.  Look at the trust level of traditional marketing methods.  Which is cheaper; recommendations from friends and family and online posts (user generated content) or traditional marketing?  Do the math; the answer should be very clear. Read More→