From the monthly archives:

April 2009

Weekend Branding: Are You Losing Your Identity to Build Someone Else’s Brand

by Deb Ng on April 20, 2009

in Community Management

community

Here’s a situation to ponder:

You’re a fairly well known professional blogger. You’re also moving up in the world of social media. People are respecting your opinion and your brand and you feel you’re going places. Respect isn’t paying the bills, however. You take a job in social media with a fairly well-known organization, and work hard at building their brand. There’s only one problem, your brand, the one you worked so hard to build up all those years, is falling to the wayside. Weekend branding is taking its toll. What do you do when the place you work wants you to lose your brand in order to build up theirs?

I’m thinking it would be a good thing to hire a social media expert with a good following.  Using a well known brand to promote another well known brand could only be a good thing, right? Not all businesses feel that way. Especially those that thing they get the whole social media thing, but don’t have much of a clue.

So I’ll put it to you – how do you build up your brand, and build up a businesses brand, without losing your identity or making your employer think your more concerned with your own brand than theirs?

Discuss…

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Community Management is More than Just Twitter

by Deb Ng on April 19, 2009

in Business,Community,Community Discussions,Community Management,Customer Service

twitterbird

I’ve been a part of this social media thing for several years now. I’ve been blogging and working online for about a decade. I’ve been building up online communities in some form or another for at least ten years. While I won’t claim to be an expert, I think it’s safe to say I know a little of what I’m talking about.  I’ve come to two conclusions about community management. The first is that everyone has a different idea about what a community manager’s job entails. The second is that most people think a community manager is nothing more than a glorified forum moderator who only needs to worry about the social networks.

That’s not it at all.

Community management  is more than just Twitter. It’s more than FaceBook or Ning or MySpace. I’m even going to go as far as to say it doesn’t have much to do with those things at all, and anyone who thinks it’s about how many friends you have on Facebook or followers on Twitter, is clearly missing the mark. Community management is about creating a positive user experience. Yes, that does mean one should monitor the social networks to see what one’s community is saying about them, but that’s not what it’s about at all.

What I like to do is pretend there’s no Twitter or Facebook. How would I reach out to my community then? How can I find out what they think of our service? When I think about it, why would I want to create separate “groups” on the different social networks when the ultimate goal is to get them to socialize at their community’s home base. That just makes cliques, not communities.

Community management isn’t just Twitter. It’s being a voice for the people. It’s being a hands on customer service person. It’s finding out  what the people in your community are talking about and taking that information and putting it to good use. Community management is about creating a positive user experience. It’s about building up relationships with people and gaining their trust. When you think about it, that has nothing to do with Twitter at all.

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Tagged as: Community Management, social networking, Twitter

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Community and Forums

by David Peralty on April 13, 2009

in Community,Shameless Self Promotion

I’ve recently bought, and have been working on a forum. I thought the site would be right up my alley, but after purchasing it, I realized that it didn’t have an active community of its own, and so I am trying my best to jump start it. One of the hardest things to do in community management is to try to start, grow and manage a community that doesn’t have a product, service, or company brand to go with it. The community I am trying to build is focused on sharing information, partnering, and growing businesses online.

Unfortunately, this is a hyper-competitive niche, and is very saturated. Add to that, the normal community pitfalls of not having enough people seed discussions, and you have a community that looks like a failure due to lack of activity, and attraction of activity.

Sure, there are ways to make it look like there is an active community that exists, so that people feel more interested in joining and being part of something that already exists, but my original intent was to search for people that don’t just want to join in, but instead they want to lead. Lead discussions, lead actions, and really grow both their own business and the businesses of others.

The difference between the actions taken to build a successful community and a community that is an ineffective flop can be hard to see, but with patience, effort, and persistence, anyone can be the lightning rod that brings brilliant people, ideas and energy to their community.

Wish me luck with my own and let me know, in the comments below, how you got your community started off on the right foot.

*Shameless Plug* In case you are interested in my forum, you can find it over on EarnersTalk.com and I’ve released two free e-books based on my blogging experiences there.

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