Effective Blogging – Creating Communities with Blog Readers Part 1

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Social Media applications have made it easy to form communities with your blog readers, affiliate marketers as well as with advertisers. More often I have seen bloggers persuading their readers to join their community on Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. Advertisers & marketers can also be valuable members of your social media community – and there is value for them as well, making it a win-win for all.

This is a 2 part post in the Effective Blogging Series covering the why it’s necessary to build micro communities, where to build communities for best exposure & how to build communities with available technology.

In this first part I will highlight the reasons why building communities should be a key focus area for all business bloggers & where to build their communities.

How Social Media can help Build an Effective Blog

• build your business’s reputation & brand easily (read more on building online identity)
• connect with your readers, customers & partners in a more personal manner (read why CEOs are focusing on building relations with social media)
• build buzz & popularity about your business or opinions in a more social manner (read more on how to make your blog popular with social media)
• influence micro communities with your ideas & opinions (read more on connecting with your readers)

Popular Social Media sites to Build Online Communities

Choosing the right media could be a daunting task & choosing to be on all of them is simply impossible. One way to start is to have a marketing plan around social media – which networks you will target, what sort of people do you want to build your community with, how & what will you communicate & how will you respond to feedback.

The extent to wish you decide to use social media for your business will determine the amount to time & money you have to spend to build these online networks. So starting with a couple of the top ones is the best way. Here are a few tips to help you choose your networks.

• geo targeting – not all social media networks are popular everywhere. Choose the networks that has the best reach within your customers communities. Read the Compete report on the geographic spread of social media networks
• universal appeals – over & above geographic targeting, there are certain networks that may not lie in your geography but has an universal appeal. Sites like Facebook, Flickr & Twitter, though mostly used in US has an universal appeal
• demography – if your product or service caters to certain age groups, religious communities or social influence, you must have a plan to use these networks. A few good examples are the Hi5 network that is popular with teens & young adults, MySpace for the artistic & music communities & LinkedIn for the salaried & business professionals

A few Tips on Being Effective with Social Media

This is both from my personal experience as well as from my experience in consulting Fortune 100 companies on internet marketing. You may be able to ratify these from your own experience.

• pick only the minimum number of social media sites when you begin. Experiment in trials & errors to find a sweet spot for your business. What worked for others (even in the same line of business) may or may not work for you
• measure effectiveness of your marketing efforts on social media. This is much like A/B split testing you do for your advertisements & helps you find out what works & what does not. A few metrics could be (a) number of followers / community members you gather (b) activity rates on your communities – how many new comments are posted daily (c) relevance of comments – are these comments relevant to your business or product & how do they add value to your business (d) the cost per new member – how much money you are spending on direct marketing, advertisements for every new member that is joining your community etc
• consistent messaging across all your online communities – make your messages consistent in all your communities, however be keen to adapt to any specific needs of the social networks you are building your community on
• moderate conversations – keep a tab on all the comments & micro communications within your communities & jump in at appropriate times to moderate. Several of these communications could have legal impact that would be best to prevent upfront. You may also be able to influence comments in specific directions by participating & moderating comments

In Part 2 of this mini-series (read here Effective Blogging – Creating Communities with Blog Readers Part 2) I will focus on using available technology to build your social media campaigns. Technology could help you channelize your social media marketing efforts effectively & with the right tools, could save you both time & money.