Lately, I’ve been discussing two Cs that are important to social media strategy: conversation and community. However, in order to create these two necessities, a brand must plan for and deliver great content for these communities to find of interest, enough so that it spurs conversation, connects with them and causes them to connect with others in your brand’s community.
I was counting the number of social networks out there today, and I ran out of time before I needed to develop this blog. It’s safe to say that there are scores upon scores of social networks. A client recently asked me one by one what each of them did, and while I had a 99% accuracy rate, I told her that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the new ones that pop up daily and what they do, but that it was safe to say that they all had at least one thing in common—they all use some sort of content to drive the conversation within the communities.
For example, SlideShare builds community around slide shows. Delicious builds community around bookmarks. Blip.fm builds community around music.12seconds.tv builds community around 12 second video clips. Blogs build community around shared topics. The list continues.
The other thing that these networks have in common is that they require some sort of user profile that can amass a following. In fact, if you do not have friends on Facebook, or followers on Twitter, even subscribers at your blog, your content doesn’t mean a thing because no one is exposed to it.
The key to the content should be that it leverages the common interest of the community. I posed a question to the team about what a community is, and we agreed that it’s not enough to simply have a group of people to create community. After all, how many of you live in a neighborhood where no one speaks, no one ever borrows a cup of sugar, no one ever gathers at the neighborhood pool, no one ever gathers for a coop board meeting? Living like this, you have a gathering of people in dwellings, but no connections, no community.
Connections create community. Connections are made over shared experiences, values, interests which can only be developed with great content.
So as you are developing your social media strategy, take some time to consider what content you will offer, when you will offer it and ensure that it is rich in media, meaning not just word, but pictures, video, sound, music, slide shows, etc.
The last thing a brand needs is a multiple social networking sites with an abundance of followers and nothing that binds them or spurs them to conversation or action.
So ask yourself:
How is your brand doing with the four Cs: Content, Community, Connections and Conversation?
LMS
