Social media tools and technology can help to cultivate a community or provide online locations where communities can exist and grow. The execution of social media strategy can achieve deeper levels of success and engagement due to the presence of a community. Conversely, social media effectiveness can be limited by its non-existence.

Myth: If you build it they will come.

Truth: Creating an engaging community through a website, a blog, a Twitter profile, a Facebook page, or private customer facing online social network takes time, resources, and most importantly, commitment. It means first establishing how these online spaces and communities fit into a larger marketing, PR, and/or customer service strategy and align with the target audience.

No matter why type of platform you are looking to use to connect with your customers, clients or employees it’s important to start with the development of a solid foundation.  There are key foundational elements the can help you to build this foundation as well as enable your community to engage with your product, service, brand or organization:

• Content: What will your content consist of? This of course will be linked to your broader and more detailed communications marketing strategy, but content is always your starting point. Your content should resonate with both your audience and your overarching messaging objectives.
• Measurement: It’s important to identify your engagement goals and establish a means of measurement. This will help you to stay more focused on the measurable goals of your social media channels as well as enable you to revise your approach as necessary.

  Radian6 offers great ideas on how to measure community impact and effectively define community success, “How you measure community impact largely depends on how you want to define what a “successful” community means for your business.”

• Guidelines: Developing user or community guidelines can be incredibly valuable and help promote engagement. Users need to know how they can participate, what are the rules and expectations, and where they can access support to assist them to do this.
• Boundaries: Organizations need to assess their own expectations, policies, and legal needs that might impact what is and isn’t allowed. A posted Terms of Use or a legal disclaimer can help notify the community of content restrictions and moderating.
• Moderation: Moderation of comments or other community content is important for several reasons. It shows your investment and commitment to the community, and it enables you to keep conversations focused and relevant to your readers.

Utilizing an online community, whether Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare or a blog, as part of your communication marketing and/or customer service strategy can be powerful. To help you maximize that potential remember to develop a solid engagement foundation.

Taking the time to execute content, measurement, and engagement in a strategic and thorough way can help your organization build a engaged community that welcomes participation, promotes loyalty, and generates value while enabling you to effectively manage potential challenges and hurdles that might develop along the way.

Being able to engage with customers, prospective customers, peers, and business leaders is an opportunity that should be nurtured and allocated the appropriate amount of commitment and time.

What foundational elements do you find are important? What tips do you have for organizations when creating an online presence and cultivating community engagement?

(Image courtesy of katiedee47, Flickr)

See the new updated Agenda with a fantastic line of speakers and topics.

Sandra Fathi, President of Affect Strategies, will be talking with Rob Key from Converseon on “Social Media & Multiple Personality Disorder” from 4:00-4:25.

And I will be part of the SocComm “twitter team”: A dedicated group of people in the audience sharing content on Twitter so that the “Social Communications revolution will be seen on Twitter” – 140 characters at a time.

Follow me on Twitter: @yasminbendror

Also, get $50 off registration: Use coupon code ‘affectstrategies’

Hope to see you there, or follow the tweets…

Woot.com is an online store and community that sells “cool stuff” for cheap. It has ‘one-day- one-deal’ product offer: They sell one new item per day until it is sold out or until 11:59pm central time when it is replaced.

Less than two years ago, Woot had about 2,000 Twitter followers. Followers now number 23,000. Woot’s feed is #43 on the list of Twitter feeds with the most followers, according to Twitterholic’s rankings. Overall traffic to Woot’s website has almost doubled from a week before they started the Twitter feed in 2007 to early this year…

So here are some tips for executives on communicating with employees:

• Saying nothing is not an option – you must acknowledge the situation and recognize people’s concerns at minimum.
• Information is power – if you are the source of the information, it has more weight than what ‘people are saying’. Let your team know how your company is being impacted and what your plan is to address it. Be realistic, but positive about your company’s ability to overcome the situation – you set the tone.
• Listen – listening to employees helps them feel better, even when you are not offering an immediate remedy. They want to know that they can trust you, that you care, and that you are taking their concerns seriously.
• Be visible and available – make sure that you are accessible to employees and that you are delivering your message, good or bad, in person. Leadership is always tested in hard times and although its not easy, personally delivering difficult news is always a better choice.
• Make sure management is on the same page – your entire executive team should be unified and have a clear message and action plan.
• Don’t let the media run your business – don’t let employees hear about how your company is fairing from a news report. Significant business announcements should be delivered to employees first, and then the media. Let them hear your version before the news reinterprets it.

There is no good way to deliver the news if your company is having to face layoffs or other difficult business decisions – but there are better ways and there are worse. If you treat your employees with respect, and let them know in advance what to expect, they will understand the situation and be more prepared to accept it. This approach can also help motivate your team to join together to overcome the hurdles together towards a successful new year.

A couple of weekends ago, I had a conversation with someone about how the phrase “viral marketing campaign” is meaningless. Why? Because when marketers release great content into the wild, the campaign is over. You can make your content very easy to share and distribute — to spread virally — but, in my view, you have to abandon the expectations that the word “campaign” denotes. You must leave your plan open.

I love this video, shot in New Orleans a couple of months ago. Marketers looking for an example of a viral video need look no further. But take notice: there was no master plan, no overarching agenda at work. In the words of the director:

We had an idea: ask as many people as possible, the same question. We didn’t know exactly why, I guess we were could hope to expose a slice [of] human emotion (maybe). Just the simple act of reaching out and asking the question, is such a enthralling experience in itself. So go ahead, ask yourself…..

Planning a “viral marketing campaign?” Maybe you should just take a camera on the street and see what happens.

Bonus points for anyone who can spot my sister

• New YouTube Tool Helps Increase of Videos, Advertising Age, September 8, 2008
• 9 Client Satisfaction Tips, HOW Design, January 22, 2008
• How to Work with an Illustrator, HOW Design, January 23, 3008
• The NFL Stakes its Future on IT, Baseline Magazine, September 2008

Dell’s simple request: Post your ideas and tell us what products and services you like, what you don’t like.

There are four tabs: “Post…your ideas for new products and services”, “Promote…interesting ideas you want to see”, “Discuss… with Dell” and “See…what Dell is planning to develop”.

Within weeks, people started posting ideas that you could comment on and “promote” or “demote” to gain recognition. To date, the site has around 76,000 comments and around 10,000 ideas.

By being asked to voice their opinions and participate in forums and programs like these, customers feel good, valued and important. This leads to customer loyalty, great and effective word-of-mouth marketing, which in turn, positively impacts the bottom line of any business. Watch jebBlue and Dell take off again.

It’s a win-win.

PR Idea Book: 50 Proven Tools that Really Work Written By: Jeff Winke, Reviewed By: Walter, Media Relations Specialist

About Walter: Walter serves as a Media Relations Specialist at Affect Strategies. Prior to his working at Affect Walter held the Media Relations Coordinator position at Multivu, a division of PR Newswire that specializes in broadcast public relations.Prior to MultiVu, Walter served as Associate Director of Audio Services for Medialink Worldwide, a global leader in broadcast and broadband marketing.

About the Jeff Winke: Jeff Winke is a PR counselor, magazine editor and adjunct university professor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Throughout his career Mr. Winke has provided consulting services for clients spanning from the U.S. to Eastern Europe. Besides his highly acclaimed book, PR Idea Book: 50 Proven Tools that Really Work, Jeff is internationally recognized for his award winning book of haiku poems, What’s Not There.

BUZZMARKETING: Get people to talk about your stuff Written By: Mark Hughes, Reviewed By: Sandra, President

About Sandra: Sandra is the President and founder of Affect Strategies. She has more than 15 years of experience in PR and marketing for technology firms. Prior to founding Affect Strategies, Sandra held various positions at RADVISION, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, Nokia and VCON.

About Mark Hughes: Mark Hughes is best known for, what Time Magazine called “one of the greatest publicity coups” in history, introducing e-Bay to Half.com and selling it for $300 million. His marketing career has included work with top players such as Pizza Hut, eBay and AMSC (XM Satellite Radio). As the son of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Hughes’ book, BUZZMARKETING: Get people to talk about your stuff, has received praises from such individuals as the former editor of the Wall Street Journal and the former Chief Marketing Officer of Pepsi-Cola.

Marketing to the Social Web Written By: Larry Webber, Reviewed By: Regina, Senior Account Executive

About Regina: Regina is a senior account executive at Affect Strategies. Prior to joining Affect Strategies, Regina served as Director of Marketing and Sales at HopStop.com, a site dedicated to helping people get easy-to-use mass transit directions for major metropolitan areas. Regina also held the role of Marketing Manager at Borders Books and Music.

About Larry Webber: Larry Webber’s passion for combining technology, the internet and communications has set him aside in the industry as an innovator and has lead to his finding two agencies, Thunderhouse and The Weber Group (no owned by The Interpublic Group of Companies). As one of the first interactive marketing agencies, Thunderhouse catered to such prestigious clients as Coca-Cola, Pfizer, IBM and General Mills. Webber went on to find the Weber Group and proceeded to grow the company to be the world’s largest PR firm. After the acquisition by Interpublic, Webber was named chairman and CEO of Interpublics Advanced Marketing Services.

PR on a Budget: 5 Rules of Great PR Written By: Leonard Saffir, Reviewed By: Katie, Marcom Manager

About Katie: Katie holds the position of Marcom Manager at Affect Strategies. Prior to her work at Affect she served as an Assistant Program Manager for the Capital Roundtable, an event production company for the private equity, investment banking, venture capital, legal, hedge fund, and professional advisory communities in New York City. Katie has also worked as an Account Coordinator at KPR and Associates, a pharmaceutical advertising agency in New York City.

About Leonard Saffir: Leonard Saffir has worked in the fields of public relations, marketing and journalism. His public relations background includes a prominent role at Porter Novelli International as executive vice president. Saffir has written three books, one of which has been chosen by the American Marketing Association as a featured selection. This book, Power Public Relations: How to Master the New PR was published by McGraw-Hill and is used as required reading at several colleges and universities.

The New PR: An Insiders Guide to Changing the Face of Public Relations Written By: Phil Hall, Reviewed By: David, Senior Account Executive

About David: David is a Senior Account Executive at Affect Strategies. He previously served as Director of Public Relations at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy in New York and the College Football Hall of Fame. In addition to his director positions, he has additional public relations experience with the Indianapolis Colts and Purdue University’s football team.

About Phil Hall: Phil Hall is a key figure in the world of communications. As the editor of PR News, Hall is not only regarded as an innovator in the PR world but has also helped many small businesses sustain key media coverage during his tenure as the president of Open City Communications. With over 20 years of experience Hall has earned such prestigious awards as the Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America.

The Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business Written By: Jon Steel, Reviewed By: Leslie, Vice President

About Leslie: Leslie is the vice president of Affect Strategies. Leslie began her career in the corporate marketing department of 24/7 Media, a global advertising network and media technology provider (now part of WPP Group). Prior to joining Affect Strategies, Leslie worked as a freelance Interactive Producer, developing online and downloadable games for several Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network properties. She also served as a Content Manager at Bolt, the Web’s first social networking site for teens.

About Jon Steel: As the co-creator of the famous “got milk?” advertising campaign, John Steel is currently helping WPP companies develop client business while also assisting with creative and strategic development. As the winner of several awards including eleven gold Effie awards from the AMA received for Advertising Effectiveness and the David Ogilvy Gold Award, Steel is highly regarded as an astute advertising professional.