Posts tagged as:

community building

10 Better Ideas Than Looking at a Top 10 List for Advice

by Andrew Hanelly · January 10, 2012

Top 10 lists are like new year’s resolutions. They seem great at first, but they quickly make you feel bored, hopeless, and like you’ve wasted your time.

And that’s usually because they are filled with things you know you should do but can’t commit to doing. They’re too aspirational. Too shoot-for-the-moon-y.

Which is why I’ve kept this one bare-bones, tactical, and hopefully useful for you beyond the 4 days it typically takes us to crash and burn through our empty new year promises.

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Your Community Is Out There, Where Are You?

by Jason Falls · August 3, 2011

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is from Harrison Kratz, perhaps the most talented, aggressive, smart and socially minded person who can’t legally drink I’ve ever met. He’s a fire ball and has done more in just a few short years in the social media space than most people will in the next 10. He wanted to share something passionate with you. I think you’ll see why I said yes.

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25 comments

Four C’s for Community Cultivation

by Ike Pigott · July 7, 2011

I have a friend who is building a nice niche community around natural hair. While not entirely new to communications or even blogging, she was new to the concept of building an intentional audience. She asked me for suggestions, and this is what I shared with her:

Four C’s to build a community

1) Content

If you don’t have content, you won’t bring any new value. Concentrate on building out your content in the proportions that matter to your intended audience. You may have a lot to say about a particular niche, but odds are you won’t be able to grow until you widen it out further.

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30 comments

That Website Ain’t Gonna Visit Itself

by Andrew Hanelly · June 28, 2011

If you build it, they will, well, probably go somewhere else.

Your target audience probably doesn’t share the same level of enthusiasm that you have toward your new website/redesign/mobile app/digital venture. More than likely, they won’t even notice. They’ll go about visiting their normal destinations online; checking Facebook, maybe Twitter, and dipping into their pool of RSS subscriptions.

But your target audience almost definitely won’t just come to your website because it happens to be there.

Launching your endeavor is a big first step. But it’s just the beginning of a long, long marathon.

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69 comments

Is Facebook for Business Overrated

by Eric Brown · March 22, 2011

This may not be a popular position, or even a right one, but our experience with our own business, and the businesses we do social media marketing for, Facebook for business is completely overrated. Marketers are flocking toward Facebook in droves, partaking in an array of circus acts to garnish “Fans” and “Likes”, mostly with lackluster results at best, yet the Facebook madness drones on.

Facebook Is the New Web site

Small Business Labs reported on some interesting data from the Network Solutions State of Small Business report on the impact of social media on traditional websites;

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Social Business Leadership Framework

by Mark Smiciklas · March 10, 2011

From a leadership perspective, embedding social business ideas into an organization has less to do with embracing tools and technology than it does with learning how to facilitate and manage culture change. What set of skills do leaders need in their toolbox to effectively lead organizations through the process of adopting social business philosophy?

The following framework is inspired by James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s Five Practices Model, from their ground breaking book The Leadership Challenge . This post is designed to help leaders understand some of the unique considerations, competencies and behaviors related to leadership in the age of social media.

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What Mixx.com’s Sale Can Teach Us About Community

by Jason Falls · February 14, 2011

Mixx.com has been acquired by UberMedia. The new Mixx.com launches sometime this month according to the Mixx blog. Apparently, the social news voting element of the site will be retired.

On the surface, this appears to be a nice endgame for Chris McGill who created Mixx in response to the soap opera-like community vs. site politics that Digg.com experience in the 2007-2008 timeframe. Grow up, do something well, build an audience and get acquired. But if you look a little closer, what happens with Mixx and its niche, but vibrant social news community, might just teach us a thing or two about how communities work and that they often have lives of their own.

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What Sandwiches Taught Me About Marketing

by Andrew Hanelly · November 25, 2010

I’m about to break an unwritten rule of social media. I’m going to talk about what I had for lunch.

But I’m not going to bore you with a Twitpic and a quip about the chili con carne I brought in Tupperware from last night’s dinner (though it was delicious). I’ll save that for a Tweet or Facebook status. Because the lunch I want to talk about today was the one I served—on a daily basis—back in college. (Hey, it’s Thanksgiving Day, how can I not write about food?)

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25 comments

The Future of Social Media Is Real

by Jason Falls · October 30, 2010

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Ilana Rabinowitz, Vice-President of Marketing for Lion Brand Yarn Company.

I have a friend who is an investment advisor. In 2005, he was talking to the man painting his house. The painter told him that he was going start investing in real estate because so many people he knew had made money flipping houses. That was my friend’s economic indicator that the housing bubble was about to burst. At the time, people thought he was crazy. But, his point was, that when people who have no understanding or interest in something start to jump in just because everyone else is doing it, take note of a possible bubble.

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