The definition of a community means different things to different people… For example, a community could mean:

• a group of people living in a particular local area; “the committee was chosen from all areas in our community”
• common ownership; “in our gated community, we share common areas such as the pool, the clubhouse and the gym”
• a group of nations having common interests “they have applied to join the NATO community”
• an agreement as to goals; “the people in the neighborhood and the local police found they had a “community of interests”
• residential district: an area where all the houses were planned and built at the same time
• (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other.

But when it comes to the online “world” – people often gravitate into virtual “social” communities – the most popular at the moment are probably communities like twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

And that’s what I want to talk about – building an online community to support your business.

Building a real community isn’t easy.  (Because if you want to build a successful community, it has to go deeper than just building a list of “followers” on facebook or twitter.) Sure, thanks to technology, it’s not difficult to build a list of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

I can give you three perfect examples of people who did just that – in fact, they’ve each built a list of millions of followers:

First, actor Ashton Kutcher (and husband to actress Demi Moore) did it on April 16.  He did it by using streaming online television called Ustream.  (And we’ll be talking about Ustream and how you can use it in your business in an upcoming article.) (Click this link to see the article by Pete Cashmore which includes part of the video.)  Something you might also find interesting is the fact that it only took him a month and a half to gain 3 million followers – you can read more about it in  this article by Ben Par .

Someone else who’s currently got over 3 million twitter followers is Ellen Degeneres.  And Oprah is a close second, having 2,700,000-something.

So there are the three perfect examples I talked about above.

And we can all see why this is a good thing or an actor, or a television talk show host, or even an author, who wants to spread the word about their latest movie, upcoming shows or soon-to-be-released book, right?

The question is, do you want to spend the time, energy and work to do the same thing or your business? Is it even possible, let alone advisable?

It depends.

It depends on what your over-all social media goals are.

What results do you need  - or want – to achieve?

What purpose does your social media marketing strategy serve in the “big picture” of your business goals, and how does it relate to your mission statement, vision statement and exit strategy?

And, by the way, (in case you’re curious), if you haven’t already added social media to your business and marketing strategy, I think you should be. Here’s why:

We are riding the crest of a very exciting and very fundamental wave of new technology that’s already changed almost every aspect of our lives – everything from the way doctors are going to be able to test for and treat diseases, to how we communicate with each other, to how we learn and work.

And we’ll talk more about that in an upcoming article, but for now, lets focus on what this means to your business – and what it could mean if you don’t have a voice in the social media community…

First of all, it means you’re missing out on an opportunity for your customers to meet you, get to know you, and trust you.  And after that, their next step is to buy from you.

Why?  Because consumers go online to do research about products or services they’re interested in buying.  BUT that doesn’t necessarily mean they just go to your Website to see what you’ve got to offer.

A March 2009 study by Knowledge Networks, for example, found that between 10% and 24% of US social media users turned to social networks when making purchase decisions about various categories of products and services. (eMarketer, October 2009)

And according to a study reported in the September 2009 issue of Manage Smarter – “Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place.”

Are you wondering what that means in terms of actual profit – money that goes into your pocket?

Well, according to a study Yahoo.com did with comstudy (from April 2006 to January 2007) that measured the impact of search marketing and display advertising on consumer shopping behavior…it resulted in a $10.5 b (that’s billion dollars) total revenue – with $2.4b (again, read billion dollars) in incremental revenue.

According to BIG Research, 89& of consumers making in-store purchases in “key retail categories” conducted online research before making those purchases.

So can you see how you might be missing the boat and leaving money – maybe a LOT of money – on the table – if you’re NOT creating your own social media community?

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If so, you probably know that twitter was recently the victim of a DOS (Denial of Service) attack.  Earlier today I read a blog post by Michelle MacPherson – an expert in social media networking – called Why Social Media Sucks, which got me thinking about it – especially because right now it’s the “next big thing” and it seems like everyone and their brother is on the bandwagon about how social media can make or break your business.

It’s no secret that the world of media and marketing has changed.

Television viewing is down, subscriptions to newspapers and magazines are down – and ad revenues are in the toilet – to the point that even some of the biggest have announced they’re closing their doors…

• Time Inc. recently announced they’re closing the doors on “Southern Accents”

And according to Newspaper Death Watch, the following papers have closed their doors since 2007.

• Claremont Eagle
• Tucson Citizen
• Rocky Mountain News
• Baltimore Examiner
• Kentucky Post
• Cincinnati Post
• King County Journal
• Union City Register-Tribune
• Halifax Daily News
• Albuquerque Tribune
• South Idaho Press
• San Juan Star

And people are moving to social networking sites like twitter and facebook by the thousands.

But what does that mean to you and your business?

If you look at some of the information that’s out there, you may think you’re supposed to get out there and get as many followers as possible.

But as Michelle points out in her article, “Social media sucks when it’s all you’ve got.  400,000 Twitter followers doesn’t mean jack if you can’t reach them when Twitter is down.(I’m picking on Twitter here, but this applies for any social networking platform. Facebook fan pages with 5k fans suck when Facebook is down.  And so on). The goal with social media isn’t just to amass large numbers of subscribers. (If they’re untargeted subscribers, perhaps people who are just following you so that you follow them back, they’re pretty much worthless anyway)…”

So what is the point of using Social Media, and is it worth the time and effort in your business?

I think the answer is yes.

Social media is the new media.  It’s us as consumers deciding who, deciding when and deciding how – we want to get news, information and messages.

It’s here to stay – and, according to Seth Godin, in his latest ebook, “Who’s There – Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web” – “… Social media, blogging especially, is social. Not antiseptic or anonymous or corporate. This means that the writing skills you and your organization have honed aren’t going to help you very much. When you write at your audience, or even to your audience, you’ve made it really clear that you think that they are the other, and you think that they are yours. It is not your audience, of course. The audience belongs to itself. And if you talk as if they are not like you, then it’s awfully difficult to keep up your position of power…”

So getting back to the question of how you should use social media for your online business, here are my thoughts.

Your Website should be the main place your customers and prospects come when they’re ready to buy your products or services.

You can and should be driving traffic to your Website in a variety of different ways – remembering, of course, to go where your customers are already at and talking to them in their language, answering the questions they want answered.

And use social media or social networking as a tool to personalize the conversation.  To create a community, not followers.

And we’ll get into what “community” means from  your business’ perspective in the next post.

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