In my last post called “Creating Community, Not Followers – a Social Media Rant” I asked you if you were using social media as part of your marketing/advertising strategy.  This is part two of this social media series – and why you should be creating a community – not a list of followers – in your business…Lets start with what a community is…

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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