Tag Archives: online community

Community Building: 3 Basics for a Solid Foundation for Success

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To succeed in social media at any level means having a clear understanding of a few of the essential pre-game rules as well as the rules of engagement.

Our focus on the success of our community, and your community, is a top priority for us here at Follr, and in helping you succeed we want to offer tips, tricks, techniques and basics that will help you build a sustainable community and encourage interaction and growth.

The series begins today with 3 basics for building a foundation for success with your community, via social networks and the “rules of engagement”.

Success Starts with the Basics and a Solid Foundation
If you want to be ready for success with a Follr Communities Website, then you have to have a good foundation to build from. Whether you have been using social networking for years or are new to the digital world, it is important to learn the basics, or have a refresher course on what they are.

3 Basics for Building a Foundation for Success

  1. Understand the “Why”
    Before you can focus on the how, you need to have a basic understanding of the why. What this means is “Why are you here?” Just as with any good business plan you need to have an objective or a mission statement. Stop rolling your eyes, and realize that it actually helps maintain focus on the goal of being active in social networking and building your community.

    Spend time considering your purpose and objectives for the community you have built, be sure to write the ideas down. Brainstorm, don’t be afraid to make a long list and then narrow down the focus. If you start with the end in mind it often helps you figure out how to begin and gain momentum.

  2. Determine the “Which”
    Once you understand the Why, you need to figure out the “Which” meaning what networks or platforms work best for your purpose and to attain the goal you identified in the “Why” section. Determining which are the ideal platforms for your community, will help you achieve traction and community growth, as well as quality interactions.

    Being on the bleeding edge won’t necessarily help you – it’s not a race to be first, it’s a marathon of focus and engagement in the right places. If you are consumer focused you want to go where you will find your target demographic, your new audience. Take time to research platform use and study the most successful users, that will help you understand whether the platform will give you a good return for your time. Investing time in the wrong platform will negatively impact you costs in time and resources, be focused and efficient.

  3. Connect the “Distribution Points”
    The purpose of engaging on social networks for a budding community, or any entity, is to build relationships that will lead people back to you community, which is your home-base. Your Follr Community Website is Website 3.0 – it’s the new black and most fashionable way to provide information and encourage interaction. Consider it your hub, the social networks you select to engage on should all be connected back to your community and included in your social wall and links.

    Create the social network accounts, customize the profiles are you are nearly ready. Be consistent with user names on the various platforms, a unified identity is powerful. Then begin linking it all back to your Follr Community website. Next you will need to set up the social sharing feature so that your new posts and content are pushed out to the networks you just connected.

    You’re nearly ready to go…

Join us for the next post in this series to continue connecting the dots and bringing it all together for the most success with your Follr Communities Website.

Your success is our priority. We make it simple so you can focus on what matters, building your community.

Take your Follr Communities Website to the next level with upcoming coaching and webinars for our members. Make sure you watch for your Follr updates with information on upcoming enhancements and new features. Don’t have a community yet? Build your own, it’s Free and Fun!

Building on the Basics: 3 Steps to Be an Online Community Builder

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If you are already an online community builder or aspire to be one, our goal at Follr is to make the experience as simple and fun as possible. As we continue our series on building a solid foundation for success with online communities we will focus on creating the community identity.

When creating a community you should have a clear definition of the community focus and purpose. Creating the community mission statement, as well as a comprehensive list of related keywords, is more important than many understand. Focusing on the recommendations here will result in an increase of online community engagement, interaction and posting, once you’ve opened your doors to your new community.

As soon as people read the term “key words” their minds automatically connect the term with search engine optimization (SEO), in this case that is a secondary benefit of your primary purpose. The primary purpose is to help focus on the content and direction of the online community you are building. Once you have a good list of 10-15 keywords, or terms, related to the community you are building, and the mission statement you defined, you will see a true community begin to form.

3 Steps to Be an Online Community Builder resulting in huge Online Community Engagement

  1. Define your purpose: A Mission Statement

    It might sound tedious but taking time to plan and focus will help create a more viable, and vibrant, online community. When the purpose is clear then people will easily be attracted to the community, don’t allow confusion to be a barrier to community success. A clear definition and statement of purpose make a transition into a new community much easier for a potential member.

    People are hesitant, they resist change, for maximum engagement in a new community being clear in the focus and purpose will put them at ease. By defining this in the community description, and even seeding content into your community, will result in seeing conversations begin at a significantly faster rate than the average online community builder does.

  2. Keyword: Success
    Identifying keywords which relate to the community topic and purpose allows for powerful online community building tricks. The first is that now potential community members can be found via social search. Use your key words/terms to search and find those potential community members. The second is that if the goal is to ramp the interactions up in the community even faster, you can use those same words and terms to invest in SEO and purchase Adwords via Google.

    Notice the focus on sharing the community with people on other social networks. By being “discoverable”, and in turn discovering, a rapid decrease in the odds of community survival shift in the favor of the community builder.

    Using social search tools, you will find people who are “talking” about your topics and focus, and get into the conversation with them. If you have seeded enough content and encouraged your community members to do so as well, you should have no problem bringing the conversation back to your Follr Communities website.

  3. Target: Locked and Engaged
    Once you begin to identify people who are conversant on the topic for your community you want to begin to have conversations, on the topic with them. Create saved searches (eg Google Alerts) to monitor – blog posts, tweets, shares, statuses, etc. that have already happened or are happening live.

    Take time to review the conversations, be sure there is something relevant posted within your community. If not, consider posting something – take the topic and spin a question out of the conversation or post. Try to build a few responses to it from your community before you get into a discussion with the target of your attempts at engagement.

The goal of these key steps is to create a community alive with conversation and engagement. Searching for people and focusing on being found is a very genuine way of finding people who are like-minded and want to participate with you and your community. Don’t feel as though you are being “sneaky” – there is nothing sneaky about connecting and sharing with other people, it is the entire purpose of building an online community.

Show us how it works for you, create your Follr Community – they are simple online communities to build, with an elegant format similar to a template, and all you do is fill in the information and voila you are up and running.

There really is no simple way to be an online community builder than with Follr.