By Barry Libert
When it comes to building a successful social network for your company or product, you need to understand that there’s a lot of prep work to do.
You can’t just set up a Facebook profile for your company, tweet once or twice a day, and expect public interest in your company to shoot through the roof.
If you were manning a booth at a tradeshow or conference, you wouldn’t just slap your company’s logo onto a piece of poster board, place your business cards on the table, and hope for the best. Yet that’s exactly how some approach social media – and that’s why so many of these initiatives fail.
If you want to become a meaningful part of social conversations and interactions, you’ve got to know who your target fan base is, where they spend their time online, and what sorts of content and programming is valuable and relevant to them that will foster their continued interest and participation.
You also need to make sure you have the wherewithal to commit to growing and sustaining your “Social Nation.”
Half the battle is knowing which mistakes not to make.
Pitfall #1: Running a Social Nation like a traditional business.
If you want to run a social network, you first need to understand that almost everything you do is a two-way street. You’re not going to prosper if your products and services are designed solely by folks on the inside. You need to embrace the perspectives and contributions of your employees, as well as those of customers and partners.
Pitfall #2: Underinvesting in social initiatives and abandoning them too soon.
Understand that a social network is organic. It won’t materialize with a proverbial snap of the fingers. Early on, you’ll need to invest a good deal of time, thought and money in attracting fans and followers. And your efforts will need to be sustained. Only after you’ve built a firm foundation will your social network begin to sustain itself through participant contribution and recommendation.
Successful strategies include posting quality content that people want to consume, letting customers tell their stories and post their grievances and then responding to their criticisms.
Also, make sure that prospects are able to learn about your business through customer and employee testimonials. Moreover, using multiple approaches – a blog, Facebook profile, and interactive Web site – will reach more people.
Pitfall #3: Neglecting to find ways to encourage and inspire your social network’s followers and fans.
Your fans and followers are essentially volunteering their time and energy to serve as developers, sounding boards and advertisements for your company. Respect what they have to say and take their input to heart.
Pitfall #4: Relying on a “build-it-and-they-will-come” mentality.
You’ll need to purposefully reach out to potential community members and make it worth their while to accept your invitation.
Rolling out a community and just expecting people to join as friends or followers is a flawed philosophy. Marketing 101 principles still apply. That means you need compelling incentives to have people join your community. You also need an aggressive programming strategy, one that includes defining your key audiences and targeting them through all available channels, to ensure that they know that you want to build a relationship with them.
Pitfall #5: Delaying the process of going social.
You don’t have the luxury of waiting until it’s convenient to go social. Your competitors aren’t waiting. If you don’t start gathering loyal followers and fans now, there’s a good chance that some other company will woo them first.
Pitfall #6: Underestimating the power of a social network.
If you believe social networking is just a window dressing, think again. Social media and community collaboration bring brand-building, customer loyalty and retention, cost reductions, improved productivity and revenue growth.
Pitfall #7: Neglecting employees, partners, investors, or customers when building your social network.
Social networks are organic organizations, so the more people who are empowered to influence yours, the better. You’ll find that leaders will emerge from your community population, whether they are employees, partners, customers or prospects. Future leaders will come from places you never expected. Empower every member of your community with the resources they need, then listen and be responsive to their insights, needs, and ideas.
Pitfall #8: Relying on traditional approaches when designing your social network.
A decade ago, you probably would have been horrified at the thought of releasing ideas and products into the hands of your customers before they were as complete as you could get them. With social networking, that monolithic approach is now becoming obsolete.
Pitfall #9: Developing your own social software and analytics solutions.
Do what you do best and outsource the software and community building to the experts. Various vendors provide ready-made, complete solutions to help you build your fans, followers, and friends. Facebook and Twitter encourage fans and friends to advance their businesses, not yours. While you should leverage the communities they have built, you need to create your own community to ensure long-term success.
Pitfall #10: Getting caught without partners to help you succeed.
Make sure that you truly treat your community members as partners, not just as fans or numbers. Yes, integrating into the social web (Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks) is key to your future success, but being connected to the social Web is only a part of what you need to do. Shifting your business strategically, culturally, and operationally are key components to the equation.
That means creating a community for the people who matter most in making your business thrive – a place that is all theirs and that is connected to your brand. Your constituents want to connect with like-minded peers, and they want to feel as though they are contributing to a purpose that’s bigger than themselves.
Given that they are buying products and services from you, investing in your company, and working for your organization, providing them with a community they can call their own is the least you can do for them.
Editor’s note: This article appears in the December 2010 print edition.
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