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A word on growing your community
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Build it, and they probably won’t come. Build it bigger and they probably still won’t come. Build roads that lead directly to it and signpost why someone might want to go there and you may just be lucky enough to get some visitors. This is the key to building a successful online community around your product and is a lesson many seem to forget.
I’ve lost count of the amount of Facebook pages or Twitter profiles I’ve seen, that have one or two updates and have since been left to bite the dust. When you’re growing your brand online it can often seem like you’re shouting into an empty room with only the echo for company. Communities aren’t going to grow overnight and perserverance is essential here. No matter how fantastic your product, people aren’t going to join your community unless they can see a real reason to and can see that you might actually talk to them back. This takes time for any brand to do and it’s easy to see why many give up so easily.
Don’t build a Facebook page ‘just because’. You have to be sure you have the time to make it work, and the content to actually bring something of value to the space. Even if you only have one or two people in your community at the start, don’t give up and brand your efforts a failure. Recognise the value in this handful of followers. Engage with them regularly early on and, if you do it right, you’ll find that your community will begin to grow more organically.
If you’re lucky enough to have an existing following around your brand – remember to use this to get the word out. Add your Twitter/Facebook profile onto your website, email newsletter, staff LinkedIn profiles, company email signatures. You have to work to build paths that lead people to your social profiles.
I can’t guarantee it’s going to be easy – social media isn’t meant to be easy, but that’s only because the rewards are so great.
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I agree that engagement is key to the growth of any community, and ultimately the quality of that engagement is even more important. However, I think it’s important to note that there are citable examples of communities which have grown 10’s of thousands of followers in extremely short periods (i.e. less then a month). If you have something to offer that is perceived to have a high value, whether it’s tangible or not, you can grow a community extremely quickly.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that the rate at which a community grows could be seen to directly represent the value that users are putting on that community. This assumes that the community is being publicised and the actual level of growth would be dependent on the target market (niche vs. broad interest, Irish audience vs. US audience, etc.).
I agree on your point regarding engagement, it is about quality not quantity. Where a community is growing to tens of thousands in a short space of time, I’d probably question the level of engagement and long term benefit you’re getting there. That all depends on your definition of a community however, which is another post entirely!
I think it all boils down to the question “why”:
Why are you (as a company) engaging in social media – what do you want to achieve? and Why should your target market/client base engage with you online – what’s in it for them?
I agree with Christian that there are plenty of examples of building “communities” quickly but the question of whether they are successful for the company centres around whether the community is a) engaging with the company/entity and b) this engagement is leading to the outcomes the company had originally envisaged.
If, for example, the aim for Comparethemarket.com was to build brand, increase awareness etc. then their 500,000+ strong community on Facebook is a success story. Aleksandr Orlov the meerkat is extremely popular and has developed a fanbase/community who are engaged enough to spread the word and interact directly with him. This translates to great brand development for the Comparethemarket.com name.
If, however, their aim had been to develop their feedback mechanism and improve customer service (somehow i don’t think it was) then this community, although large and engaged, would not achieve the original aim of the company in developing a social media campaign.
So basically the way i see it, it’s about figuring out the answers to the two “whys” and making sure they fit and then executing really well – putting a lot of time and effort into it.