Building an Online Community

While social media was not initially created with the intent of being another tool for marketers, it has rapidly become and integral part of any marketing plan. There are examples of corporations making incredible use of these new tools and establishing themselves as someone worth watching and listening to online. There are also examples of organizations who have done such a bad job with social media that they have become identified as nothing more than someone who wastes the attention you've given them, or worse...SPAMMERS.

Spam.  Not to be confused with Spammers.  Not sure how processed meat became the go-to word for unsolicited email and social media harassment.

Spammers ruin the good intent that so many companies have when venturing into social media. Social media is an incredible opportunity to engage and interact with your customers, leads, employees, and even business partners. When someone decides to become a fan of yours on Facebook, decides to follow you on Twitter, or subscribes to your blog, it's because they think your messages are entertaining, interesting, intriguing or worth aligning themselves with. They are essentially offering their loyalty. They are willing to publicly acknowledge a tie to your organization to their personal connections. That's HUGE.

Unfortunately, along with the companies like Buffalo Wild Wings, who use social media to have fun with their customers, there are companies or independent "experts" who force their opinion and pour their useless information all over you. This is when there is a huge difference between interacting and selling online. The people who are truly successful building an online community are not forcing their opinion. They are doing their best to put out interesting content, interacting on a one to one basis and making their company worth interacting with. Ultimately, their fun little online community will visit their website, go to their store, set up a sales call. These relationships do lead to customers and to income. But you're going about it in a different way.

The people on Twitter who "follow" everyone in the hopes that they will get "followed" back are spammers and as a result, are following 25,000 and have only 300 followers. The people who send out updates on Facebook every 15 minutes urging you to go to their website and buy something are spammers. People whose blog is nothing more than an online sales pitch are spammers. Spammers ruin the reputation of legitimate marketers who are trying to build an online community. Don't fall into the dangerous rut of becoming a spammer yourself. And if you are genuine about your intent to build an online community, heed my warnings.  Don't ruin inbound marketing for the rest of us.