Most mornings, I sit down at my computer with the first cup of coffee, open up my browser and begin what I call my morning surf. This morning that included several great links from friends on Twitter, including a link to Jason Falls’ post, “What is Most Important in Online Community Building?”
Not only are the points he makes correct, but I love that he used his theory of leveraging your already existing community to get answers by doing just that with his Twitter followers. Read the article and you’ll see he posed the question for the blog post to members of his community to gather their opinions.
He raises a point that I try to make to everyone who asks me, and that is that you must be flexible. When a brand does a print campaign, it is pretty much locked down and there is nothing you can do about it once it is out there. It’s in the magazines, newspapers and hanging on bus stops, and short of ripping it down and starting over, there is not much you can do if you need to change.
Online campaigns have to be flexible and organic. While you may have planned everything out and have really pretty storyboards around how you think everything will flow, you have to be ready to evolve the campaign if needed. The tools that people use. The sites they spend time on. The reactions they give you. Any of these can change mid-campaign, and you have to be ready and comfortable to change with them. This is just as true if you are building a community around your brand. You must listen to the reactions of your community and act accordingly.
Before this morning, I wasn’t really part of Jason’s community. I had seen the name, but I didn’t know much about the guy. But this single blog post got my attention, and now I’m watching to see what he does next. I see that he has a YouTube channel called Social Media Explorer TV. I just watched a couple of episodes, and I’m looking forward to more. I’ve subsribed to his blog and plan to read older posts later today. I see he is going to SXSW like I am, so I hope we’ll get to meet in person.
The point I’m trying to make is that communities happen. We are each members of ones big and small, and sometimes we are rather passive members of them. But you never know when you might join a new one. I know this morning when I woke up I didn’t think that was in the cards, and look what happened. *grin*
