The speed at which social communities move means undesirable results as well as positive ones can be amplified. Businesses must learn to manage the speed of social to capture the full value of the social community.
By Joshua Ferdinand

One important fact that has emerged since businesses began using social media is that developing a value–generating online social community requires careful planning. The second important fact is that the speed of social can lead to negative consequences as easily as it can produce positive results. Getting heard and staying relevant in the heavily populated social media system is challenging, but successful engagement of the right crowd can produce phenomenal business results.

Developing a social media community begins with understanding that it is not a virtual salesperson trying to push products and services nonstop like a continuously running advertisement trying to reach everyone online. Used to its full advantage, social media is an engagement tool that can humanize the business, meaning it is about building relationships with the right crowd.

Develop Caring Communities
The speed of social media means that one negative comment about a product or service can reach thousands, maybe millions, of people in a matter of hours. That rate of speed can also enable positive comments to move just as fast.

Think of social media in terms of a personal friendship. When people are true friends, they do not spread malicious gossip about each other. There is a relationship based on trust and good intentions. Brands should approach social media with a similar perspective. Developing a relationship via social media with current or potential customers, versus direct marketing, is the ideal approach for a savvy consumer base.

One goal of businesses using social media should be to build a strong, positive reputation as a company that cares about communities made up of consumers and businesses. It is easy to attract the wrong crowd when social media is used as a direct marketing tool. The right crowd is one that is engaged, and there are several intentional strategies that increase engagement with people most likely to support the brand.

How does a company develop a lasting relationship with people in cyberspace? One strategy is to offer feedback when consumers praise the products or services, or mention they are seeing intended results. For example, a company sells nutritional products, and someone posts that her health is improving as a result of consistent use. Offering encouragement and congratulations makes the business a "friend" who truly cares.

Like any relationship, social media relationships need nurturing. Ignoring online community comments is likely to attract the seemingly endless number of people looking for an excuse to criticize a brand.

Accessibility and Responsiveness Matter
Closely connected to offering feedback is the need to ensure all followers on various business social media sites can gain access to staff to resolve issues or can find desired information about products and services.

Companies are increasingly using chatbots to assist with maintaining positive communication with the online community. The chatbot technology emerged as machine learning advanced, and natural language processing humanizes the chatbot. Chatbots are software applications that mimic human speech, simulating conversations with real humans. Smaller businesses with limited IT budgets and unable to develop their own chatbot software programs can still take advantage of this technology via sites like Facebook Messenger.

Of course, developing engaging social media content is always crucial to building the desired group of followers. Engaging content makes people want to join the community and to share information. Engaging content is a two-way street, too. A business, for example, that encourages followers to tell their story supplements the story the business tells.

LEGO is an expert example of a company that has successfully mastered building a social media following. The company's social strategy is built on the two basic needs of its customers – the need to play and build as a community, and the need to take pride in a personal creation. LEGO has amplified social media results in various ways, including running a competition; maintaining a crowdsourcing platform that encourages people to submit ideas; and issuing an invitation for children to build an imaginary "Kronkiwongi" based on their personally creative ideas. LEGO reaches out to its followers with interesting focused content and lots of opportunities for interaction with the company and between followers.

Always Listening … to the Right Followers
To manage the speed of social requires the business to always be listening in order to capture opportunities for brand building amid the loud noise.

The noise includes negative and positive comments, and both need responses as quickly as possible. The positive comments should be amplified via the company's response. A comment may offer new ideas for product uses, a suggestion for new products, ideas to improve packaging, a push for increasing social responsibility in a particular community, and so on. In effect, the followers are offering marketing and innovation, so having the ability to pull out creative ideas is important. There are ways for all sizes of companies to "listen" without investing a lot of resources, like Google Alerts which is free.

One of the challenges that organizations face is deciding which social media platforms to manage. Trying to maintain communication on all the sites is a herculean task, even with monitoring software. It is noisy online, so the key is to determine the specific sites where the target audience is found. It is direct engagement that builds relationships and not the company's mere presence on the social media sites.

To stay on track, measure results. Data and analytics offer guideposts, keeping the effort productive. Categories of measurements include output (what the company is producing), out-takes (new perspective consumers develop after brand exposure), and outcomes (changes in audience activities after brand strategy exposure). Quantitative and qualitative data collected in each of the categories includes volume, sentiment, and momentum. The ultimate goal is to be one step ahead of the social community.

These are just a few strategies that can cut through the social media noise and enable a business to intentionally develop a positive brand. Trying to do too much can lead to doing things that have little or no impact in attracting the right social media crowd.

Target the audience, be responsive with relevant content, and monitor results are the three primary strategies for developing relationships. Be a friend to the followers. Be intentional.