The World According to Mitch Fanning

At today’s Social Media Club Niagara meeting we’re exploring the topic of online community building.  So in honor of the great panel we’ve got lined up who are:

Cathy Burkout-Bosse of MyPelham.com

Trevor Twining, a Drupal Ninja-Master and Community Builder

Tiffany Mayer of EatingNiagara, and

Chris Ennest from GetOutNiagara.ca

I’m going to share my list of 38 bullet-proof community-building tips.  For starters, I’m not going to get into the reasons why you need to build an online community.

I’m going to assume that for those of you who are reading this or attending tonight’s meeting you see the value in this.  For those that don’t, ignore the following at your own peril.  Feel free to repost all or any of this, but if you do, please give credit to this link.

I’ve broken them done into  3 categories:  mind-set, foundation, social media.  I’ve only given myself an hour do bang this off so here goes.

Here they are, sponsored by Scribe: SEO Copywriting Made Simple (affiliate link).

HAVE THE RIGHT MIND-SET

Be like Dale Carnegie.

1. Be a good listener

2. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.

3. Give honest and sincere appreciation

4. Be genuinely interested in other people.

5. Remember that a person’s name (or Twitter handle “mention” ☺ ) is to them the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

6. Encourage others to talk about themselves (i.e. ask questions).

7. Talk in the terms of the other person’s interest.

8. Avoid arguments.

9. Show respect for the other person’s opinions.

10. If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

11. Begin in a friendly way.

12. Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.

Honorary Mention:

13. Speak like a Human, Not a Press Release.

14. Teach, Don’t Sell.

15. Forget about monetization and SEO (for now).  However, if you must experiment with SEO (and you’re a complete “newbie”) this free 27-page report (affiliate link) by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark gives you a basic strategy for creating content that ranks well in search engines.

BUILD YOUR FOUNDATION

16. Build your team: Strategist, Community Manager, Legal, Privacy/Security, Employees.  If you don’t have the resources see #2.

17. Educate yourself: Permission-based marketing, content creation, email, search, blogs, micro-blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, widgets, apps.  Before you say “why this or why that” learn about all the available tools.  The bell has rang, it’s back to school for you.

18. Listen:  Join a club, start listening to what really smart people in the “space” are saying and doing, get yourself setup on Google Reader  Pay attention.

19. Determine strategy: After listening and finding out where your customers play online decide on what you want to accomplish.  How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you’ll know where to begin.

19. Build a home:  Before you even think about Facebook or Twitter build your home.  Your home is the hub where everyone comes to visit and chat.  Your home could be a website with a community forum, a blog, video blog, landing page with social media integrated into it.  Bottom line, it’s something you control (via hosting and branding), is relevant to your audience, can generate discussion, and be easily shared.

20. Be ready to put in the time:  One thing that’s often overlooked when discussing community-building is the work that’s involved.  It’s a slow process and takes work (but it’s worth it!).  Get an egg timer and be disciplined with your time spent online as it can be addictive .

21. Create compelling content.

22. Adopt a company-wide publishing model: Change the way you think about content output.  Start delivering content through multiple outputs and creators – tweets, photos, podcasts, content packages, etc.  Instead of one output (you), there should be 5, 10, or even 20 pieces of content being created by multiple people (you, community manager, freelance writers, employees) at the same time.  What if your entire company told your brand story?

23. Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose: Too many companies reinvent the ‘content wheel’ for every content outpost they maintain. A better approach is to create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information.

24. Be consistent with your content.

GET ‘SOCIAL‘

25. Choose a global user name for all social media channels (i.e. mitchfanning, your company name, NOT coolguy63).  First impressions count.

26. Choose a good picture of yourself and keep the same picture for all profiles.

27. Before setting up any social media profile, go to other people’s blogs you follow and add to their conversation.  Remember, using social is about having conversations.  Does it really matter where they are started?

On Facebook Pages & Communities (compliments of Mari Smith)

28. Monitor your mentions: As part of your routine brand monitoring efforts, experiment with www.youropenbook.org, www.kurrently.com and Facebook’s own deep search feature to search for your various keywords and company name.

29. Appease the naysayers: Look for any negative mentions of your brand and, depending on the severity of the negativity, reach out to these individuals. See how you can listen to their complaint, take remedial action and turn them into fans.

30. Find your Super-fans: Email them on Facebook and/or search for them on other social media channels, and contact them as well. See how you can reward, incentivize and empower these individuals to become you super-fans.

31. Just follow Mari Smith – if anyone knows Facebook it’s her .

On Twitter (compliments of Chris Brogan)

32. Promote other people 12x to every 1 self-promotional tweet.

33. Use Seesmic or Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so you can do and see more.

34. Just make money, then the boss won’t ask about ROI any more.

35. Your customers might not be on Twitter. Use rapleaf to find them.

36. Spamming us repeatedly is okay. We just unfollow you.

37. For more, read this post – 50 Power Twitter Tips by Chris Brogan .  When it comes to Twitter, I like his approach.  Just don’t tell him I said that.

38. Based on where your audience is and what they find useful, use as many social tools as you can manage properly with consistent, regular, and useful content creation (i.e. 1-2 blog posts per week, 5-10 tweets per day, 2-3 updates on Facebook).  Re-purposing content will help in this process.

What have I missed?

Update:  Here’s the video of the panel discussion (length approx: 24 min)

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is an online marketing and social media practitioner. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brand (NBC.com, Nestle) to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100, creating, selling, implementing both traditional and digital marketing opt-in strategies.

Photo credit: Steven Warburton