14 Sep Online Community Engagement

Social Communities may provide your business with the opportunity to get closer to customers and leads.  SAAS platforms exist to help facilitate this engagement.

Not many know this about me, but I am a licensed real estate professional with the State of Georgia.  I don’t “practice” as the day job is too important.  But what they used to teach us in Real Estate brokerage was that it took 6-8 lead touches to convert a possible real estate lead to a potential customer.  At the time, email drips were popular, as it was a great way to present an article to a potential customer in order to show your agent prowess in order to either help them sell a home or buy one.

Today, this funnels down to a pool of leads being your “community” & the ways in which you choose to engage this community in order for it to grow and want to auto-populate community content.

Social communities can be large or small.  I think that this depends on the community leader and the topic demographic.

e.g. If one decides to lead a community on the antibacterial effects of Salvia Officinalis, then you may have a very small community.

By the way, this was my 9th grade State Winning Science Fair Project.

OR, one may pick a HUGE demographic such as “Fans of the L.A. Lakers” >> Go Kobe!

Either way, one must pick a medium to engage the community.

This may occur through:

1. An existing community social platform like Facebook or Myspace
2. A social bulletin board based on a particular set of topics
3. Your very own Social Network or community

Some Example Stats

Social value is measured in many ways. As an ancillary addition to one of my web brands, the following community offered over 63K page views… This gives a boost of nearly 800 page views per day to the main brand website’s stats, offering the opportunity for growth in site registrations and other monetized key performance indicators.  (May 1,2010 – September 14, 2010)

Site participation can also be measured.  During the time between August 14th and September 14th, site visitors:

• Added 44 new videos, pictures, or MP3’s creating possibilities for viral re-purposing.
• Nearly 4,900 views went to “Play pages” where a video or MP3 could be play for viewing or listening
• Over 1,100 viewers went to Profile pages of other community members
• Nearly 1,500 views went to Message boards
• Over 600 visits came to the New Member Registration page
• and over 800 views came to LOGIN page.

While I have used Ning, I have to admit that implementations via KickApps have been easy.

Kickapps provides campaign-level capabilities as well as community empowerment.

Per their website, the SAAS allows the following opportunities:

• Build an Online Community
• Grow your Online Audience
• Create New Revenue Opportunities

• Employee Communities
• Increase Productivity and Reduce Costs
• Knowledge Sharing Without Boundaries

• Custom Video Solution – Widgets – Media Management
• Social Networking – Profiles – User Content
• Social Graph – Feed Builder – Activity Streams
• Third-Party Plugin Apps – Ad Networks – Analytics

• Turn customers into brand
  ambassadors
• Crowdsource feedback for product
  development & innovation
• Support communities for customers

With customers such as Heinz, Madonna, McDonald’s, Microsoft,  New York Rangers, Scholastic, 7Eleven, and the Special Olympics, who could go wrong?

Check out Kickapps for a hot social media solution for Online Community Engagement! and feel free to comment on your experience with Kickapps or other SAAS platforms.