Community managers look constantly for ways to make online communities grow and to increase social network engagement of their members.

Here are 10 action items from “The State of Online Branded Communities.”  It’s a study of how big brands are handling community performance, member engagement, and social media integration. Find details in the full post at the link below.

1. It’s Time to “Do Both” Social and Community

2. Avoid Stale Content like the Plague

3. Answer the Phone

4. Think Creatively When Building Customer Communities

5. Implement Leaderboards

6. User Reviews are Key

7. Find and Foster Your Brand Advocates

8. Offer a Cohesive Experience

9. Review what’s Working and Make Adjustments

10. Offer User Personalization

“Many brands continue to define Facebook as their community and point to the number of fans or likes as an indicator of community success. Yet countless studies have concluded that ‘likes’ are NOT equivalent to ‘relationships with customers.’ In reality, a social-only strategy is an incomplete line of attack, as is a ‘branded community-only’ approach.”

–The State of Branded Online Communities, ComBlu, November 2012

 See Related Post on Social Network Engagement

Social Network Engagement

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Fran Berkman wrote an interesting post on Mashable on the business models of internet companies entitled How Your Favorite Internet Companies Make Money.  47 different websites are covered.

Here’s a sample of some social networking websites, including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.

Results were  conceptualized by SEER Interactive and designed by O3 World.

Note that of these 5 sites, only Tumblr is unprofitable.  It’s also the only one relying on the fremium model.

See Other Posts on Online Business Models

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Learn the future of social networks by reading responses of 21 people to these questions posed by Ignite Social Media:

1. Do you think social networking has hit a saturation point and peaked in user interest?

2. Compared to what happened to MySpace, what do you think is the future of Facebook?

3. For businesses and brands that are just starting to ramp up in 2012, what new social networking trends do you see going forward?

Read more at this link:  http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-networks/the-future-of-social-networks-2012/

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The network effect powers dramatic growth in social websites, but the effect works in reverse too. When the popularity of these sites decline, traffic plunges.

“ The network effect is a double-edged sword, Ken Sena, a consumer Internet analyst at Evercore, told me this week.
‘The network effect allowed these companies to grow so fast, but the decline can be just as ferocious,’ Mr. Sena said. ‘If any of them misstep with users, they can leave, and the network effect goes into reverse.’ The textbook case is Myspace, once the most visited social networking site, that is now a shadow of its former self.”

via Sites Like Groupon and Facebook Disappoint Investors – NYTimes.com.

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Niche social networks for freelancers include marketplaces like Odesk.com and Elance.com.  Sarah Kessler writes on Mashable that these Networks for Remote Contractors See Massive Growth.

In these online marketplaces, businesses post projects and freelance web designers, marketers, and programmers create profiles, bid on work and get paid.

The number of freelancers is doubling on these sites.  Why?  Because freelancers like the freedom they make possible.  Also more and bigger businesses are getting comfortable using them.

Odesk SEO Swart “points to three trends that have helped remote work take off over the past few years: better Internet tools, a bad economy that requires companies to produce more with fewer resources and worker expectations.”

Have you used one of these social networks for freelancers?  Will the explosive growth continue?

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Today I share my new Pinterest board: Pinterest tips for business marketing.  Pinterest is a hot new niche social network, a photo sharing website, that allows members to “pin” images from around the web in groups called boards. Others can then re-pin those images.

Who Pins?

Observers are saying that Pinterest consumes women like computer games consume men. And while it started among young women, those of all ages are embracing it.

Imagine planning a wedding or designing a room or putting together an outfit or deciding what sites to see on a vacation. All these are reasons to group images and share those grouping to get feedback. That’s Pinterest.

Businesses for Which Pinterest Seems to Work

Magazines, ecommerce sites, and product-oriented businesses can benefit from Pinterest activity. As users pin images from those sites, the images are shared far more widely than they originally might have been.  And each image links back to the site where it came from, potentially driving traffic to your business.

Pinterest Tips for Business Marketing

Here is a Pinterest board with Pinterest tips for business marketing. 

As of this writing, you need an invitation to join. Email me at community@scorechicago.org and I’ll send you one.

Come join me and start pinning.

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How does one create a social media business plan for any business, including a social networking website?   In essence, a business plan has goals, strategies and specific plans to achieve its objectives. (Find info about how to create a social network business plan, a plan to launch and grow a niche social network, here.)

A social media business plan has the same goal setting, strategy, and tactics.  What are the steps to create a social medial business plan?  How do you measure results?

Social Media Business Plan Steps

Cory Williamson of Checkerboard Strategic Web Development has put together a good presentation on how to create a social media business plan.  Click the top image to view it on Slideshare.  He identifies 6 steps which I summarize below.

1.  Plan

• Write down how and where news and information is circulated online in your niche, what social networks your industry uses, and what influences your clients.  If your clients are corporate, for example, Linkedin may be critical.
• Think about what marketing channels you already use, like email, direct mail, online ads, newsletters. And about how you might integrate social media into them.  For example, you might add social media links to emails.

3.  Listen to Your Niche 

• Set up social media presences for your business on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to stake out your brand on these important sites.
• Monitor social media activity using Google Alerts, social mention.com, and Twitter search.  You can also use fee-based sites like Radian6 or SM2 and specific measurement tools like Facebook page evaluation tools.
• Search social networks using your main keywords to identify relevant influencers, competitors, news sources and blogs to follow closely.

5.  Contribute and Respond 

• Create an editorial calendar, including days and times to post, content or themes, and type of content for each (videos, images, news posts, guest posts, research posts.)
• Set aside time each day or week to engage in social media activities, what my friend Peggy Duncan calls “social media pauses” in your other activities.
• Be transparent and authentic as you create updates and respond to others.
• “Think conversation, not campaign” as Cory Williamson  says.
• Execute the content calendar faithfully, interact regularly and evaluate results monthly.

6.  Measure Results

Depending on your specific goals in step 1, your results may be either nonfinancial or financial. Non-financial goals encompass as website traffic, fan growth and more.  Financial results include sales, transactions, and coupon usage.  Measurement and monitoring is a complex topic that starts with basic Google Analytics for marketers.  We’ll do another post on measurement shortly.

 Social Media Business Plan for a Real Estate Broker

Here is an example of a rather comprehensive social media plan for a real estate broker.  Click on the image to go to Slideshare and view it.

How do you measure your social media activity?  Why not share your thoughts in a comment?

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Today’s niche social network tidbit is about the social network Pinterest.

Cynthis Boris wrote an interest post titled Sure Pinterest is Hot, But Is It the Next Facebook?

She concludes:  ”Will Pinterest become the next Facebook? I say the next Twitter but Facebook has nothing to worry about.”  Her reasons are its capacity problems, legal issues and the unhelpful “clutter” of the interface.

I pin, and have a board on Social Network News out there, among others.  I see it working well for some clients.

But I ask myself, can the Pinterest passion persist? What do you think?

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Does anyone actually try to use infographics?   Mashable shares Online MBA’s infographic on the social network demographics of big social networks. If you click the foregoing link, you’ll see that it’s colorful and big, yes.  But can you interpret its data?

The Biggest Demographic

I struggle to make marketing sense of the social network demographics in the above table, trying to determine the biggest group of users in each of the categories, by network.  More of Facebook’s users are over 45 than any other group?  Twitter has the lowest income demographic, lower than Pinterest?

Why, exactly, is the internet obsessed with infographics?

More on Social Networks

Apart from the social network demographics of big networks, might you be interested in niche social networks?

The post Social Network Demographics: Who Are Biggest User Groups of Big Networks? appeared first on How To Start A Social Network.

Selling online products by subscription is “all the rage,” according to Darren Dahl in the New York Times.

The subscription model for online business has long been attractive.  If the product or service is valued, the entrepreneur can expect re-occuring revenues that grow at a compound rate.   But if online users except products and services for free, subscriptions are an uphill sell.  It’s related to the membership model.

When the Subscription Model Works

Many online businesses that try the subscription model fail. Why?  It usually works only in certain circumstances.  “I think subscription models work best in two instances,” Dahl said. “Where the product is a necessity or when it’s an absolute passion. It stops making sense when you try to do something like a tree-of-the-month club, which doesn’t fit either of those categories.”

Subscription Model In Use

Traditionally, the subscription modelhas been used to sell content, like magazines, books and records;  for networking services, like Linkedin’s premium service; internets services, like access to online software applications; and services that sell credentials or trust with a subscription, like the Better Business Bureau.

Using the subscription model to sell products like pet food or shoes is a 21st century twist.

Subscription Model Advantages

Dahl quotes entrepreneurs who describe these advantages to the subscription model:

• Sales and inventories are easier to forecast, allowing entrepreneurs to reduce inventory and negotiate discounts on purchases.
• Funds invested to acquire customers can be amortized over the months or years they stay a customer.
• The subscription model creates lifetime relationships with clients.

More on Online Business Models

See our mega-page of links and info on various online business models.

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