Besides being a pop icon around the world, Gaga is making the right noises online. Here are 3 things Lady Gaga is doing right in building an online community:

1. Lady Gaga is close to her community

A strong community will be with you til the end. Lady Gaga shows gratitude toward her fans and interest towards their comments. In return, fans feel part of this community. Lady Gaga refers to all her fans as “monster” and embraces the close relationship she has with them. Her 2nd album “Fame Monsters” she released in tribute to her fans. Fans on Facebook and Twitter embrace this nickname and accept it as part of their community.

For example, Lady Gaga’s most recent Facebook status update: “Little monsters heart I keep, and as I lay me down to sleep, I dream of rainbow roads to love, for now New York city’s my drug”. Her updates receive an average of 5000 comments and 20 000 likes on Facebook.

In return, Lady Gaga’s online community is extremely loyal. For example, one fan wrote a comment on another fan’s post on Facebook saying “Gaga’s going to delete this. You know that, right? She doesn’t let posts she doesn’t like stay on her wall.” They feel like they know her personally and they respect her.

2. Lady Gaga stands out from the Crowd

Lady Gaga as a whole can most probably be defined as different. She attracts attention. Her brand is what makes her different – her music, sense of fashion and controversial statements attract a lot of attention.

Online she stands out from the crowd by living in the limelight. Instead of fighting against the oh-so-public life of a superstar, she goes with it and lives her life in open spaces online and offline. On her Twitter account you will find photo’s posted by friends and from shows.  There are a lot of brands who are openly engaging online, but what makes Gaga different is her brand and her character which she portrays on all her social platforms.

3. Lady Gaga is true to her brand

Lady Gaga posts things the ‘Gaga’ way – sometimes not making a lot of sense – but it’s all original and true to her character. She is consistent with her posts on shows, new video’s and ‘Gaga’ news she’d like to share with her fans.

As a Lady Gaga fan, you’ll find all there is to know about her latest album, photos and news by joining her online community. @LadyGaga on Twitter is where her fans can have a one-on-one conversation with her. She uses this platform to be authentically ‘Gaga’ and say/tweet whatever is on her mind. She has virtually offered fans unrestricted access to chat to her on Twitter.

Lady Gaga’s viral presence is undeniable. Her near-dominance of all things social media is a great example many brands can learn from. Take these three principles and apply them to your online community strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, numbers are good. Big numbers are a great starting point, but they do not equate to “community”. So, before I take you through my community management grid, I’d like to define what I believe “community” to be.

I’m not a sociological expert but rather tend to form my thinking from experiences that I am exposed to in life…

Being a Spurs fan and fighting off the taunts of failure from my mates, with the only other 2 Spurs supporters in my class – that was a community of three. It was then attending matches and sitting in the Paxton Road stands and feeling part of something way bigger than I could comprehend, but knowing that my voice made a difference, that I was a vital cog in the wheel. If I wasn’t chanting the team wouldn’t play as well – that was a community of 35,000.

Community wasn’t about the physical location and it wasn’t about the numbers. It was about a group of people with a common interest – a cause to follow. But more than that it was a group of people with energy, opinion and belief.

As marketers this is the holy grail. Having a group of people that provide feedback, have true loyalty and evangelize about your brand.

In order to achieve this “community” in the online space your strategy has to include following steps:

1) Enticing new potential members behind a cause they believe in
2) Convert those interested into interactors, willing to share their opinions
3) Turn interactors into followers/believers who will spread the word

In terms of the practical implementation of these steps, action needs to be considered using:

a) Content Syndication
b) Monitoring of noise and engaging in the conversation
c) Creating new opportunities for engagement

The three steps and the three types of action form what I call my community management grid, which can be used to help create an appropriate online community strategy. Below is a grid showing how the different components can make up your strategy:

Hopefully, this grid will help marketers to clarify thinking on the various critical aspects of community management, and focus the day-to-day tasks involved.

Tip 1: Be a model citizen

The Community Manager and their team will make up are the core of any online community and their behaviour, passion and integrity should be a model for all other members of the community. The core members will be the first people to be involved in your community and it up to them to get the ball rolling. Setting a good example will help bolster organic membership growth because new visitors will see the quality of conversation created by the core members and they will be more likely to participate within the community.

Tip 2: Know which medium is best for you

It is important to understand that not all social networks are suitable for your brand and your community. Mediums such as Facebook and Twitter are fast-paced and have a very energetic personality whilst mediums such as email newsletters are slower paced and more intimate. Choosing a medium which is not appropriate to your existing community can cause damage to your brand.
Your customers might feel as if you do not understand who they are and what they are looking for.

Certain specialised communities will prefer to congregate outside of the more established social networks in places such as forums, blogs and IRC channels. These mediums are generally more exclusive and have a higher barrier to entry. Engaging with these communities can often yield the most passionate brand ambassadors who can be used to form the core of a community on more popular social networks. But be warned, these brand fans definitely know what they are talking about and they will jump on the Community Manager if they make even the slightest mistake.

Tip 3: Incentivise participation

These days competition for the attention of your customers on the Internet is incredibly rife. The easiest way for your brand to stand out from the crowd is to create an incentive for new members to join and participate in the community. It is important to remember that the incentive which is used to encourage participation is appropriate to your audience and the brand. This will ensure that members who join and participate in the community are actually interested in the product and brand and will continue participating in the community once the incentive is taken away.

Tip 4: Make an effort

Until such a point where the community itself takes over responsibility for content creation, the core members of community will need to shoulder this responsibility. It is not an easy task to ensure that there is always discussion around new and interesting topics. Making sure that content is continuously being updated and that comments and questions posed by the community are promptly and correctly answered, will give members of the community a good reason to keep visiting the site which will build loyalty and an increased desire to participate in the community.

Tip 5: Burst a bubble

Occasionally take a pin to the bubble of a commonly held belief. Doing your research and picking an intelligent fight is a great way to get people talking. It is a fine line to ensure that people aren’t offended and that the conversation doesn’t spiral downwards into a flame war but if done properly, it can increase people’s interest in your community.

Remember that there is no tick-and-bash solution to growing and retaining your online community. Always take the time to get to know your community members, treat them well, be truthful in all communication and reward their participation with something valuable.

So, throughout all this hard work, we’re starting to see somewhat of a pattern emerge. With the various experiments and taste-testing of ingredients, there are certain stages in the process that we’ve identified as being critical to the success. In the spirit if sharing with our own community members, I’ve listed these stages below:

Stage 1: Offer Something Resonant

Note the word ‘resonant’. Not something ‘valuable’ or ‘expensive’. It’s a subtle nuance, but it’s a key differentiator to what will make your community building efforts effective. The point is: if whatever it is that you’re offering your potential community member is not enticing enough, he or she will not join. So, it needs to resonate with them. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you’re targeting executives to sign up as members to a particular group. To initiate your campaign you offer them a cash prize of $10,000. This may seem like a fair amount of money, but the campaign bombs. Why? The problem is that there are too many monetary offerings around rendering your prize meaningless. So you try another tack. This time your message is “Win a holiday worth $10,000″. Again, nobody cares. Why? The offering doesn’t hit home. There are too many competing prizes that renders yours insipid – plus, more than likely, the executives you’re targeting already have a bunch of money.

Now, think about an alternative message: “Win an internet-free, 100% wireless holiday with your partner.” All of a sudden, it stirs interest.  People start signing up, en masse. The difference? You have struck a nerve in the emotional side of your community members – and you’ve not even mentioned how much the holiday is worth. You’re offering the people something that’s relevant and that resonates on an emotional level.

Stage 2: Interact Relentlessly

Now, a whole whack of people are joining your community, but all you can hear is crickets chirping. Believe me, this is more common that you think. There are countless forums, wikis, Twitter profiles, Facebook pages and message boards that are sitting dormant.

Remember this: the yardstick of a successful community is not how many people have joined, but how often those people interact with each other.

How does this happen? Simple. Your community needs a community manager. This is the poor sod who uploads content, news, articles, posts, links, updates, calendar events, images, questions, polls, podcasts and videos. This is the hero/heroine who sits on TweetDeck scrutinizing @replies and mentions relating to your brand. This is the thick-skinned superstar that puts out fires and flags bad behaviour.

A community manager is the person who monitors and stimulates activity within your online community.

There are many ways in which this can happen, depending on the size of your community – but believe me when I say this: your community manager needs to be smart and energetic. We’ve seen it at our own agency: the job of a community manager is something that requires a unique combination of social media nous, general/topical intelligence, street smarts and writing skills.

Whether you’re hiring someone, or you’re managing the community yourself, you need to ensure that there is non-stop interaction. Each day, you should be doing the following three things:

a) using ORM tools to track signals (online conversation threads relating to your brand)
b) identifying interaction opportunities (criticisms, compliments or questions relating to your brand)
b) initiating conversations (updating news, event dates, articles, links or fresh content)

Your community manager is the champion that will  perform the three tasks above, all in the spirit of interacting relentlessly. Without this interaction, your community will whither and fade away.

Stage 3: Repeat

Let’s go back to your executives. The big day comes when you deliver your prize. You announce the winner’s name and triumphantly record that the community has grown seven-fold since your campaign started.

Now what?

The important thing here is that you’ve built up momentum and your members have you top-of-mind. Your challenge is to avoid saturating your audience with irrelevant updates. You need to repeat the process outlined in Stage 1. Once again, the key is to offer something resonant. Bear in mind, this can take many forms: another prize, an award, a certificate, or even information packaged in a unique and valuable way. As long as you ask the question “Is what I’m offering going to resonate with my audience?” and the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

** Note” I’m not talking about setting up a community, e.g. developing an online forum or a Facebook. I’m talking about growing a community.

• Mad Hatter: Online Community Manager
• Guests: Community
• Table/Party: Social Media Platform (Facebook page, Twitter account, forum, blog)
• Tea: Your product/service
• Cookies: Prizes

As the host, Mad Hatter needs to keep his guests at the table at all times chattering away and drinking tea. To keep them at the table, his guests need to be entertained. There are simple ways to do this:

1. Keep the topic of conversation interesting. Mad Hatter needs to constantly create new content.
2. Indulge in small talk. Mad Hatter needs to respond and engage with all the guests. Any guests who don’t feel welcome will leave the party. Make every guest feel important and they’ll stay.
3. Keep the tea cups filled and the cookie jar full. Your guests won’t stay for long if you leave them hungry. Mad Hatter needs to feed their appetite with giveaways and competitions. Lure them in with quizzes, polls and questions. In other words, offer your community something in return.
4. Eavesdrop on the gossip. As a community manager you need to follow every conversation about your brand. Monitor them and, if needed, join in.

Why, you ask? Why do we need to throw a tea party? To sell more tea of course!

“Online community members visited Web sites nine times as often, stayed five times as long, and represented 65% of sales, a recent McKinsey & Company survey found.”

So, keep the music playing, the laughter rolling and your tea tasty and sweet. Do this and your guests will want to take some home. If they’re satisfied, they’ll be back for more!

And now, for your enjoyment…

Paul talks us through the hi-jacking of a URL, the drama it caused and how a large corporate new to the social media world was given a introduction they hadn’t anticipated.

Firstly, thanks to everyone who came and thanks to Deloitte for the spectacular new venue for our Heavy Chef Sessions in Cape Town.

When it comes to our speakers, Tim from Brandseye offered us a lucid explanation of the intricate workings of ORM.

The event grabbed everyone’s attention with a story we’ve all heard about earlier this year: The Woolies Lovebirds Saga and a hi-jacked URL. Paul from Yuppiechef told the story with all its tension, anticipation, drama and sheer good heartedness.

If you missed the event please take a look at our speakers’ presentations below and keep an eye out for the videos of their presentations on our blog.

We are happy everyone enjoyed the new venue and of course, the brilliant presentations. Thank you Paul and Tim for coming to chat to us!

Also, many thanks to our sponsors, Channel Mobile for their SMS services; and Delheim and Corona for the beverages provided.

The Difference:

Offline PR incorporates components such as media conferences, media releases, competitions and contributed articles to generate publicity through print, radio and television. Offline PR uses ‘real life’ public events to promote their brands. In other words, it basically uses all traditional media.

Online PR uses the internet (social networks, blogs, forums etc) to promote a brand. This is better known as ‘generating buzz online’. Online PR can be more conversational since you can engage directly with your audience in real time and create a relationship with them.

Now, PR does not only refer to the fun stuff like promoting a brand or company, but rather it involves managing public crises and bad reputation blunders as well.

A story spreads like wild fire online and can cause immense damage to a brand. That is why it is important to incorporate Online Reputation Management into your PR strategy.

When it comes to deciding how to incorporate offline and online PR in your business (and whether you need both) you need to understand both online and offline media very well and the type of consumer you will find on both media.