I was reading a post from a well-known analyst firm, Gartner, and their 7 characteristics of a well defined social application “purpose” (courtesy: Communityserver.com).
In short, these characteristics – which you can view –>HERE – highlights having a solid purpose and focus when launching a social media campaign.
But the one point that stood out for me however, was number seven… a social application must be…
Community-Driven – The value must come from the community. The best communities contribute far more to themselves than do the enterprises that support them. If the purpose requires the enterprise to contribute most of the content, and the community participants are mere readers, the enterprise has simply used the new technologies as another channel to push communications.
It is a tough mind-change for organizations to do this though.
Being used to communicate via ‘traditional’ channels, where a message is just thrown out there and no real response is required apart from a ‘phone us now’ / ‘text BANANA to 31005′ / ‘click to submit a quote’… or something to that affect.
Now your customers need to start actually contributing, give opinions, make selections, add media, voice their concerns etc… and, believe me, your customers put a high price on their contributions. They expect something in return.
What can your campaign do to motivate contributions and be more community-driven?
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