Hi, I am Philipp. I am happy to announce that I am now working part-time with these great guys at sixgroups.com. This is my “evangelism statement”.
Fancy to start the next great music or video or student or mama or Emo or deep-pan pizza lovers (I would join!) community? I wish you good luck. At 6g we know what we are talking about, we are currently hosting over 2300 special interest communities. People are fed up. They don’t want to join anything anymore. They are on facebook, myspace, Xing, or somewhere else, but they are there.
If you haven’t locked in your community by now, chances are you never will.
The great news? It doesn’t matter.
People will still use your site or service, because they like it, because it is useful to them, or maybe, if you are really lucky, they care about it.
Now you only need to understand that community is not membership anymore. Community is engagement, interaction, sharing. And you will need that. You have to prepare for this. People want this. Otherwise somebody else will come, more open and understanding user’s needs better.
Identify your users, your tribe. Who are these X people that visit your site everyday? Let them engage with you and other users. On your site, on other sites, in their networks. Bring them together, make them visible, and let your users connect. Use these trends. Leverage the power of community-based social media marketing.
Another great news: It is easier than you think, it is no pain. You don’t need to take steps that you might not be ready to take. To start a blog or twitter, to suddenly engage in facebook groups or even to put your phone number on your homepage can be great challenges. It is good if you can take them, but it is not necessary, you just need to leverage your crowd and build on what you already have accomplished.
Leave the challenge to us. We have the skills and tools to do it. We are building something very cool and very useful. Please talk to us if you would like to learn more about our social media marketing machine and how you can benefit from it.
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