My Le Bui's Social Media Adventure

Posts Tagged ‘online communities’

Idea #1: Exchange link with other bloggers

Description: Reaching out to other bloggers that are writing about the same or related topic as my blog.

Rationale: I believe that if you connect with other bloggers in the blog community, they’re more likely to link back to your site if you do the same.  People will be grateful for you in appreciating their blog post by linking to it. You can link to their blog by writing a blog post about a round-up of your favorite blog or you can create a sidebar at the side to feature them in. Links are more helpful than most other forms of sharing as they assist with rankings more.

Achievement: By linking to other blog and having other bloggers do the same in return, you will therefore create more traffic toward your site. I hope to get more readers interested in what I have to post and hopefully link back to my blog site.

Measurement: I will know if this is a proficient approach by measuring the increase of traffic to my blog. I will do this through either Google Analytics or Sitemeter, which provide the breakdown of my site activities.

Idea #2: Bookmark my blog post on Delicious

Description: Create a delicious account and share my blog link to a community of like-minded individuals that’s on the lookout for interesting news.

Delicious is a social bookmarking website for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Rationale: I think it has the ability to send traffic to my blog post.  I believe social bookmarking website have high influential power among its community. People trust their own peer’s recommendation.  People usually trust the knowledge you have accumulated. If I blog about a particular topic for so long and continuously post interesting and substantial blog post to Delicious, then eventually the number of bookmark will increase.

Achievement: I hope by sharing my blog content on Delicious that other people will find it interesting by visiting my blog or sharing it with other people.

Measurement: I can determine the success of this approach by examining how many people share my Delicious content in addition to an increase in traffic to my blog.

Image Coutesy www.perfectcirclepr.co.uk

I completely agree with Craig Donato’s post about the importance of building meaningful relationship in online communities with a conversational tone which will require “marketer to act human.”

Businesses cannot aim to build their company in the old way of marketing to consumers anymore. Now, the power is in the consumer’s hand.  Facebook fan pages that promote too much will turn off followers. It must have a balance in order to retain these followers.  By engaging through conversations, a facebook fan pages will have a strong base of loyal fans. Marketer’s goal should be to build an emotional connection with customers to their brand.

The majorities of my “like” for facebook fan pages are usually pages that are consistently updated, create interesting discussion, have interesting photo albums, links and various others. Advertising that tried to sell to us doesn’t influence us the way it used to. If I want to purchase something such as a car, computer, or mp3 player, I would normally read the reviews online or ask my family and friend for recommendation.  I would take into consideration of people’s opinions that have used a particular product or service before and have positive feedback. It would increase my chance of buying that product or using that service.

Image Courtesy of interactyx.com

Facebook banned from the workplace!

Do you agree or disagree that “Facebook should be banned in the workplace”? Would you work for a company that banned the use of Facebook?

Whether it be facebook, twitter, youtube, tumblr, reddit or any other social media outlets of your preference, it is a fact that most of the tools, sites, and channels are time-consuming nature. Normally, if you are to waste your own private time working around those communities, sharing information, watching video clips, meeting new people, then it would be acceptable. However, it’s when your usage of these social media gets out of your home and steps into your working hours that may stir up some troubles.

From personal experience, how I see it is that unless your job description include you utilizing facebook for public relations, marketing, promotion, online communities, customer engagement and interaction, if not it will cause serve damage to the quality of your work. For professional in the industry, it’s their job. They don’t go on facebook to view their friend’s profile or to chat. These workers’ job is to analyze the facebook’s communities for their company. It’s part of the job.

The majority of the problem lies in people abusing the system and using it for personal enjoyment. It can get quite addictive. A mere ten minutes can easily become one hour if not more.  Which lead to an unproductive work and a decrease in the quality of work you will provided. When people take mini break to log into facebook it’s acceptable. The line is cross when it goes beyond that to more than a hour. If it’s necessary, then facebook should be banned from the workplace.

Since my interest is online communities and marketing, I want to work for a companies that allow facebook access.