Hey, great thanks to everyone who attended the KickApps seminar in Los Angeles last week. We were really thrilled with the level of interest and it was great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. Special thanks also to Alan, Jeramie, Allison, Megan & Dylan for taking the time to share their perspectives and insight in this dynamic space.
It was no accident that all of the speakers from the seminar last Wednesday, were responsible for formulating and overseeing highly successful social media initiatives – in fact the day after the seminar, Ovation TV & KickApps won the SAMMY award for Best Social Community in New York City. And in thinking about all of our speakers, I was reminded of the common threads that I’ve seen over the years that make a difference in successful social media initiatives.
I’m often asked what it is that our clients do that make them successful – what it is that truly creates an engaging site and really moves the needle when it comes to the business case for social media.
There are (in my opinion) three things that determine this. Of course I’m making the assumption that the product or service that you’re selling or the general concept of your website is something that appeals to some (hopefully large) group of people out there.
First and foremost, you need to have a strategy and a business case around why you’re trying to foster deeper engagement amongst your constituents. Our most successful customers have smart people that work on these types of projects. They spend time thinking about why they’re involved in social media, what it is that’s going to entice users to participate in their concepts and how they can grow their audience through contests, campaigns and other marketing initiatives that will affect revenue streams within their business.
Second and equally as important, you need the right technology. This could be as simple as identifying the right message board provider or video provider, or it could be identifying the need for a full suite of social applications like those that we provide at KickApps. But in any case, it will not matter how smart you are or how brilliant your ideas are if you don’t have technology in place that can support your initiative. The technology needs to always work, it needs to scale to handle large growth, it needs to be deployed easily but in a way that’s highly customizable and most importantly, it needs to be flexible so you can always go back and tweak it. As you probably know – the minute you launch a web initiative is the minute you want to start to make changes to it.
Finally, you need to MANAGE this initiative. Too many companies think that the launch is the thing. Fortunately, the launch is just the beginning of the fun! That is when it’s time to listen, to observe and to change things accordingly. This is the time to get to know your technology even more intimately and to truly understand how you can leverage the technology to grow your experience even further. We like to tell our clients that a community without a curator is like a party without a host.
The bottom line though – and the common thread amongst all our speakers last week – is that they all focused on these three elements. It’s virtually impossible in my opinion to be successful unless you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these concepts. Even if you’ve got 2 out of 3 in place, you’re likely to fall short of your goals – and we don’t want this to happen!
So please feel free to reach out to us at any time if we can help you with these concepts and any others that will help you and your businesses become more successful.
