The short version of Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy presented at SEMpdx SearchFest. A longer version is available as an eBook: http://fastwonderblog.com/ebooks/

1. Companies and Social Media
Participating without being sleazy
Dawn Foster
dawn@fastwonder.com
Fast Wonder Consulting
http://FastWonderBlog.com
03/02/09 FastWonderBlog.com 1

2. Why Companies Should Participate
People: gives people a place to engage with
●
your company
Product Innovation: get product feedback
●
Evangelism: help you grow evangelists for
●
your products from outside of your company
Brand Loyalty: engagement can drive a
●
tremendous amount of loyalty for your
products
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3. Guiding Principles: It's All About the People
Focus on the individuals: Participate as a
●
person, not a corporate entity
Be Sincere: Sincerity = believability & credibility
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Not all about you: Community is about
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conversation, which is by definition two-way
Be a Part of the Community: Don't try to control
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the community or the conversations
Everyone’s a Peer: You are not the expert;
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knowledge comes from everywhere
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4. Participation Guidelines
Do quietly monitor competitor’s communities
●
and learn from them
Do not participate on competitor's sites
–
Do participate as a person with diverse
●
interests
Do not participate in communities solely to pimp
–
your products.
Do talk about the industry first & your
●
products second
Do not mention your products in every post or
–
comment.
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5. Where (and how) to Participate
Industry Communities (PCWorld, etc.)
●
Participation by subject experts (not marketing)
–
Find people passionate about the topic and have
–
them participate as part of their job
Blogging (corporate & personal)
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Talk about ideas, thoughts, & industry trends
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Comment on other blogs with insightful information
–
Social Media sites
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Engage as people on Facebook, Twitter, etc. with
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discussions about your job as one part
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6. Community Managers
What Skills do they need?
“Jobs of the future, #1: Online
Community Organizer
Patience
–
... If you were great at this, I'd imagine
Networking
–
you'd never ever have trouble finding good
work.”
Communication
–
--Seth Godin
Facilitation
–
What do they do?
Technical Skills
–
Ongoing Facilitation
–
Marketing
–
Content Creation
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Self-Motivation
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Evangelism
–
Workaholic Tendencies
–
Community Evolution
–
Organization
Monitoring –
–
03/02/09 FastWonderBlog.com 6

7. Make it Fun
Why do you sit there like that?
I know it is wet.
And the sun is not sunny.
But we can have lots of good
fun that is funny!
I know some good games we
could play.
I know some new tricks.
I will show them to you.
Your mother will not mind at
Translation:
all if I do.
Have fun! Lighten it up
occasionally!
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8. More Information
Additional Resources:
http://fastwonderblog.com/starting-point/
●
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog
●
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/
●
http://socialmediatoday.com/
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About Dawn:
Online Community and Social Media Consultant
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More Info: http://fastwonderblog.com/consulting
●
Dawn@FastWonder.com
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@geekygirldawn on Twitter
●
03/02/09 FastWonderBlog.com 8