Have you ever watched the Ken Burns series The West? It’s a marvelous series, especially if you are a history buff like me. There are so many insights into American history, but one of my favorites is somewhat late in the story. The US has been connected East to West with railroad tracks, and settlements and cities are growing like never before. The development of one such city is explored in a bit of detail. A news reporter noted that the ground breaking ceremony for the city’s town square actually happened far away from where the people were living at the town.
“I thought you would want your square to be in the center of your town,” He said to one of the organizers.
“Oh, this is where the center of the town will be after we have grown and expanded,” the organizer responded.
When it comes to your online community, which you are building based on all of these engagement techniques, growth is the ultimate goal, or at least, presumably, one of your goals. But are you planning for that moment in the future right now? Here are some things to think about.
What is your “town square?”
What is the center of your community? Where is that going to be and how will people know? Is your center going to be your Twitter presence? Your blog? Your Facebook page? Even if you don’t have a very big community right now, it’s important to visualize where your hub will be when you have thousands of people in your community. And yes, you will get there.
What will your “follow-back” policy be on Twitter?
This is a whole topic onto itself, but it’s something you want to start thinking about before you even have a dozen followers. What will be the technique that will enable you to engage most the way you want to engage? For me, I look at the person’s profile, I look at the kinds of tweets they send out, and of course I try to take note of who I actually converse with. Those are important to me because of the way in which I choose to engage online. As time has gone on, it has gotten harder and harder to keep up, but I do the best that I can.
What is your plan for keeping track of who is following you and who you should follow? It’s never too early to figure that out.
What is your strategy for responding to comments?
As your blog begins to take shape and attract readers, how will you respond to comments or questions? It’s important to establish expectations not just for yourself but for those readers, too. Back when I was super lucky to get a comment, I still had in my mind that I would always do the best I could to respond to comments on my posts. I don’t always hit them 100% but I do the very best I can. If you think there might come a time when you won’t be able to do that, or if you don’t want to set that as an expectation from the start, you need to establish clear ground rules that you’ll be able to stick to once the comments start coming fast and furious.
How will you keep in touch with people you truly care about?
This is a big challenge as your community starts to grow. Suddenly a month will go by and you’ll say to yourself, “Huh…I haven’t talked to so and so in ages!” How will you overcome those challenges? Will you use Twitter lists? RSS feeds? Again, it may seem like there’s no reason to deal with these things now if you don’t have a great big community, but in fact, now is the perfect time!
Success in any part of life is often where preparation meets opportunity. There is an element of luck to finding success in Social Media. That being said, you need to have your framework ready so that when success comes, you are ready for it. When it comes to engaging with people online, few things are more important than knowing what you will do when there are even more people with whom you can engage.
What are you doing right now to plan for your growing community? Let’s talk about it!
This is “Lucky 13” in The Engagement Series. If you are finding this helpful, I’d be grateful if you could direct other people to the conversation. The more the merrier!
Image by Robert Linder. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/linder6580
Great Timing Margie- The Lucky Thirteen Segment. I am right there now So I need to find out how to do RSS Feeds, and to build lists.
Thanks for saying so – I’ll try to concentrate on things like that in this series!
I hope you will expand the piece more! I have begun finding myself asking these questions a lot recently. I would love to hear more techniques and strategies that others use to cope!
Thanks, Brandon! I appreciate the feedback and will do what I can to put some good ideas together for you 🙂
Great Post Margie! This is exactly where I am at. I have been maintaining the social media presence and blog for my company, but have just begun to build my own follower base personally. These are great tips to think about as I am building. Blogging is around the corner for me too – just trying to monitor those who are experts first – you’re on my list! Thanks for great information.
Aw, thanks, Amy 🙂
It’s a great idea to build your Twitter community before blogging. If I had it to do all over again, I would probably have gone that route. I tried to build my blog community and my Twitter community at the same time. It ended up okay, but boy, what a struggle!
Glad this helped 🙂
It’s your last bullet that keeps me up at night Margie, and I have a very small community right now. I read the stories of people who have large communities lamenting that they don’t have the time to engage the way that they did when they were small. (Usually you can hear a little yearning in their voice for those days.) I can see building many quality, top-notch friendships and relationships are I grow (that snowball is already starting) and it hurts my heart a little bit to think that those scenarios just aren’t scalable/sustainable with a larger community. I think it’s a really great question to spend time on and plan out well in advance.
I know what you mean. The thing of it is, though, once you develop those super special relationships, it just becomes second nature to stay in touch with them. Maybe you don’t talk every day or even every week, but they’re your friends. You keep up with them as best you can. Or at least that’s where I am at this point. Hopefully I’m still singing the same tune 5 years from now, if Twitter still exists!
I read the title, and was like “God forbid.” You are a fine metaphor maker and expositor. I love how you dig through media and find relevance in the historical, TV, film, and American mythology.
I remember this moment when I first started playing Sim City back in the nineties. I suffered with small nowhere-villes…then suddenly I had this huge city, Jonesville, and was terrified. There were so many damned Sims, they were angry, and I couldn’t handle the stress. So I bombed my own city.
I’ve been thankful not find a place in urban/planning or politics (God forbid!).
In sincerity, I’m scared sh#*less of success. In my mind it = responsibility, I think. I haven’t psychoanalyzed it too much, but I know I like having readers and reading and engagement and enchantment.
Thanks making me think of this…so in the event of fire, I won’t have to break glass or run away.
M
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