Imagine your online community is a group of hungry people who walk up to a table where you have a spread of finger foods and appetizers. That’s your online content.

By watching which items disappear quickly, you learn what your audience truly wants. That’s the content that satisfies their hunger. And that’s what you need to give them.

In this article I’ll show you 8 ways to discover what topics satisfy the hunger in your online community.

#1: Ask your community

Most businesses assume that they know what their online community wants to hear from them. There’s nothing like doing a reality check by asking your community directly. What you learn might surprise you.

Start by creating a list of 10 topics you believe your audience wants to hear. Use your list to create a survey and collect their opinions using one of these strategies:

• Ask them to say “yes” or “no” for each topic.
• Ask them to rank the topics in order of interest.
• Ask them to pick their 3 favorite topics.

Always include an option for “other” so they can fill in any topics that you didn’t include in your list. Pay careful attention to these topics. If someone goes to the trouble to write in a topic, it’s very important to him or her.

There are several popular services that allow you to create a free survey including SurveyMonkey, Free Online Surveys, Zoomerang and Bzoink.

You can easily create smart professional surveys.

You can add your survey to your website, highlight it in your email newsletter and promote it on Twitter and Facebook.

#2: Check your blog comments

Which blog posts get the most comments?

Most bloggers will tell you that their most popular blog posts often surprise them. It’s usually not the post that they like the best.

When you write a post that gets many comments, you know you have struck gold. Review the comments to see what about this post inspires your community.

• Are people interested in this topic? Write more blog posts about it. You might even create a new category for these posts to make them more visible to your visitors.
• Did people like the post format? Did you make a list? Did you review an article or a tool? If the format was a hit, then consider starting a series of similar posts. You can even make this a recurring feature on your blog.

Tip: If most of the comments on a blog post are questions, it means that your audience is looking for more information on this topic. You can become their go-to source by providing detailed answers to their questions.

#3: Check your retweets

You post things on Twitter that you believe are useful and interesting. However, value is always in the eyes of the reader. When your Twitter community loves the information in your tweet, they retweet it to their communities. Check for your most-loved tweets and turn them into important conversation topics.

The new Twitter makes it easy to find your retweeted items and how many people retweeted each one.

1. Open Twitter.com and log in (if necessary).
2. Click Home in the top menu (if necessary).
3. Click the Retweets tab (in the left pane). Twitter displays the retweets menu.
   

   The Twitter Retweets menu options.

4. Select Your Tweets, retweeted. Twitter displays a list of your tweets that other people have retweeted in chronological order.
5. Hover the pointer over the first tweet, and click the flyout button to see the retweet details.
   

   Click the flyout button to see the details about this tweet in the right pane.

   Twitter displays the retweet details in the flyout (right pane).

6. Locate the retweeter list for this tweet.
   

   Twitter tells you how many people retweeted this tweet and displays their profile pictures.

To analyze your retweets:

1. Write down the number of retweets for each individual tweet in a month.
2. Group together tweets into topics or categories.
3. Add the individual retweet numbers to get a topic or category retweet total.
4. List the 3 most popular topics based on retweets. Plan to talk more about these topics in the next month.

#4: Check your URL click-throughs

When you share a link on Twitter, you probably use a web address (URL) shortener to save space. Most of these services provide statistics about each shortened link. You can use these numbers to see which links people clicked most often. These are the topics that captured their interest.

The popular URL shortener services include Bit.ly, Goo.gl, Tiny URL, Cli.gs and Is.gd:

You can collect, organize, shorten and share links.

HootSuite, the popular Twitter client (software that lets you use Twitter with additional features), provides two URL shorteners with statistics and detailed reports.

Users can now choose between two flavors of links—one with a social bar and one without.

The statistics on these services show you the number of times someone clicked through each link. Use this information to determine the most popular links. Group your links into topics or categories and get a total number of click-throughs by topic.

An example of Bit.ly statistics for a blog post about Cherry Street Coffee House.

Tip: Twitter.com uses its own shortening service, http://t.co, which doesn’t provide any statistics. You can use another service to shorten URLs before you paste them into Twitter if you want to get click statistics.

#5: Check your Facebook engagement

Facebook Insights provides details for page administrators about how users interact with their business page. It’s easy to see which status updates received the most feedback and interaction.

To display the interaction details for the previous month:

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click View Insights (right column).
   

   Click View Insights to display the page administrator's statistics.

3. Locate the Interactions graph in the bottom half of the page.
4. Click See Details.
   

   Click See Details to get information about individual status updates.

Facebook displays the interaction details for the previous month.

The chart provides detailed information about your status updates and how your community interacted with each one.

Use the detailed information to find the popularity of each status update.

• The top graph provides the total count of likes and comments for each day of the month.
• The middle chart provides details about individual posts. Click on the column headings to sort the data by column.

Group your status updates into topics or categories. Talk more about the topics that get the most likes and comments.

#6: Ask Facebook questions

The Facebook Questions feature makes it easy for you to ask questions to anyone in your online community.

Before you start, write out your question with multiple-choice answers. Each community member must choose one answer to your question.

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click Question.
   

   Click Question to start creating your Facebook Question post.

3. Facebook displays a blank question form.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you type any information.

4. Type your question.
5. Click Add Poll Options.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you add the poll options.

   Facebook adds blank poll options to the question form.

6. Type each multiple-choice option to answer your question. Facebook automatically adds blank options as you type.
   

   Complete the question options and click Ask Question.

   Tip: Leave the check for “Allow anyone to add options” so your community can add options you did not consider.

7. Click Ask Question. Facebook posts your question on your wall and distributes it to the news feed of people who like your page.
   

   An example Facebook question on a business page wall.

#7: Check Twitter favorites

Twitter’s Favorites feature lets you mark a tweet in your timeline that you like or want to be able to find again.

You can use Favstar to find which of your tweets people have marked as favorites. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with the people who follow you.

To review your tweets marked as favorites by other people:

1. Display Favstar.fm.
2. Click Sign In With Twitter.
   

   The Favstar front page before you sign in.

   Favstar displays the Twitter sign-in page.

3. Click Sign in Now.
   

   Twitter requires you to sign in and authorize Favstar before Favstar can find your tweets marked as favorites.

   Favstar takes you to Twitter.com.

4. Click Authorize app.
   

   Twitter explains what Favstar can and cannot do after you authorize it for your account.

   Twitter authorizes Favstar to look for people who marked your tweets as favorites and displays your customized Favstar page.

5. Click My Tweets.
   

   Click on the My Tweets button here.

   

   Favstar displays your tweets marked as favorites with the most recent on top.

Scroll through your most recent tweets. Group them into topics or categories. Calculate a total favorite count for each category. Talk more about the topics that get the most favorites.

#8: Check your email newsletter click-throughs

If your business has an email newsletter, it’s another great resource for tapping into what people really want to hear from you.

There are many useful email services such as AWeber, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp. While they offer slightly different services, they all let you track the clicks from your newsletter to your website or blog.

An example report from AWeber showing the links clicked in an email newsletter.

Reviewing the most clicked-through links gives you insight into what people found the most interesting in your newsletter. Talk more about the topics represented by your most popular links.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? What strategies does your business use to get inside the head of your community members? Has your research provided you with surprising results? Share your experience in the comments box below.

This article will assist you in gathering the building blocks for a strong online community.

#1: Know Your Audience

Every business should begin its focus on its audience, the customers. No online community can exist without a firm foundation and if your online community is to truly succeed, you need to know the demographics of your target audience.

What are demographics, you ask? Demographics are the characteristics of your audience. These characteristics are helpful in assessing the changing trends of audience behavior and narrowing down a wide audience into smaller segments.

General categories of demographics use age, gender, life-cycle stage, income, social class, lifestyle, education, religion and location and are collected by varying means of market research. These categories help give shape and definition to your audience and clarify who they are, what they do, their habits and more.

If you know who your audience is, your business will be better able to understand the needs of and what drives the audience. Image source: http://www.istockphoto.com/.

#2: Know Their Needs

How does a business find out what its audience needs? Ask questions! Engage with your audience to determine what they want, need and desire from your business. This is not a once-and-done type of inventory. Audiences are comprised of dynamic individuals and with time their needs will change organically. Also, external factors applying pressure to the collective audience will also cause ebbs and flows in needs.

By asking and being open to the response from the audience, your business can benefit from knowing not only generically what is needed, but you can gather insight on trends and benchmarks; potential problems or issues; research and development opportunities; product, process and service improvements; crisis communication plans and more.

How can you get in front of your audience to ask about their needs? Image source: http://www.istockphoto.com/

David Canty, director of loyalty at JetBlue Airways, explains how JetBlue discovers the ever-changing needs of the dynamic members of their TrueBlue community, “We are constantly in dialog with our customers, whether it be online, through email, or face to face. We host a number of customer events all over the country and we use these forums to have ‘human’ conversations about what we are doing well, where we can improve, what would they like and more.

TrueBlue Community lets members make friends and make plans, discuss restaurants, sightseeing and travel tips.

“During one of our tactical promotions, ‘All You Can Jet’ (AYCJ), we noticed that the customers who participated were looking for ways to communicate with each other, and this was the foundation we used to form a community,” Canty said.

Use your AYCJ pass for business, pleasure, to visit your favorite cities or meet with a client.

Above all else, your customers are feeling validated in knowing that their needs are being heard and quite possibly acted upon. That validation can unite the audience with a sense of common purpose.

#3: Know Your Business

All effective and successful businesses are customer-centric. Without your customers, your business wouldn’t exist. So intimately knowing the needs and wants of your audience can help shape and purpose your business and its future plans. Giving your customers a role and voice in the direction of your business lends itself to creating a sense of community.

As the focus and leader of the community, it is imperative that your business plan is known and understood by your leaders and staff. How can you expect to rally a community of customers around your business if you don’t know your own business?

Start with a strategic plan with the goal of mapping out the future based on the needs of now and the lessons learned from the past. Do you know what your business’s plans for growth, contingencies, expansion, product and service development, reduction and possible shuttering are?

You should know these answers about your business!

#4: Know Your Stuff

Knowing these answers about your business can lend itself to building credibility as a business within your online community. Audience members learn to trust those representing businesses that know what they are talking about.

You can build that trust by using your knowledge base to answer their questions, listen to their feedback, troubleshoot their issues and—if you can—fix the problems they have with your product or service. Every conversation you have with an audience member is an opportunity to build or destroy your business’s credibility!

Don’t be afraid to ask yourself the following questions about your community-building efforts:

• Are we fostering mutual respect or disrespect in our response?
• Is there ever a time to admit that we do not know what the answer is and that we need to do our homework before answering?
• Is there a time to admit that a competitor may be a better option for a customer’s needs?
• Is there someone else in the business who can answer a question or respond to negative feedback better than I can?

Remember, how you respond to negative comments and complaints is just as much a credibility opportunity as how you respond to the compliments and positive feedback!

#5: Know Your Limitations

While your business can certainly respond to many of the needs of the online community, is it wise for the business to dictate all of the interactions of the audience? Not always.

Consider the possibility that you may not always have the best answer for building the community and may need to let the community build itself. Your customers have the potential to be your best brand ambassadors.

The audience members should be encouraged to build relationships and connections with one another and grow dynamic interactions within your online community. The benefit to you, you ask? Your business is the commonality in the community.

Who can better attest to the viability and relevance of your product or service than the customers? You as a business representative are admittedly biased in your opinions of your products or services and this is limiting. Unbind your community and encourage it to explore the possibilities in the experiences of other audience members!

#6: Know How to Appreciate

Recognize and appreciate your community members for participation, brand loyalty, solutions orientation, patronization and for any number of other activities that merit appreciation. Your appreciation will encourage them to come back and visit your online community more frequently, to encourage their sphere of influence to join and even lend itself to increasing their purchasing behaviors with your business!

A few examples of demonstrating your appreciation:

• Encourage active and knowledgeable community members to engage with newbies.
• Reply to questions and inquiries in a timely manner with solid answers.
• Prizes, giveaways, vouchers, coupons and more are always a good way to reward and recognize your customers.
• Ask for their opinion and feedback! People love to contribute.
• Most importantly, say THANK YOU!

When asked how JetBlue shows their appreciation for their community members, David Canty explained, “We don’t necessarily differentiate between community members and non-community members. They are all customers and both are valuable.

“We do actually travel the country and arrange for dinners, sporting events, lunches, town halls, performing events, etc., to which we invite some of our best customers. We use these events to ask questions and listen to what our customers have to tell us. These events will usually include myself and some of our executive team members including our CEO, Dave Barger. They do not have any scripts—they are human interactions and conversations and we find them hugely valuable.”

Canty went on to say, “We have multiple ways by which we gather feedback. We have a “Speak Up” link on our website JetBlue.com, and every single email we receive is answered by a human being—there is no script.

Speak Up is much easier than picking up the phone.

“We also send out 30 surveys for every single flight we launch, and in these surveys we ask customers about their experience throughout the travel ribbon. We collate all the feedback and report it on a weekly basis internally and we can track the feedback to specific flights, airports, in-flight crews, etc.

JetBlue customer satisfaction survey.

“We’re constantly keeping our finger on the pulse and ensuring we listen to what our customers are telling us. If we are failing in any way, we must address it and ensure we live up to our promise of bringing humanity back to air travel.”

The moral of this community-building tale?

Building community around your business online supports the community-building you’re doing offline. More and more customers are beginning their purchasing decisions with online research. Don’t miss this opportunity for your customers to speak for your brand!

An online community of brand-loyal, well-appreciated and encouraged members and customers speaks volumes for the relevancy and credibility of your business.

What steps have you taken to foster an online community around your business? What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing businesses that are trying to develop a community? Feel free to post your comments and feedback in the box below.

Photos mentioned above from iStockPhoto can be found here.

What’s New This Week?

Facebook Announces Real-Time Analytics for Social Plugins: This gives Facebook page admins “access to real-time analytics to optimize Like buttons across both your site and on Facebook.”  It’s another little upgrade to help you get more out of your Facebook marketing.

"You can use this real-time data to test the impact of button placement on Like Button CTR or identify the Open Graph image that generates the highest Like Story CTR."

HootSuite Launches Super Social Analytics: This is a new collection of customizable reports providing a comprehensive view of social media campaign results to help companies and agencies articulate more clearly the ROI of their efforts.

Check out these new features of this popular tool.

Recent Study Shows LinkedIn Is More Effective for B2B Companies: HubSpot’s 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report shows how B2B and B2C companies are able to acquire customers through four social media channels. And as you can see below, LinkedIn is notably more effective for B2B companies while Facebook is notably more effective for B2C companies.

All of these social media channels bring in leads for both B2B and B2C companies, but some are better than others.

HubSpot recently announced a $32 million investment from Salesforce, Google and Sequoia.

LinkedIn Launches News Feed:  LinkedIn Today “delivers the day’s top news, tailored to you based on what your connections and industry peers are reading and sharing. If you only have five minutes to catch up on news, LinkedIn Today can help you cut through all the clutter, so you can discover the top headlines you need to read to be better informed everyday.”

LinkedIn Today makes it easy for professionals to stay on top of industry news.

Foursquare Adds a New Specials for Businesses: Foursquare’s latest upgrade gives you “a new Specials management system, allowing you to run multiple Specials at any venues you manage; and before, during, and after the campaign you can now see aggregate statistics.”

There are a variety of different Specials to choose from. “Some businesses want Specials that are all about loyalty. For some businesses, they’ll set a Special to unlock at every check-in.  For others, it’s like a coffee shop punch card where you might get something free on your tenth check-in.  For other merchants, it’s about increasing visits – running a frequency Special granting those who check in three times in seven days the ability to unlock their Special.”

Businesses can now choose from a variety of Specials to offer their customers on Foursquare.

ThingLink and SoundCloud Announce Innovative Collaboration to Add Sound to Your Images: Want to add sounds to your website’s images? The process is quick and easy: Set up a free account at ThingLink.com and SoundCloud.com.  Then install a few lines of ThingLink javascript on your website or blog and follow instructions to attach a SoundCloud URL into a tag’s link field on the photo.

Here’s an example from the gallery: as you hover your mouse over the Smashing Pumpkins image below, click the dots to find the audio clip.

Here are a couple of social media tools worth a look.

BTBuckets: “A free personalization and on-site behavioral targeting tool that allows websites to increase engagement and ultimately maximize conversion rate optimization in real time, by segmenting and targeting strategic user groups.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPEv1LPfBw4

DailyFeats: A new “online community that rewards and celebrates doing good. DailyFeats members collect points for doing simple but meaningful feats that benefit the body, mind, home and community. Points can then be redeemed for exciting real-world rewards, including everything from discounts at local businesses to savings from national brands.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=781b_lD-N98

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2011: Just announced, this online mega-conference will help your business grow with social media.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

The Pros of Creating Your Own Community

So with all of the existing communities out there, what’s the benefit of creating your own?

Driving Traffic to Your Site – Let’s say that you start a forum on your own domain. If you’re successful in creating a popular community, you’ll be driving a lot of traffic to your website. The traffic, in turn, will lead to the next benefit.

Increasing Your Income – There are several ways to monetize a community. The direct approach is to actually charge your community membership fees for entry into the community or advanced privileges, such as the ability to promote themselves more within the community and premium content.

If your community is tied into a business, having the additional traffic to your site is bound to lead to converting community members to clients, or getting clients to join the community so you can later upsell them with additional products or services.

Then, of course, there are the indirect forms of monetization, such as capitalizing on the additional traffic to your website and offering advertisers banner space.

Becoming an Authority – If you become a successful community leader, you could become an authority in your industry as the administrator of a thriving community.

The Cons of Creating Your Own Community

As with just about anything, there are usually cons (or as I like to call them, considerations) that need to be thought through before jumping into starting up your own community. Here are some of the big ones.

Startup Costs – Generally, to maintain a community on your own site, you’ll have to invest in the development or customization of community software, such as a forum program or social networking plugin.

Administration Time – The next major factor in maintaining your own community is administration.  This involves everything from managing the software platform to moderating the activity among members to be sure that there isn’t any abuse of community rules or harassment of other community members. Without this kind of administration, the community will quickly fall.

Sticky Members – It’s not just about getting people to sign up, but getting them to keep coming back to your community and participate as much as possible. Unfortunately, what some people forget is that there are sometimes too many communities out there, and not enough time to devote to all of them. So if your community is not at the top of its game and requires too much involvement, members might start dropping off in activity.

What You Must Do to Have a Successful Community

So what does it take to create a successful, thriving community to which members are happy to come back regularly?

Start With Research – Before you jump into creating your own community, start by seeing what’s out there in a related niche, join those communities, and then observe the activity. Note what you like and dislike about the way the community operates, from the platform to the members and the leaders. Note which communities keep you coming back for more and how they do it.

Provide Unique Value – Notice I didn’t just say value, but unique value. Think about the communities you researched, and then try to figure out that one thing that no one else is offering that you can. One example would be creating a community that’s more specifically focused by doing a little brainstorming.

Instead of just blogging, narrow down to business blogging, then narrow down again to B2B business blogging, and then further down to B2B business blogging in the service industry. While it’s super-specific and might not allow for a huge following, it IS something unique which will intrigue your members.

Address Your Members’ Concerns – This one may get tough, depending on how many members you have in your community, but it’s always important to acknowledge any concerns that your members have in terms of site functionality, rules or other members. This lets them know that there’s someone actively in charge and always willing to cater to the members’ needs when possible.

Platforms for Your On-site Community

If you’ve weighed the pros and cons of creating your own community on your website and have decided to go for it, here are some platforms to get you started in creating your community.

Forums – If you’ve chosen to create a forum, the most popular platform is vBulletin, which starts at $195 per site/forum. While it’s pricey, it has the most robust set of features and is most widely used. Google vbulletin and your keyword to see what other communities are using this platform in your niche – you’re bound to find them.

Webdeveloper.com is an example of a forum built on the vBulletin platform.

Not ready to invest in forum software? A popular open-source alternative to vBulletin is phpBB. It has less functionality comparatively, but still provides the basic forum functions and needs.

Social Networks – Want to go beyond a forum? Two popular platforms for building your own social network are Ning and BuddyPress.

Ning, once a free service, now has plans at $2.95, $19.95 and $49.95 per month, depending on the number of members you want and space you’ll need.

Tennisopolis is an example of a social network built on the Ning platform.

A great example of a community built on their platform is Tennisopolis, a personal favorite of mine as I am an avid tennis fan and player. Members can connect with each other, participate in forums, create blogs, private message, share photos and video, join groups and much more.

An alternative is the free BuddyPress. The solution is meant to be integrated on top the WordPress platform. So if you’re already familiar with WordPress as a blog or content management system, you should be able to learn the ins and outs of BuddyPress as well.

Hello Eco Living is an example of a social network built on the BuddyPress platform.

An example of a network built on their platform is the Hello Eco Living Network. Similar to Ning networks, members can make friends, write blog posts, participate in forums, privately message each other, join groups and more.

Great Alternatives to Creating Your Own Community

So what are some good alternatives to creating a community on your own website? Try some of the following options on other networks.

Facebook Groups – Facebook is the top social network, so creating groups within their platform is a great way to go in terms of getting people together on a platform that they’re already involved in. You can add members to your group automatically, although I suggest you do this only after asking them if they would be interested, as it can be really annoying to be added to a group by someone you don’t know.

What are the perks of having a Facebook group? Groups can be public or private (invite only). Members can be notified each time there’s activity in the group, or change their notifications to be received only on threads that they’re actively participating in (such as ones they start or comment on).

Tell members how to customize their group settings for the best experience.

You can also encourage members to check the settings so that your group shows in their home navigation.

Members won't forget about your group if they put it in their home navigation.

This way, members will always be reminded about your group anytime they’re logged into their Facebook homepage.

LinkedIn Groups – LinkedIn, the top professional network, is also a great place to start your own community through LinkedIn Groups.

These can be especially powerful for a myriad of reasons, including the fact that you can email your group once a week. It’s almost like building a mailing list through their service (although you shouldn’t overpromote yourself on things that you’re selling through it).

Social Media Examiner uses a private LinkedIn group for Blogging Success Summit attendees.

Your Thoughts on Building Online Communities

Have you ever created, moderated or even simply joined an online community, forum or focused social network? What were the perks as well as the downsides on ones built on specific domains vs. ones built within popular social networks? Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.

But first, it’s easy to pigeonhole WWE as fringe cable channel with a small group of die-hard fans, but you likely don’t know all the facts…

WWE.com outperformed ABC.com, CBS.com, NBC.com, NASCAR.com, PerezHilton.com, NHL.com and UFC.com. More people attended Wrestlemania XXVI than the Super Bowl, held in the same stadium.

“WWE” ranked #3 for most searches on Yahoo! in 2009, behind only Michael Jackson and Twilight. (As I write this, WWE is the top-trending search term on Yahoo!) And WWE.com has more than 14 million average monthly unique visitors worldwide.

More significantly, WWE’s own social networking site has 610,000 registered users who participate in forums, comment on blogs, and consume the millions of photos and videos that WWE updates continuously.

Therein lies the conundrum for WWE’s web production team. When you already have millions of fans engaging with you, do you really need to add Facebook and Twitter?

For WWE, the answer was yes.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” said Mark Keys, VP of web production, digital media. “People were engaging on those sites and communicating about our products anyway, so we might as well embrace them and bring them into the fold.”

But even WWE, accustomed to its enthusiastic fandom, didn’t expect the welcome it received.

The Party’s at WWE – and Only at WWE

It’s not that WWE hasn’t embraced social networking. The brand actually came fairly early to the social media party – but held the party at its own house.

Two years ago, WWE launched its WWE Universe site, a hub for fans to interact directly with more than 200 performers – called superstars and divas in WWE lingo. The site features wrestler profiles, along with forums, photos, videos, chat and blogs. You can even “friend” other fans and performers Facebook-style.

Many of the wrestlers and commentators blog about recent or upcoming matches. And just like in the business world, blogging helps each WWE performer build his or her brand – or in this case personality – with the fans. In turn, the more engaged fans are with the performer’s story, the more likely they are to tune in.

Fans from all over the world post words of encouragement to superstars and divas, or debate who’s going to come out on top in the next Smackdown.

Superstar Randy Orton

They can peruse videos of the most recent events and more than 3.3 million photos, or even create their own “smash-up.” You pick the videos and the theme music to make your own two-minute video montage.

Fans can create their own “smash-ups” on www.wweuniverse.com.

One of the site’s most popular features, live chat, runs during live TV and pay-per-view events, with performers joining in from the arena and WWE hall-of-famers as hosts. On average, each fan stays active in live chat for an impressive 45 to 50 minutes each session.

Going Where the Fans Are

As social networking has become more and more popular, the question of whether to join was increasingly pressing. Keys and his team didn’t see a clear business case for jumping in.

“To be completely honest, two years ago we didn’t care about social networking because we didn’t have to,” Keys said. “Our audience was so engaged on our site that they consumed whatever we put up there. Why would I send my audience over to other brands? I don’t need their engagement because I have such a rabid fan base.”

The turning point? They realized that fans were talking about WWE on Facebook and Twitter – with or without them.

Moreover, WWE had a huge problem with imposters pretending to be superstars and divas, on Twitter in particular, pushing the network to establish an official voice.

However, WWE wanted to do it right. Three months ago, they quietly created corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts – without promoting them – as a test of sorts.

“We’re not rushing into anything,” Keys said. “We want them [fans] to have the best and highest-class experience they can have with the same robust quality experience of our TV and the website.”

Within two months, 500,000 Facebook users had hit the “Like” button to become fans on WWE’s Facebook page and more than 93,000 were following the brand on Twitter.

They also set up Twitter accounts for many of their top performers. Within just two hours of his first tweet, superstar John Cena had amassed 5,000 Twitter followers, with the number growing to 30,000 in his first week.

Now, WWE has more than 50 official and performer accounts and 90 official and star pages on Facebook.

In a couple of months, without any promotion, WWE has 106,000+ Twitter followers on its main account, and millions more through other official WWE accounts.

Protecting the WWE Brand

WWE is upfront about being a scripted TV show. In the arena and out, performers follow a set storyline. WWE superstars and divas can choose what to post on Twitter but mostly stick to their WWE storylines, with some reality peppered in.

When some of the stars got ash-trapped in Ireland, with flights halted because of the volcano, they tweeted about the predicament.

“We even created a funky map feature that followed stars from ferries to trains to buses, and then we produced a TV feature,” Keys said.

To maintain brand consistency across social networks, WWE created a “W” logo to distinguish Twitter and Facebook from imposters.

Though initially under the marketing team at WWE, the digital content division now manages social networks, realizing that it’s largely about online content.

About five staff members devote part of their time to the WWE Universe site, Facebook and Twitter. The team tweets about 10 to 15 times every day, posting news and links back to videos, photos and other content to encourage fans to come back to WWE Universe.

They schedule tweets and follow inbound social networking hits with HootSuite and use Omniture for more advanced web analytics. While WWE could outsource comment moderation to a number of professional companies, it has so far chosen to keep its hand in oversight and responses.

Opening the Two-Way Street

WWE has not yet started actively promoting its Facebook and Twitter accounts on the WWE Universe site. So far, the only evidence is a Twitter feed on its website that streams all WWE and performer tweets.

Yet growing traffic coming from Facebook and Twitter gives WWE confidence in this new direction.

In the coming months, it will put its “foot on the gas” and begin telling its community of users about Twitter and Facebook. Icons for both sites will encourage fans on the WWE Universe site to share any of that content with their friends and contacts – opening the whole world of WWE content for fans to post.

By having mainstream and its own social networks, WWE expects to increase traffic and content sharing going both directions exponentially.

“If you go to superstar pages, we have very close to three million total fans on branded pages,” said Corey Clayton, online community leader at WWE. “It’s a vast network to reach out to and we’ll easily triple that in two weeks.”

As the brand goes full-force with social networking outside of its own site, WWE aims to evolve less-frequent website visitors to more active users. In doing so, they indirectly hope to increase pay-per-view sales, website page views and product sales.

“If we engage someone on Twitter who is a lapsed fan or bring new people into the product, then we’ve done our job well,” Keys said. “We’re now following the philosophy of going where the audience lives instead of getting them over to our house.”

How about you? Are you a WWE fan? Are you meeting your best fans in the social networks where they hang out? How do you ensure you stick to your brand story in all of your social media activities?

#1: 50% of Small Businesses Say Lead Generation is Biggest Benefit of Social Networking

According to the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” from Ad-ology, lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking for U.S. small businesses.

Here’s the breakdown of respondents’ top benefits of social networking:

• 50%: Generating leads
• 45%: Keeping up with the industry
• 44%: Monitoring online conversation
• 38%: Finding vendors/suppliers

This chart shows the level at which the respondents found each social networking benefit useful.

Here’s a surprising statistic: While 67% agreed that social media is a good way to increase business, 39% of those surveyed said they did not plan to use social networking in their marketing plan in 2010.  This number is likely tied to the finding that 31% reported that their customers do not use social media, 29% stated they do not have enough time to devote to it and 21% said they do not know enough about social media.

Although more businesses are beginning to adopt social media strategies into their overall marketing plans, this report suggests businesses still have a long way to go before social media is fully integrated into marketing efforts.

#2: Online Forum Users Are Enthusiastic Brand Advocates

According to a recent survey published by PostRelease, people who actively contribute to online forums are overwhelmingly more engaged in “influential” activities – both online and offline – than people who don’t use forums.

What’s most interesting about these findings is that a forum contributor’s influence far extends past the walls of the forum.  Here are some statistics:

• 79.2% of forum contributors help a friend or family member make a decision about a product purchase – compared with 47.6% of non-contributors and 53.8% overall.
• 65% of forum contributors share advice (offline and in person) based on information that they’ve read online – compared with 35% of non-contributors and 40.8% overall.
• 57.7% of forum contributors proactively recommend someone make a particular purchase – compared with 16.9% of non-contributors and 24.9% overall.

There’s also an interesting correlation between forum users and blogging.  The study found that those who contribute to online forums are 10 times more likely than non-contributors to also publish a blog, and are 9 times more likely to take an active role in organizing an offline event or meeting for a group that originally met online.

For marketers who are looking to connect with the key influencers in their niche, the findings suggest that online forums are a smart place to start; however, marketers should proceed with caution. Justin Choi, founder and president of PostRelease, writes, “Online forums are great places to find enthusiastic consumers and influential brand advocates. The people in forums are often discussing specific products, sharing advice and asking each other for recommendations.  For marketers, participating in that discussion is not quite as simple as jumping into a forum conversation – forums have rules about that.  But there are tools for connecting in a way that’s transparent and relevant.”

Here's a snapshot of the behaviors and habits of people who contribute to forums versus the non-contributors.

#3:  Only 47% of Companies Experimenting With Social Media

A study by Gartner predicts that by the end of 2010, more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will manage an online community.  However, another study by ComBlu brings Gartner’s findings into question.

ComBlu’s study, The State of Online Branded Communities, shows how most companies do not understand how to engage within online communities and have no real idea of what their customers want on these sites.  Furthermore, most companies are unaware that people interact on these sites in different ways, so many companies are merely pushing data with little or no interaction.

The report reveals that when companies do get people to join their communities, their lack of engagement is extremely obvious to the sophisticated user.

“Instead of engaging the visitor, the brand drives them away because they offer little of value. Consumers today are sophisticated users of social tools and seek out communities to learn, share and interact. If these elements are missing, or there is no obvious organizing structure that fulfills specific needs, the ‘faux’ community will be quickly abandoned,” stated the report.

Here are some interesting findings related to brands and their online community activity (or lack thereof):

• 47% of brands are still in the experimental phase, meaning they “exhibit lots of social activity with little connection or integration with each other.”
• 24% are community ghost towns, meaning there is no engagement and very few members with no return visitors.
• 20% show a cohesive strategy and typically had robust engagement tools and multiple activities with an active participation from their community.
• 9% show community overload with multiple messages to the same audience, most likely causing confusion and diluting the message.

Perhaps even more important, the study points out that some of the most effective online community best practices were used the least.  Of the 135 communities they examined, only:

• 44 have a community manager. A community manager acts as the face of the community. Without one, there is no cohesive bond between the community sponsors and its members.
• 44 allow social networking. This practice allows community members to connect with each other and find shared interests, thus promoting further connection.
• 35 offer social bookmarking. This best practice gives community members a tool to personalize and aggregate their online experience at the brand’s destination site.

What do you think about these study findings? As always, we want to hear from you. Have you had similar results that support the data above or does your social media experience contradict the findings? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below!

In 2004, Steven Cox sat down with a fellow musician after a gig. Cox’s friend and his wife were expecting their first baby and hoping to buy a house. But as a musician and private instructor, he struggled with making ends meet.

“Playing music doesn’t necessarily pay all the bills, unless you have a really big contract or gig,” Cox says. “My friend was hanging flyers in drugstores and music stores but still not finding enough students.”

Cox, once a full-time musician, worked a day job in IT and management consulting at the time. When he suggested his friend go online to connect with aspiring musicians, the friend confessed, “I’m a musician. I don’t know anything about that.”

With that, Cox began orchestrating TakeLessons.com.

Today, TakeLessons is America’s leading music and voice lessons company—a position reached largely through social media marketing.

He Built It, They Came

TakeLessons.com provides singing and music lessons in over 2,800 U.S. cities. Students register online for local, private, face-to-face lessons with a TakeLessons Certified Instructor™ after finding each other via a Match.com-style approach.

And like a dating website, TakeLessons.com takes some of the risk out of those in-person meetings.

“It can be difficult in music services to find reputable, trustworthy teachers, especially when you’re inviting someone into your home to spend time with your kids,” says Cox, CEO and founder. “Our customers turn to TakeLessons.com for our rigorous teacher hiring standards, and our online tools are second to none.”

To that end, TakeLessons.com only hires the best out there—just 4 to 5 percent of all teacher applicants.

TakeLessons.com must build awareness among two audiences: potential students (and their parents in some cases) and prospective teachers. With a background in fostering online communities—Cox formerly worked in strategy for a college social networking site—the CEO recognized the value of “getting people together to yak about stuff.”

In 2005, TakeLessons.com gave its audience just that, an online forum. The site not only allowed students and teachers to communicate with TakeLessons.com, but also each other—showing the power of online community.

“Teachers were sharing lesson plans and ideas,” Cox said. “Through the forum, they got quality guidance from each other.”

“So You Wanna Learn How to Play Guitar”

Since then, TakeLessons.com’s social media marketing has taken off. The company’s tightly integrated strategy now includes blogging, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

“We want people to consume the content and ideas in the form they want, when they want it,” Cox said.

TakeLessons.com blogs a few times every week on everything from conquering stage fright to recipes for vocal health to to “So You Wanna Learn How to Play Guitar.”

“So You Wanna Learn How to Play Guitar.”

Yet the team only spends two to three hours per week total creating, posting and responding to comments. Their secret? Guest bloggers.

“We’ve got a whole university’s worth of qualified instructors,” Cox said.

In 2009, TakeLessons.com began turning to its expert pool of teachers for content. At once, the company gives its instructors valuable exposure while saving time for the in-house staff, which simply edits posts and populates them with keywords.

A Blog-Twitter Duet

Quarter-over-quarter, blog traffic continues to increase, largely due to search engine hits and a Twitter snowball effect. TakeLessons.com micro-blogs on Twitter one to two times every day, directing followers to the blog.

Tracking traffic patterns, TakeLessons.com knows that blogging and tweeting continuously increase traffic back to the TakeLessons.com blog. The company’s approximately 650 Twitter followers share with their own followers via retweets.

Yet TakeLessons.com takes a more casual approach to Twitter than many.

“We decided to let Twitter build organically and let true followers become followers, so we don’t follow others to get them to follow us,” Cox said. “We’re trying another way by just writing what’s relevant to people.”

Feel-Good Video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS96nQHOW-E

TakeLessons.com lends itself perfectly to YouTube, the web’s third largest search engine. If you search for TakeLessons.com on the site, you’ll find inspiring, feel-good clips of student recitals, mini guitar lessons and teacher introductions.

For just $150 for a high-def Flip camera and a little bit of time, the company has generated tens of thousands of views that include the TakeLessons.com logo or name, generating valuable brand exposure and website traffic.

Most often, the company shoots video of “Show What You Know” recitals, where students of all ages play publicly for the first time. Each clip kicks off with a screen of the TakeLessons.com logo.

The company racked up some of its biggest views—nearly 50,000—with a video response to a current event. When a musician whose guitar was broken on a United Airlines flight spoke out via a music video (“United Breaks Guitars”), Cox responded with a video. He offered to lend his own Taylor guitar to the musician, and indicated the company had switched a recent flight from United to Southwest in solidarity.

Not everyone agreed with Cox, but he chalks it up to the nature of social media.

“You’ve got to learn to let things slide off your back if you’re going to be transparent and use this medium to get your message out,” he said.

Six Months, 1,000 Fans

Last but not least in TakeLessons.com’s four-pronged approach: Facebook, with nearly 1,200 fans. Popularity on Facebook exceeded initial expectations. Instead of reaching 1,000 fans in one year, they did it in just six months.

While staff does post links to its free “Teach the Teacher” web seminars, mostly the company encourages fans to share their own news and interact with each other. Fans post notes about their own upcoming gigs, arrange in-person meet-ups, find concert venues, or connect to play gigs together.

Here, TakeLessons.com gets back to its roots of community building. Teachers interact and encourage each other separate from the company.

Automating Customers’ Status Updates

In a smart move, TakeLessons.com automates Twitter and Facebook updates for its customers. When students sign up on the company’s website, they are asked about their goals. From then, they can keep up with their goals—maybe the five songs they want to learn—on the TakeLessons.com website.

TakeLessons.com then asks whether students want to install the company’s API applications for Facebook and Twitter. If so, they are asked what type of information they want to automatically post on those sites.

They can choose to automatically post each week that they’ve had a lesson, after the scheduled lesson takes place. Or, they might be asked if they want to post that they’ve met a certain percent of their goals.

“We try to talk less about us and more about them,” Cox said. “We’re not out pounding our chests, which we find works better in social media.”

The Payoff

In total, Cox estimates that TakeLessons.com spends no more than about six hours every week on social media marketing activities. From there, the various online communities create a viral effect.

“It’s growing beyond us having to physically manage everything,” Cox said. “We’ve become the conduit.”

For that six hours, and virtually no direct costs, TakeLessons.com sees impressive results:

• 39 percent decrease in cost per acquisition year-over-year
• 30 percent increase in teacher applications since a year ago
• Nearly 10 percent of website traffic from social media
• Sales directly attributed to specific Twitter and Facebook posts
• Speaking invitations
• Connections with several Fortune 100 companies
• Joint venture opportunities with two companies

However, Cox values the intangible benefits just as much, namely fostering trust and relationships with customers.

“We don’t want to hide behind a corporate image,” he said. “We want people to say, ‘Wow, there are people behind this idea and this company.’ This aligns with our core values and everything we do. People are getting to know who we are so they’re comfortable making a decision.”