 |
|
|
Amongst Peers: Experts Enter Social
Media Communities to Build Contacts through Content |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 March 2007 |
|
|
|
|
While social media has become the hot trend in publishing
many of the properties generating social media content are
not attracting headline experts into their frays.
Gather.com is addressing this by seeding leading figures
from book publishing, music, heath and finance to post
content and field comments on a peer basis with other
Gather members. Getting experts to act as community members
should not be too unfamiliar to publishers already used to
organizing conferences but using experts effectively in
social media outlets may require them to lay aside some
preconceived notions about how experts support their
publishing requirements. |
|
In spite of social media's increasing popularity amongst online
audiences its success does have limits. One of the key factors
that limits social media growth is the very same factor that
makes social media outlets attractive: peers. No offense to the
groups of
enthusiasts who post their content like crazy, but for the most part
it's clear that you're generally not going to be rubbing
shoulders with the big dogs in any real way when you log in to
the typical online publishing community: it's just plain folks
for the most part. That's good in its own way but sometimes you
want a little more pizzaz in your online relationships.
By the same token most social media publishers leave the
stars of business, politics and media to traditional media
outlets. In social media community
comes first, with pre-branded contributors playing a role but not with
starring credits. Sometimes
celebrity CEOs break out with weblogs to keep in touch with the
public or celebrities of various sorts post out
pages on MySpace but a few stray weblog comments or getting love
notes from "emma the feisty pink muffin" is not quite the same
thing as building content alongside sophisticated audiences
who do their own publishing through social media.
But hope on, there is some middle ground to work out this
dilemma. The
Gather social media community has been creating an
environment that appeals to serious adult audiences online
which leverages their ability to create articles and
discussions. Gather authors pump out tagged content that gets
voted on by its members and points towards online purchases.
It's a community that takes its authoring duties seriously,
including those who participate in Gather's "first
chapters" book writing competition to surface budding literary
talents. "Gather Essentials" categories such as
Health
attract established authors as well as everyday people with
insights. Other social media outlets are larger, but few
provide the level of serious engagement with adults that Gather
has managed to garner.
Into this mix of professional and self-styled authors is now
coming an
announced stream of experts who can rub elbows with their
core audiences on serious topics - and in the process of doing so build
brand equity for themselves within that community that would be hard to generate elsewhere online.
Sara Nelson, Editor-In-Chief of
Publishers Weekly, posts
articles about the publishing world that appeal to Gather's
bookish users, while contributions from executives at Harvard
Health Publications, Columbia Records, and McGraw-Hill
Professional are tailored to meet the interests of crowds
focusing on health, music and finance. Users comment on their
articles just as they would any other member of the community -
and they post back comments to engage them further.
While social media communities usually develop their own
home-grown "star" network of contributors the presence of
high-profile members from key verticals changes the nature of
information flow from and to these important figures
significantly. It's a little like the difference between
bumping into Bill Gates in an elevator and being able to have a
coherent one-to-one discussion with him at Davos: sometimes context
can change a conversation significantly. Best of all these corporate headliners are posting
content regularly so the dialog can build within the community
over time amongst other committed online authors.
Not every social media environment may benefit significantly
from leading experts in their online peer groups but in general
it's important to consider how experts previously sequestered
behind the filters of traditional editorial channels can become
key attractions for social media outlets. Here are a few
thoughts as to how experts can enhance your social media
publishing:
- Keep relationships toe-to-toe. More established
media methods for featuring experts online tend to make the
expert person the "star of the show." While this may work
well for personalities featured briefly on a site social
media tends to favor relationships that evolve over a much
longer period of time. Don't make experts invisible but make
it clear that they are but one of many contributors in the
community. This is important not only to everyday members but
as well to experts who are eager to get uninhibited feedback
and ideas from their target audiences.
- Don't expect experts to be community leaders. While experts
may be looked up to by your online communities their
workloads oftentimes
are such that they will not be in a position to anchor those communities
any more than other members. In fact, having a dominant
expert, widely recognized or self-proclaimed, can inhibit the
formation of the peer contributions which build up the
broadest base of content possible. Allow experts to use your
publishing tools in a way that provides them with a chance to
provide thought leadership in your online community without
expecting them to take on anything but a "just another
contributor" profile within the community.
- Consider premium packaging for selected levels of
expert access. To go back to the Davos analogy, you
didn't fork over a pile of cash to Bill to have that chummy
conversation, but you did pay a pretty hefty tab for the
conference. The potential for subscription access to social
media seems fairly antithetical to many at this time but as
pointed out by Reid Conrad, CEO of
NearTime,
in his
SIIA Previews presentation the smaller the social media
community the more effective and important the subscription
model becomes for making the most of focused groups creating
a high level of contributed value. The technology and
methodologies used to implement social media are inherently
egalitarian but in a world where some people want to be more
equal than others we can expect to see social media "country
clubs" sprouting up fairly rapidly - with key experts in tow.
The beauty of social media is that oftentimes it promotes
people into expert status who may have otherwise never achieved
that recognition through normal media channels. But this beauty
can be amplified greatly when already recognized experts are a
part of the fray that generates insights and ideas. Gather's
use of experts is just the kind of low-key approach to expert
participation that is likely to serve as a template for many
publishers trying to provide more draw to their online
gatherings.
-
John Blossom
To top of
page
 |
