Using the right Web 2.0 tools for your audience is key to driving community involvement with your site. An Eluma VP explains what works for viewers, participants and creators.
If you build it they will come. Think again!
The line worked great in the movie "Field of Dreams." Not only did the baseball players come to the field, but they actually played on it.
But building an online community doesn't follow this script. If you build it, your users might come, but chances are, they're not going to play in it. In fact, research has found that a whopping 90 percent of your users don't participate in your online community.
So, how do you encourage your users not only to visit your online community, but also to participate once they're there?
Not too long ago, a brand's online community was typically cultivated using message boards, email newsletters and the like. While these are still effective ways to engage your customers, they're no longer sufficient. The recent proliferation of Web 2.0 tools affords marketers new, myriad opportunities to engage users to interact with the brands and their online communities like never before.
There is no shortage of Web 2.0 tools and technologies available to you to implement in the context of your brand, including social networks, blogs, wikis, forums, customer reviews, et cetera. And, each initiative potentially engages a different slice of your audience, and brings a different set of benefits to your marketing plan.
How can you best determine which ones to implement? One way to answer this question is to try to identify the different segments within your user base, and tailor some initiatives to each one.
Next: Tools to engage viewers, participants and creators.