Createsouth 2009

This weekend I attended a conference called Create South which was all about South Carolinians embracing social networking (Facebook, Twitter etc) and using it to build community both online and off line. The key note speakers were excellent and they really helped me to understand why it is important to utilize these tools in the market today whether you are a business or a professional consultant or every day user.

In one of the classes that was held in the community track in the afternoon I was told that Twitter gathers metrics on all of the tweets that are sent out on their network and the more tweets that are sent out by an individual or company using # (hash tags) the more likely that person or company is likely to be trended. The bottom line is this. If Twitter sees that you are very active on their network because of all the #(company name) hash tags showing up then your company will be highlighted.

Does that mean that one single individual person at one location needs to sit at their desk and constantly tweet this or that with the #(company name) hash tag? No, absolutely not. What it does mean is that every single location that has a marketing person assigned to BUILD COMMUNITY within the Twitter/Facebook communities should be using the #(company name) hash tag so that Twitter will begin to build metrics on our activity. I guess this is sort of like the way Meta tags work on web pages. I am assuming that meta tags are still be used to build metrics on web pages.

I was also reminded of a tool that is being used online to build community. This tool is called Meetup.com. Meetup is used to bring people together in real life in a face to face meeting who have common interests. For instance there is a Meetup for Photographers and bloggers in Charleston. How can you use that for you or your company? How about searching Meetup for people who are interested in a specific aspect of your business or hobby?

Another tool that is used for building online community is Podcasting. Podcasting is where you create a 5 or 10 minute video snippet about your business or whatever and post it to your website for others to view. You also can have folks download the podcast to their iPhone or iPod touch or whatever. There are podcasts on almost any topic you can think of.

No matter what tools you use or how you use them the key element of using them is to BUILD COMMUNITY. To make personal connections with other people and businesses who can help you network your talents and what you are trying to sell or share with others.






James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
chiefpropellerhead@comcast.net