In the future, there may be a market for established, online communities. Communities for niche topics, of value to specific businesses, might be sold to those businesses. Or, community owners might use tools to restrict social access by businesses—making companies pay for that access.
Social Media Marketing will be about leveraging existing communities
I was at a talk the other day by Holly Brown of R2i. (The best social media talk I’ve ever been to, by the way.) She mentioned that although the focus now tends to be on building your own community, she thinks the future focus will be on participating and leveraging existing communities.
I agree with her. For my own clients, I look first at what communities already exist and whether we can use them rather than building our own. It’s expensive and time-consuming to build an online community, with no guarantee of success. If you can participate in other thriving communities of your target customers, and get your message and content out effectively, why build your own?
Self-sufficient, niche online communities are valuable
If you’re a business (or consulting for one) and you want to engage in relevant communities, the first step is to find the best communities for your purposes. That’s what Holly’s talk was about, and she provided some terrific best practices for doing so.
The niche communities, where your target audience is predominant, are a valuable resource to you. In online advertising, companies pay more to get their message to their target demographic. Likewise, a social community filled with you target demographic is worth a lot. That’s why some companies invest in building their own online networks.
What if individuals got in the business of building communities?
Let’s take an example. My son has Crohn’s disease, and is regularly on expensive medications for it. There are various online communities for Crohn’s sufferers, where they can trade stories, get advice from fellow sufferers, etc.
Let’s say that I started a site and community for Crohn’s patients. My goal was to create a thriving community that was largely self-sufficient: with content and engagement coming from members, with little effort on my part.
I found bloggers who wrote about Crohn’s and got them to guest-post on my blog. I enlisted hospitals, practitioners, naturopaths, and other small businesses who served Crohn’s patients. Perhaps in exchange for participating and contributing regularly to the articles and community questions, I gave them some free advertising on the site—all clearly marked as sponsored ads, of course. Maybe I’m even able to get some insurance companies to provide knowledgeable people as resources to answer member questions, so they can direct their own customers to the site for information and cut down on calls.
I nurture my community, building out resources and areas on the site, perhaps with subgroups of people. I ensure the content and engagement is not spammy or too self-promotional. I also gather demographic information about my visitors, including demographics specific to Crohn’s patients. Through polls, contests, etc. I find the percentage who are experiencing flare-ups at any given time, the percent with and without health insurance, age and sex, etc.
Ultimately, I have a fairly self-sustaining community, that isn’t requiring a lot of work on my part to maintain.
Selling my online community
How much would my community be worth to a pharmaceutical company that sells expensive drugs to Crohn’s patients? Could I sell my community (domain) to them, so they could brand the pages themselves? I’m betting a pharmaceutical company would be willing to pay a pretty penny for a thriving online community full of patients who are candidates for its drugs.
Publishers and domain owners sell their domains all the time. Just like publishers of any kind, the more specific demographic information I have about my audience, the more I can show its value. Likewise, by making a community that sustains itself, I can show the operational costs are low, making it even more valuable.
Restricting access to online communities
Or, let’s say I don’t want to sell my community. I could certainly charge for advertising space on the pages. But could I also charge for social access? What if I prohibited certain large companies from posting links to their online properties or mentioning their products in any way? Unless they paid me.
I could charge companies for social access to the audience in my community. One concern is that companies paying would spam members or provide low-quality interactions. As the community owner, I would have to ensure that even the companies paying for social access use good social media techniques, rather than just advertising through posts. It’s in my best interest to set those kind of limits, in order to maintain the value of my community.
Hospitals, large specialty practices, pharmaceutical companies—they all might pay for access to my audience.
How might I charge? I could charge by the type of content. For example, a post with a link costs less than video links. Contests cost the most. I could charge by volume: posting weekly, versus daily, versus unlimited access. Of course, I’d need the tools to monitor and manage this. Presumably if communities become commodities, those tools would be built.
Would it be all bad?
For many, the idea of communities as commodities is going to raise their hackles. It wouldn’t be all bad, though. When money enters the picture, people have a reason to invest time creating these niche communities. That’s why I said that Facebook should give Community page owners a share.
More online communities for specific audiences just makes for a richer social atmosphere. The people in the communities benefit greatly. The small businesses and individuals who can’t afford to maintain their own blog or forum have easier access to potential customers. Communities that devolve into spam-fests or advertising spaces would quickly lose their members, giving businesses and community owners a reason to serve their members well.
What do you think? Might there be a market for communities?
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