Miscellaneous Uses for a Blog

The rapid explosion of social media channels in the last 6 months or so has businesses, organizations, and other brands scrambling to get involved in the conversations. Social tools such as Facebook and Twitter have seen the most dramatic growth in 2008 (Facebook alone grew 30 million users in the last 3 months), and rightly so, these tools have gotten the most buzz

These new, flashy tools have the biggest numbers are helping pushing the social web closer to that point where it’s simply the web. The web’s drving force in the future IS social interactions of all types. As Celeste Lindell mentioned in response to recent Kansas City Social Media Club event:

“Once everyone gets what social media really means, having a social media club will seem as silly as having a telephone club.”

Does this mean that Facebook and Twitter, MySpace, etc will be the only things you can do on the web? Of course not. Social interactions and communities are wide and varied across the web, as they are in the offline world. If you limit your understanding of social media to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. you are missing a HUGE chunk of the social pie. They are great starting point, but you may be missing the most active communities and conversations around your brand or topic.

Case in point. I recently launched a weather consulting company with a few other Kansas City folks called LRC Weather. We save companies money by assisting them  in making decisions that are weather dependent. This is done in a variety of ways including our short and long range weather forecasts specific to their needs. Another side of the business is researching our weather theory called the LRC (Lezak’s Recurring Cycle). In searching out online communities to help with our theory, we found there were few real “meteorological communities” in channels such as Facebook and Twitter. They exist, but are not as strong as other online channels. The biggest communities exist in online forums, email listservs (yes, I said email), and blogs. If we had limited our search for conversations to the “mainstream” tools, we would have been rather disappointed.

The truth is, social interactions on the web are not new. BBSs, forums, mailing lists, IRC, etc. have been around for years and have thriving, engaged communities. While they may not carry the “Twitter mistique” or “Facebook credo” they are valid and are often extremely targeted groups of people. Converstations have been and continue to happen outside of the buzz of the main social media tools.

This is why utilizing things tools like Google Alerts should be at the top of any brand’s monitoring strategy. Find ALL of the channels the conversations are happening from. Utilize web statstics to monitor inbound links to find conversations. Seek out, listen to, and engage in web forums, listservs, etc. that you can become a part of. Find local events relevant to your brand and engage with them offline (I know, a shocking concept).

An interesting question was raised during a discussion of Twitter at the last Kansas City Social Media Club event. “What will your brand do if Twitter starts charging, and people leave?” Then answer is, “You simply continue conversations you have in other channels, and seek out where new conversations are happening.”  If you advertise on television for a national product, do you simply run ads on one television station? No! You seek out multiple markets that work for your brand. Why do you expect online conversations to be any different?

Conversations are spread out across the web and can and WILL move in and out of different online channels. Just like when FriendFeed dropped from the social radar, forums, blogs, and other conversation tools rise and fall in popularity and in engagement. If you aren’t actively seeking converstaions outside of the big name tools, you’ll wake up one day to find that the conversations have disappeared and moved somewhere else.