According to best-selling author Charlene Li, creating a sustainable social ecosystem means focusing on the passive “watchers” first and the actively engaged members of your community second. Li noted this as she kicked off SmartBrief and SocialFish’s summer breakfast series, Buzz2010, on social media for associations.
Li discussed recent findings that analyzed the way people in the U.S. engage online and focused on the importance of more passive users, who primarily watch social sites, not sharing, commenting, producing or curating content themselves. The “engagement pyramid” outlines how Americans are spending time on social spaces, and it shows the significance of the more passive user groups.
Li noted, “Unless you can build a firm foundation of people who are engaged with you at a more passive level of watching and sharing, it’s very difficult to create that audience for the people who are commenting and producing content.”
While it is an asset to have ambassadors for your brand and influencers willing to create content, your platform will not be successful unless you have the people there to consistently watch and share it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgq3_AYg2mE[/embed]
How are you developing your community of both active and passive users?
If you missed the Buzz2010 series of events on social media for associations, recordings have been made of all three events. The June 16 session on open leadership and July 20 session on social-media risk are available now. The Aug. 18 session on social-media ROI will be available on Sept. 1. Get more details here.