Six key ways to leverage the power of social media

Gartner identifies six core principles to help create a social business strategy that motivates collaboration and encourages engagement.

Active Participation

User participation is crucial in developing a social media community. Businesses focussing on using social media for collaboration rather than just corporate communications are more likely to see positive results. Gartner recommends motivating individuals to contribute content through social incentives like gamification and social status to help promote participation.

Create a Purpose

Creating a community with a sense of purpose is more likely to encourage individuals to contribute content. Purpose can help create a sense of community and helps to self motivate people on an personal level. Gartner advises businesses to create a well defined purpose that will be meaningful to the target audience.

Be Transparent

Transparency allows the social community to improve content, self-correct and evolve. Creating a transparent community encourage individuals to use and provide feedback from others. Gartner points out that transparency is what sets social media apart from other mediums of content sharing like web content management.

Promote Individuality

An ideal social media community promotes individuals contributing independent of one another. Any design that might hinder member collaboration at any given moment should be avoided. Gartner advises that using minimal administration and moderating will help avoid bottlenecks. 

Persistence

Social media helps individuals interact in a persistent setting for other community members to share and respond. Using social media allows relevant information to be gathered more effectively than communication over the telephone or a video conference.

Self-evolving 

Unlike other traditional networks and systems a social media community works better if it evolves based on interactions by contributing members. Gartner suggests organisations allow time and flexibility for a community to achieve results in its own time. Monitoring social media behaviours within the community will help moderators decide how to guide the community or make adjustments. 

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