The Heartbeat of Social Media!

The Heartbeat of Social Media!

Being a part of a Community is Something, to which You can Contribute just by being aPart!

What are the successful social networks doing better than other networks? Why do people gravitate to one social network over the other? What makes them stick around?

The heartbeat of social is the people. That heartbeat gets stronger, louder and becomes viral as more people feel and hear it. It’s what they see, talk about, share, listen to, watch, virtually touch and feel that keeps them coming back. It’s the emotion of good, sad, bad, frustrated, happy and grateful. It’s the ability to share all of those special times and moments with others. It’s the sharing of hopes, dreams, ups, downs, prayers, accomplishments that keep us bonded. It’s new friendships that start with a Tweet on Twitter and turn into a like or friendship on Facebook.

It’s the friendship that evolves to in real life friendship. The heartbeat of social is people sharing life together. Yes, we share business. Yes, we share blog posts, data, expertise, tips and tricks. However, at the end of the day, people buy from people. People are at the heart of communities. #Communities are the heart of the social networks. You can't have one without the other. Community isn’t something that happens once just to help build you up from zero to one hundred or five thousand followers. A real community is there for the long term. They are the people you can count on come thick or thin.

They are the people who will build you up, tell you the truth even if it hurts and celebrate your successes because they helped you get there. Conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the knowledge and application of certain rules. Communities go thru different stages as they form and build.

1. Chaos: When people move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their real selves. This stage places great demands upon the facilitator for greater leadership and organization, but Peck believes that “organizations are not communities”, and this pressure should be resisted.

2. Emptiness: This stage moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to us all as human beings. Out of this emptiness comes

3. True community: the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community. Peck believes this stage can only be described as “glory” and reflects a deep yearning in every human soul for compassionate understanding from one’s fellows.

10 Reasons Why We All Need Community

1. Friendship. People are the heartbeat of social media. Without people there would be no such thing as social media. Life is too short and too scary to spend it all alone or with people who are fake and afraid to let them see their real self.

2. Relationships as a life raft in a sea of technology change. Who cares if Facebook goes away tomorrow and is replaced by the next big social network “thang”? As long as you have a community built on real relationships, then they will endure the technology, social network changes. Your community, friends and online buddies will follow you wherever the technology tides may take you.

3. Push you to be your best. If you spend your days, nights and life only in your own world then you have nothing to compare it to. Healthy competition is good and healthy. Learning what your best colleagues, best competition or neighborhood small business is doing down the street is motivating.

4. Reality check. There is nothing better than having a group of honest, authentic, transparent online or offline colleagues tell you the blatantly honest truth about something you need a reality check for.

5. Guts to take risk. Taking risk is a healthy part of any business. When you know you have a community of friends behind you to give you an honest reality check of your next greatest idea as well as a group of peeps who will have your back and be there to help you stand when you fall can have positive impact on your ability to continue to move your business forward. Sitting inside all by yourself, afraid to take risk is likely going to be safe for the short term, but longer term could be putting your business at more risk as you are not growing or connecting with others who are also growing their business.

6. Get unstuck. You know the days I am referencing. The days you don’t know what to say, what to blog about, what to tweet or what to do next in your business. Those are the days you hop on Twitter, watch some videos on YouTube, read a few blogs from your favorite authors and spent the day being inspired by your community. If you feel stuck, then ask them for help. Chances are you’ll have a long list of folks ready to help motivate you in no time.

7. Learn. With as fast as the social networks are being built, evolving, morphing, and moving there is no way we can be an expert at every one of them overnight. It’s just simply not feasible. Not only can we learn about the social networks from each other but we can also learn about our target markets, supporting technology, best practices or a simple how to blog on anything under the sun!

8. Innovation. When you bring smart people together who are openly communicating, sharing knowledge, supporting one another, smart things happen. Many new ideas, products and businesses are sparked from a simple online conversation or a relationship taken offline that started with a simple tweet.

9. Social sanity. In an influence, metric, tweet and follower crazed world it’s nice to be able to hop on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook and know you are not alone. It’s nice to know there are people who can relate to your excitement of a two hour of block of time set aside just for tweeting, or the celebration that you got a new technology or widget finally integrated into your blog or website. Particularly for those who’s offline colleagues are made of primarily folks who can’t spell let alone relate to why you would want to spend Friday night on Twitter, it sure is good there are some online friends who do understand!

10. Pay it forward and help one another. Just as you need to lean on your community for many of the things mentioned above and more, your community needs you too. You can pay it forward every single day on the social networks. You can help people learn, grow and be motivated. You can help them get unstuck, bring together a solution, launch a new business or simple learn how to Tweet or setup a Facebook business page. Whatever it is, make sure you focus on paying it forward as much or more than you focus on receiving. If you focus on helping others achieve their goals and objectives as a priority, you will achieve your objectives by default. The heartbeat of social is the people. It's what they see, talk about, share, listen to, watch, virtually touch and feel that keeps them coming back.
 
February 01, 2015 at 03:55PM http://ift.tt/1zJIiW9
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