Even if you haven’t used the site personally, you’ve probably heard of MySpace, right?  What about Facebook?  Flickr?  See what I’m getting at here?  Social networking and socially interactive websites are what everybody’s talking about these days.  What if I said you could get a cut of the action and showcase your brand or product at the same time?

Shane Atchison talks about doing just that in his article "Leveraging Online Communities".  He’s not talking about creating a mega-site to take on MySpace, either.  He’s talking about a brand or company-specific community for your users, fans, and customers.

He’s broken down the legwork into three main categories:

Defining Your Online Community

What makes MySpace successful?  What makes eBay successful?  What made digg make the leap to near househould name status in no time flat?  Boiled down to their basic elements, all of these sites do the same thing:  they let people interact.  As Atchison points out, more people use email than search engines.  Folks want to talk and communicate with each other.  Whether they’re keeping up with family and friends or meeting complete strangers, people love online interaction.  That’s what any community is all about.  Creating a community for your company should first, and foremost, be about communication.  Once that part is down, start thinking of ways to build that community around your product or company.

Study Other Communities

Atchison presents a good idea:  go to other social networking sites and do a search for your brand or some of your products.  Identify what people are doing and how they’re interacting with those products.  Get ideas for the tools and services in your community by looking at how existing communities serve your customers.

Continue to Study

Never stop learning.  Illicit user feedback.  Keep studying other communities.  And continue to build up the successes of your company community while improving the weak areas.  You can never test enough and you can never have enough customer input.  Make getting that information a regular part of your online community.

Are you hyped up about creating a community now?  If not, are you at least mildly interested?  These social communities are what Web 2.0 is all about.  Get a jump start on the “future” of the internet today and start working social and community features into your marketing plans now.

You know I’m going to keep harassing you until it’s done… right?