The Fundamentals
We have identified 6 fundamentals to growing a fruitful social business (and I’ll use a gardening analogy)
1. FIND THE RIGHT SEEDS - Start with your customers in mind better understand their attitudes, aspirations & natural social behaviour. The best customer is a sharing customer.
2. PREPARE THE GROUND - Appreciate which platforms can deliver on the insights. Choose the right tool for the right job.
3. FERTILISE EARLY & FREQUENTLY - Fresh content is the fertiliser which interests & brings the community with it. In turn the community will bring fresher and better content.
4. GROW ORGANICALLY - Buying likes or followers is pretence – there’s no short cut in forming meaningful relationships.
5. MAINTAIN YOUR GARDEN - It requires agile development, weed out mistakes and move on. And don’t forget to celebrate success!
6. HARVEST WHEN RIPE - Social business takes time but the harvest is generous and keeps giving. In time traditional marketing, customer service and research costs and so on can be reduced.