In many ways social media is simply human social organization and interaction transplanted from the real to the virtual space. Social media consultants and experts rightly tell you to listen, engage, build communities, and display the same social desirables that you would present to people in your real social life. The problem is that it seems like most of the advice stops at community. But if we are basing best practices in social media on best practices in society, then we are missing one key piece: the family.
In the same way that human society is generally built around communities, it is also built around families. There are many resources and qualities we get from a family that we can’t always get from a community, such as advice, support, and mutual trust. In short there is a much closer and more valuable bond between a person and his family than a person and his community. This is the idea that we need to apply to social media in business.
Many businesses are already trying to maximize the potential of the consumer community. But I don’t see many examples of businesses maximizing the potential of the consumer family. As we build our communities, we should be looking to establish families within those communities. We should be looking for the most active, engaged, and valuable community members, and build a new level within our business to consumer social relationships. If you believe that each member of your community is the same in terms of value to your business, you are missing out. There are always influencers and leaders within any community, and yours is no different. If you can identify those influencers and incentivize them to engage on a closer and more elevated level, you will unlock a largely untapped potential in your existing consumer community.
Your new family will be made up of people whose opinions you can trust, and whose presence and depth of engagement is consistent and dependable. Your family can be your focus group, your brainstorming session, your opinion poll, your crowdsourcing, and many other services that were traditionally expensive and time consuming. You can prove the ROI of family because it will save you money and time. There is tremendous potential in the idea of a consumer family, and if you understand the value of community, this is simply taking it one step further and creating some value from your communities.
