The Social Media Snowball Effect: Staying Connected

[#1]

I ran across an interesting blog post from the ubiquitous Chris Brogan I thought I'd share: 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day

Chris titles his approach as "Presence Management", which struck me as odd initially, since it's about reaching out and responding to the community, not about pushing yourself on others. But upon reflection I can see how defining it as a discipline can help - especially for someone like Chris with such a huge following. Putting yourself out there every day is an effort that needs to be performed religiously, which is really what his post is about. And the tips he provides are useful examples of those hundreds of little things that add up over time. Here's a few for reference:

1. Find seven things worth retweeting in your general feed and share.

3. Point out a few people that you admire. It shows your mindset, too.

10. Share at least 3 interesting updates that you find.

13. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer 2-3 answers.

(see the full article for the other 15)

This is one of those areas that is often tough for newcomers to social media to grasp; that it's not about the killer content, the ultimate blog post or your perfect design. Its about the constant stream of little things that keep people connected to you or to your community. Like a snowball rolling downhill and growing larger as it travels, those little connections are the way your members come to know who you are and what your community is about, and grow closer as a result. So be sure to keep in touch, keep it real, and keep it coming!

Are you inside your community, whether its your corporate site, your facebook page or twitter feed, interacting with others and sharing with them? How do they know who you are?

Photo by redjar

[#2]

I completely agree with your summary; about how it is the daily feed that keeps user's connected to a community.  Sometimes I look at it as the "daily share" (as cheesy as that sounds).  Time and time again I would stumble some across some awesome website that had content that I really cared about (cult bands, cult movies, or something else really obscure that I was into), but the site would never be updated, so after a while I stopped checking.

Communities (forums in particular) are the same way.  Whenever you see threads titled "how come nobody posts here?", you know it is time for an Extreme Community Make-over.

Scott, you and I have both seen this happen where businesses have spent a great deal of time coming up with User Interface designs that take months to get off the ground, only to have a really dead community (because the team did not have a true "Community Management" plan).  Part of that plan has to be the "daily share".