Social Media is like building a new town

Companies struggle with how to draw people to their social media activities, to me it is like creating a new town. A town, if it is to thrive has to have

• Cafes/Pubs - places to meet and talk. On the web this may be a Facebook group, a forum, a community page.
• Transportation Hub. To help navigate the web then it needs links to other places. Your site can do this by bringing in news feeds from your area of interest for people to visit.
• Newspapers or bulletins. This to me is your blog.
• Entertainment. Youtube can be your local cinema providing entertainment.
• Conversations. To me this is Twitter.
• Local radio. Yep, you guessed it podcasts.
• Local clubs. To me this is the social networking element.

Social media is a virtual community, it is a way of bringing people together with shared interests but more than that....a place that provides value to its inhabitants. It needs to be visually attractive, it needs to be friendly, it needs to look for ways of bringing the community together....to fulfill that human need of being needed.