The Triad of Social Media

Just as no man is exactly the same as the other, social media sites aren’t build the same way, too. That’s why others are popular and some only have a handful of users. Why is that so? It’s probably because not all social media sites take note of the importance of the 3 basic elements of social media.

What basic elements?

Simply put, that’s community, relevancy, and technology, in no specific order.

Community. As social media thrives on socializing with people, it’s only common sense to say that no social media will thrive without an active community to back it up. The diversity of cultures and knowledge that manifest in each community member’s posts and updates helps keep things fresh, alive, and, in a way, interesting.

Relevancy. You can be a topic-centric social media site or one that allows various groups to set up a place for their conversations in. Either way, there’s always going to be a topic that binds the group, or groups, together. Say, for example, you had a social site for pet lovers, if you don’t post anything related to pets on the site, how likely can you get pet owners or pet lovers to join it? You’ve got to engage your target followers for them to engage you. It’s a simple case of “I’ll scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine.”

Technology. Although isn’t always the case, most of the time people want to be in a social media site that offers them the flexibility of using various tools or applications. Take Facebook and Twitter for example. These are sites that keep up with the times, technologically speaking. They’re always coming up with new applications to offer their users.

Even if there are those rare few who like kicking it old school, most people nowadays have a tendency to switch to another site if the technology on their current social media site stales out. And if you’re after keeping the community happy, this is something that you’d probably want to always check on.

Some social site owners make the mistake on putting too much emphasis on one of the and take the other two for granted. You put too much emphasis on technology and forgo relevancy, there’s a high chance that the community will not take that too well. You put more importance on relevancy and ignore technology, the community will not appreciate the stale features.

If you want to engage the community, you need to give them something worth their time. This means putting equal weight on both relevancy and technology. The more value you give your followers, the more they will value you back.

What’s your take on this?