Community: Worth the time?

One of the chief concerns I hear about social media is: “it takes so much time.”

While I’m as much of a fan of time-saving tips as the rest, I feel unapologetic about saying “Yes. Yes it does.”

The reason I don’t make excuses for the time it takes to “do” social media is because building reliable, fruitful relationships takes time. When was the last time that you ever heard someone say “Finding the love of my life took so. much. time!” Yes. It turns out that the really powerful relationships only happen with mutual investments.

And lest you think I’m talking about using social platforms on a personal level; let me clarify: if you’re in business or work for a business relationships matter. In today’s business environment, relationships don’t “just” belong to sales and marketing. They belong to HR, Customer Service, Product, even Operations. An entire organization has to take responsibility for relationships.  Today’s lines are blurring faster than we can keep up and this is why traditional business silos no longer apply.

If your marketing or communications team is the only one who cares about relationships, your community will sniff that out. Or worse, if your marketing and communications teams don’t share relationship building with the rest of the organization, they are doing a huge disservice to your company. Change that. Stat.

Change is hard, but its required to survive.

But Why Should You Care?

Here’s another fact: creating community doesn’t happen during crisis. Its during a crisis that you’ll be glad you have a community.