I need your feedback – Health Habits & Social Networking
Every week, I get a bunch of emails from readers.
And every week, I am blown away by the quality and depth of your questions, comments, observations and criticisms.
And, as much as I enjoy reading those emails, I think it’s a shame that the rest of the Health Habits readers don’t get to join in the discussion. I think that we could get much more out of Health Habits if there was more interaction between all of us.
Because of this, I have been looking at ways of making Health Habits more “social”.
Here’s what I am thinking of doing:
- Setting up a facebook page/group page for Health Habits
- Setting up a twitter group for Health Habits (currently 75 people have added me to their list)
- Setting up a separate community site using Ning or SocialGo
- Or testing out this new WordPress plugin that would allow us to set up a social network right on the blog.
All of these approaches have their pluses and minuses.
So, I would appreciate your feedback:
- Is this a good idea or not?
- Which social networking tool do you think is best?
- Any other suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Doug
Category: Miscellaneous
I use FB the most. I have a twitter account but I’m not thrilled with it as I’m not as aware of the conversations that occur as they can in blog comments or FB update comments. I’m not at all familiar with the other options.
Number 4. It would be very nice to be able to have that interaction right here on health habits!
I think you may be asking the wrong question here, or well half of the right question. I think what you are looking to create is a hub for your readers to exchange information in a way that makes that information more accessible to your readers and also will help your own information flow.
This is less about the tool that you use (although that is important) and more about creating an engagement strategy.
Your blog is currently in a information-digest format. That is I know that I can come to your blog read it and ask you a question if I don’t understand (very web 1.0). While the blog is a valuable source of information for me, I rarely use it to engage a community (aside from yourself). So how can you take me, the average reader and get me to ask questions to the broader community?
As you often note your blogs about fitness there are three parts to fitness
1. Exercise
2. Nutrition
3. Emotional
In communications we can work in 3′s as well.
1. Information & Message
2. Community Engagement
3. Target and Reach
They build on each other. Your information and message is already quite solid. Now you need to figure out how you want to develop your audience into a community… to do that you need to identify your target audience (where are they right now aside from reading your blog) and what communications vehicles are best to enable your audience to begin connecting as a community (this is often a combination of where they are and where you are willing to go as well as them).
My initial recommendations, not knowing your exact goals, targeted outcomes etc… as well as not having a knowledge of your other readers is Facebook. It continues to be the fastest growing online community (aside from Twitter) that has the capacity for users to exchange meaningful information.
Still Facebook has it’s drawbacks, specifically it’s group function provides little incentive for return visits and can require larger investment by group leaders to pull users into engagement.
Other social networking sites which are not as well known (ning and SocialGo) you need to sell your audience on the platform as well as the community development.
Sara,
Wow!
You just confirmed my belief that I have a lot to learn if I want to make Health Habits the kind of experience I imagine it can be. Hopefully my excitement doesn’t get the best of me.
If you could recommend any resources to help me get up to speed, it would be appreciated.
DR,
Ning:
I nearly set up a community at ning called Project Shred but with managing Project Swole and some other websites, I just don’t have the time to invest in an entirely separate ning community. You might have that time, but it just seems like a lot of work. Besides that, you will have to sell people on the ning platform concept, which many people know nothing about. I’ve no experience with SocialGo, but the same principles probably apply.
Twitter:
Twitter is what it is. I don’t think you will get the results you are looking for with Twitter. You are looking for a larger scale solution, not just a spastic glorified instant messaging utility. That being said, working with Twitter takes far less time to manage than any of the other solutions, so I think you should use Twitter as much as possible in addition to a better social strategy.
Facebook:
I think Facebook has the most potential. Facebook is a highly active community that is growing faster than any other online community. Start by creating a Facebook group for Health Habits, but you have to offer something of value. Consider looking into having a proprietary Facebook app developed… something users can embed into their own pages… something they will want to use again and again. Think Mafia Wars.
Forums:
You didn’t mention this, but I think forums are completely outdated. This is a lame attempt at building a community. Don’t do it.
Mingle:
I have no experience with Mingle, but it seems like a decent tool. I am going to probably try this out on my blog at Project Swole. That thing needs a complete redesign anyway, so I may integrate Mingle with a redesign. I’d like to see you try Mingle on Health Habits and give us all some feedback.
Videos:
You could also consider learning how to publish your own videos on YouTube, in order to establish a video community. Those videos can also be published to a wide variety of video sites using a (subscription) program called Traffic Geyser, as well as published on Facebook. This is just one of the many things I know I need to do for Project Swole.
If you are anything like me you are starting to feel like you are dropping the ball on keeping up with technology. I don’t have really any offsite communities for Project Swole, and I definitely don’t make the most of my Twitter profile. I think you are on the right track, but it may take some trial and error to find the perfect solution.
Thanks Steve,
Dropping the ball is 100% accurate.
I have all of these ideas of what I want to do…I just don’t know how to do it
Argghhh
I feel your pain. I have todo lists up the wazoo for increasing the online presence for Project Swole, but with a full-time job and a family, nothing ever comes to fruition.
I even outsourced development on a Pligg site once called Fitwire, but it never panned out. See it in all its unfinished glory at http://fitwire.me. I was trying to replicate Health Ranker, was well on the way to success, but couldn’t find time to finish up the site and promote it. Now that Health Ranker is dead I might actually resurrect that. But, I digress…
I still think Facebook is your best option, along with making the most of Twitter. I want to thank you for introducing me to Posterous. I created a new profile today for PS but I’m not sure how much to use it, or even if I know how to make the most of it. Probably publishing workout routines or something, like you do.
Steve
As my Grandfather used to say,
“Don’t try to do everything.
Leave one or two things for God to do too, eh?”
Facebook thing should be mandatory.
I’d join your Facebook fan page if you made one. That would also be a really easy way for me to share your ideas with my friends. I just emailed my husband a link to one of your workouts- if you had a fan page I could share that with everyone.
Don’t be confused with a Group page on Facebook, go for the Fan page!
A fan page is in the works
This is a Test Comment for Mingle
Interesting blog, great variety of topics and comments.
Great work!
Sebastien Rahman
Personal Trainer Toronto