A Simple Presence Framework

June 15, 2009 · Comments

Janes Addiction Gaining the awareness, the attention, and ultimately the trust of a community online is a challenge many people are working to accomplish. Whether for your own personal interests or for a business-related use, we look to build relationships using these tools so that we can have conversations with the right people. But where should you start? What comprises a good methodology for using the platform? What’s the proper etiquette. Here are some starter moves to consider when building a presence framework for business communications purposes.

This ran pretty long. Let’s call it part 1 of 2.

A Simple Presence Framework

Listening First

  • It’s easier if you grow bigger ears.

  • Use listening tools to find where people might be talking about you (by inputting search terms your prospective community might use in discussions that are pertinent to your interests.
  • Start a spreadsheet or simple database to note where these conversations are happening, and to record info on who is out there in the space.
  • Check out Alltop and Google Blogsearch to find existing blogs on the topic. Subscribe. Get ready to start commenting there.
  • Keep your listening station running all the time. Tune it all the time. Work hard at knowing where people are talking about you, your competitors, those topics that interest you. This is one of the most important parts of the platform.

Passports

In my post, Using Outposts in Your Social Media Strategy, I talk about home bases, outposts, and passports. A home base is the eventual site where you hope people come to interact the most with you. Outposts are places of presence that you maintain for interaction and promotion purposes. Passports are profiles to use on various social sites, meaning that it’s important to have an account/profile there, but you might not necessarily have to participate as a full-fledged community member.

Here are some recommended sites for passports. Some of these might be outposts for you, but that’s up to you.

  • wordpress.com – a blogging platform
  • flickr.com – a photo sharing site
  • gmail.com – for all Google Accounts
  • yahoo.com – for all Yahoo Accounts (including flickr above)
  • digg.com – a social news/recommendation site
  • stumbleupon.com – a social recommendation site
  • disqus.com – a commenting platform
  • delicious.com – a social bookmarking platform
  • blip.tv – a video hosting platform (see also viddler.com and vimeo.com)
  • twitter.com – a powerful social network (see more in outposts below)
  • facebook.com – a social network (see more in outposts below)
  • youtube.com – a video sharing site (see more in outposts below)
  • openid.org – a universal account (very useful)
  • brightkite.com – a location-based service (not 100% necessary, but recommended)
  • yelp.com – especially pertinent to small and/or local businesses

Having these accounts means you can communicate faster should a conversation pertinent to your interests start on any of those sites. From here, we’ll look into outpost sites that have worked well for me.

Outposts

Outposts refer to those social sites where you might consider maintaining an online presence, but where your participation will be split between interacting with people there, and guiding them gently to your home base (whatever site you intend your online interactions to focus around). Here are a few recommendations. The truth is, you’ll also need to have done your listening homework to find the more focus-specific sites that aren’t as general as these.

  • twitter.com – this site is my single most successful point of presence as an outpost. I devote a full 60 or 70 percent of my efforts here, as they pay off repeatedly. Twitter is a great place to build loosely-joined relationships, and to find pertinent conversations using the Twitter Search Tool.
  • facebook.com – if you’re willing to mix life and work, facebook offers a rapidly growing user base (over 700,000 a day at this writing), and many ways to interact. I have mixed effect on Facebook, but they do offer many sharing and promotional tools that spread my online presence and then redouble. With recent improvements to business pages and fan pages, Facebook seems to have even more new features on the horizon that will help.
  • youtube.com – with over 13 billion videos served a month, ignoring the presence point of youtube as a potential place to build community is no longer prudent. Video isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it might be of value to create at least a few video assets to start the conversation.
  • linkedin.com – this isn’t an online resume; it’s a living business connections network. I admit to using the service somewhat differently than officially recommended. I’m a promiscuous linker (meaning I don’t necessarily restrict my connections to people I know well; I save that for recommendations, as I won’t recommend someone I can’t vouch for). Many people find great success devoting some time to the Q&A section. If you’re not necessarily into business networking, you could also check out Yahoo! Answers.

Beyond this, you might check out sites like Ning.com to find like-minded communities. Don’t forget also Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. Forums are alive and well, too. By searching and listening, you’ll get a better sense of where people are spending time. That’s where you should focus your preliminary efforts, no matter my recommendations above.

Home Base

Home base is where you focus the most of your presence time. Depending on who you are (or who your client might be) should determine how you build this site. I rarely find a case where blogging software isn’t the best choice for your home base. Here’s what I mean with regards to home base.

In my case, [chrisbrogan.com] is my home base. The goals of this base are fourfold:

  1. Equip you to be successful with business relationship management (social media and marketing, mostly).
  2. Share my perspective such that it might appeal to you professionally, either as a speaker or as a business associate through my agency.
  3. Point you to other projects, products, and people who I think are noteworthy.
  4. Experiment with business communications and media so I can better equip organizations for success.

Those are my goals. Knowing the goals of your home base will dictate how and what to include on the site. For instance, if I were representing film actor Ryan Reynolds, I’d build a site with these goals:

  1. Connect people with Ryan’s personality and off-camera, behind-the-scenes world for community relationship management.

  2. Display Ryan’s body of work (YouTube) and his photo stream (Flickr) for lead generation.
  3. Provide Ryan a platform to talk about non-film-related interests (maybe BlogTalkRadio and/or Ustream.tv for weekly chats).

Ryan’s not a writer. I’d skew the site towards video and audio connectivity, which also provides a more human connection. Maybe he’s secretly an essayist. If so, I’d give that the stage.

My main point here is that we can’t build a home base to be generic. It has to fit the personality and needs of the person or organization we’re crafting it for.

Summing Up the Platform

We’ve built a 3 part platform plus a listening station. We have a home base, outposts, and some passport accounts, should we need them. The listening station is up and running so that you can be aware of the larger conversation around you, and you’ve got a reasonable platform put together.

In my next post, Make Presence Management Work For You, we’ll talk about what to do with all this, and how to accomplish some simple business relationship management objectives.

Any questions on what’s listed above? Does this help? How are you doing it differently?

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  • Chris, I've been trying to outline a "socialmedia framework" ever since someone in a virtual team meeting asked if I had one. WELL DONE on this post. I'm going back now and dissecting it. @jmacofearth
  • Just for sake of simple on-line "findability", a passive basic info repository like Google Profile (and, for professionals, VisualCV) might not be a bad idea as well.
  • Great stuff. I've used the 'outpost' terminology before, but really like the 'passport' definition too. This is valuable for any brand, whether an individual, SME or Fortune 500. Narrowing down the places you are active in is key, so the digital life isn't overwhelming. But having awareness of and the ability to step into other 'passpoart' platforms is advisable as well.
  • Love it. And of course it works for B2B and B2C which is important because I do mainly B2B and I find that the "rules" are different for organisations than consumers.
  • Hi Chris,

    I think this is a really good framework you've outlined here.
    A little surprised that you didn't mention Google Alerts along with Alltop
    & Blogsearch as a key listening tool but still very good.

    Can easily see this becoming a core document you expand & revise over the years as tools & technology evolve.

    Looking forward to reading the next post Make Presence Management Work For You.

    Thanks,

    Michael D. Walker
  • claus
    That's a thing on my to-do list, to fill the missing parts on social websites and networks.

    Thanks Chris for your advice
  • I do much the same thing, but I blend the outposts and the passports together a bit more than you do. So instead of having two categories, I have one lump of outposts, some of which we are active in, and some we aren't. My Library's MySpace page is a good example of that - it's been not so active, but I've "re-established base contact" with it last week, to see if I can start getting interaction going with our 600 or so friends there.

    But the general jist is much the same. Thanks for the post - good stuff!
  • Great post Chris!
    I already used some of the Listening tips mentioned above.Having an efficient dashboard to collect information related to our business is crucial.
    Now I need to prioritize which one of this platforms to use for outpost and passport regarding the type of my business.
    Waiting for the next post.
  • this is wonderful sharing as it is very important to keep our eye on latest happening. Combination of all type of promotion is the important part as we cant relay only on one or few promotional techniques.
    thanks for sharing
  • Print out. Post on Wall. That's really all I could add. Chris might have saved companies at least 10K in consulting from this post alone. Scarily useful.
  • Did Chris save those companies from hiring you, Stuart?
  • In a sense. He kind of knocked basic SM consulting out of the park. Whether or not those companies could interpret this correctly is another story...
  • I would add Twitter and LinkedIn to the listening station list along with Google Reader, Alerts, AllTop. I get a lot of my ideas and places to check out from these resources. Looking forward to Part 2.
  • Chris,

    I've been using your Outpost and Base Camp strategy for a while now, and it has proven to be excellent.

    In pitches, it shows the phases of growth, and in building an online brand, it provides a straight forward way to actually build a powerful presence.

    This is a much appreciated addition. Thank you for keeping up the great content.
  • Well said.
  • Zoe
    Chris,

    These simple analogies offer such a useful tool for creating a meaningful presence. When we have a tangible way to envision our presence, it suddenly seems a lot more important to be genuine and useful at our various points of chatter.

    I wrote another version of this analogy in The Unconventional Guide to Art and Money (which I co-wrote with Chris Guillebeau) -- I described these elements of online presence as the heart, the limbs, the ears, and the mouth. Same idea, different words :).
  • Great advice; *thank you* for spelling it out like that!

    We organizers need to-do lists, you know. :)
  • Brilliant, as always! Thanks!
  • michaelqtodd
    Exceptional stuff Chris.The secret for all you who have read this is to go out and do.

    If you have not commented on this post after reading it you have missed out on its biggest point sorry!

    The point Chris is making is that this is a conversation.Its not one way!!
  • This outline/overview is just what I have been looking for as I learn the ends and outs of web presence and social media. Have felt of late that I am lost in the trees without understanding the ecosystem of the forest. I look forward to the next installment. Thanks a lot.
  • L
    I found this information to be informative, of high value, and I am extremely appreciative of the format in which you delivered this much needed information. Thank you.
  • Thanks for sharing, Chris. This is an awesome post in that you're actually handing out digital marketing strategy 101. I can see this is going to be one of those posts you (and visitors) come back to time and again.

    When you say:
    Start a spreadsheet or simple database to note where these conversations are happening, and to record info on who is out there in the space.


    I would recommend doing this with one of the excellent mind-map applications that's out there. It's nice to visualize the points of connection and conversation. If you're on a Mac I recommend Tinderbox. The learning cure is quite steep but the benefits are worth it.
  • Chris,

    I love how you outlined the presence framework: Listen, Passports, Outposts and Homebase. Clear & Simple.

    Don't forget Intense Debate.

    Best,

    Coretta Jackson, MBA
  • Excellent post Chris! I think many people get so involved in the other points that they forget about strengthening home base. By the same token though, if they don't build up their outposts and passports they won't get many people to visit their home base. I think you hit it right on the head with forming a tripod of these three things.
  • Chris, I find that building your presence, maintaining all the passports, doing outposts takes a lot of time. You need a full time job in order to do all the above, I never have time to browse (with purpose of course) for more than 1 hour at night. It's impossible to know about everybody and everything out there.
  • Good system you've got in place. I may incorporate some into the system I'm using. Thanks for the great post!
  • ramonbnuezjr
    Chris as always great work. I have been rattling my head on how to build up in this space. Although I have a number of ideas - what you have presented here lays down the groundwork on what needs to be done.
  • L
    Chris, is there one or two sites that you recommend that you can post blogs and feeds to that will be a hub to all those other sites. So, you can be on one site, hit send, and it feeds your info to all the other sites?
  • Great article...as usual. It makes a lot of sense in terms of the general approach, individual steps to be taken, and how everything fits into a coherent and successful online presence. I know I will try to apply this to my own needs and experiences.

    Always a wealth of very useful information.
    Thank you so much!
  • Chris man you continue to give people a trail to follow that you've blazed! I'm definitely going to have to tweet this because so many people who are trying to live the social media networking/marketing life online have absolutely no direction!

    Thanks for continuing to kick incredible VALUE and knowledge out to the peeps!

    Timothy Carter
  • Thanks for the great post. This framework is very helpful for explaining the various tools and platforms available and how to utilize them in a cohesive strategy. So many small business owners are overwhelmed by the options and jargon that they do not move beyond a basic website. I'll definitely be sharing this post with some of my colleagues.

    Thanks again!
    kk
  • Great post. Thanks, Chris.
  • Shouldn't you start by figuring out what your goals and objectives are so that you know what to focus on and what success looks like?
  • Jaimey
    Thanks Chris! I see the applicability of this framework for both business and grassroots, non-busines communities. It validates that there is not a shortage of community to interface with, affect, and build collaboratively.
  • Chris, nice job! I truly see how this strategy will benefit the job seeker. The other comments have been helpful too! I sang your praises for this in my recent post...hope I got it right!
    http://hannahmorgan.typepad.com/hannah_morgan/2...
  • You did a really did a great job here of explaining the whole social media process and the different areas need for full participation in social media.
    I have setup my different areas.
    I agree with Michael I was going to suggest Google Alerts for help in the listening portion.
    I do have many passive outposts where I don't really interact daily with, but pick a main "site" my active participation.
  • Great post, Chris! This is going to help integrate my social media plan into the larger communications plan at work. Thanks!
  • ShellyKramer
    Chris,

    I speak to small business owners all the time about developing a presence in the social media sphere. What a great resource you've compiled and your usual down-to-earth, succinct way of pulling it all together is terrific. As always, you're providing a valuable resource to all of us and it is much appreciated.
  • I'm sure there's a ton more Outposts of various sorts, but I'd add Slideshare.com as well. That's a great place to put stuff both for it's own sake as well as to link to.

    Scott
  • This is helpful. I imagine many folks are overwhelmed by what you are describing, but for those of us who are used to creating online hubs and then spoking out from there, it's very useful. (And there are no pirates involved, so I'm happy.)

    Thanks, Chris.
  • Chris,
    I'm already doing most, if not all of this. Some of it I learned from you and hubspot and other awesome experts in social / inbound marketing.

    I am, once again, very glad to be one of your subscribers. You definitely have put this out there in a detailed way that we all can apply now to improve our efforts immediately.

    Thanx, Dude! 8)
  • Shilpi
    Hi Chris, I am a novice blogger and this is my first attempt. I liked the way you broke down the fundamentals of a social media strategy. This helps me with my strategy as well as you verbalised it so much better than I would have. Thanks!
  • Chris, great stuff. Thanks for the reminder to have all our ducks in a row-talking, sharing and communicating is simple-but these tools help a great deal.

    Thanks for all you do.
  • For some, a missed opportunity with this kind of Framework is the output of content that comes from creation/participation and it's availability to search.

    Search is a formidable discovery channel and any digital content that can be indexed by a search engine presents an entry point. Except of course, when the passports, outposts and home base are oblivious to what people are searching for.

    Find out what people are searching for relevant to your goals and flavor (NOT stuff) your digital content as such. Make it easier for those that are not already socially connected to you, to find your outposts, passports and home base via search. You you may very well amplify the effect of the sage advice Chris gives about building a presence.
  • This is an excellent outline of how to begin and maintain.I have yet to decide my homebase as I get introduced to the various tools and platforms available.
    I really liked the point you made about tailoring it to your skills (writing/speaking)
    Homebase and outposts sound good because I can't see how you could really add any value or support if you kept an active presence all over the place.You would be spread way to thinly.
    Good point by Stuartfoster to print it out and hang on wall.
  • I will come back to this post OFTEN ... until I get it all under the hood: A Simple Presence Framework by Chris Brogan is tops at this time for how to think and plan next steps out here on th'net. Thanks Chris! @marklapete
  • Chris

    Outstanding article.

    You nailed the basics of social media marketing online. And let's face it. The basics will get us a long way when we stick to them and not be tempted to deviate.

    I learned a little bit more here too.

    Best luck!

    Michael Searles
    'The Luck Doctor'
    Expert in all things Lucky
  • Chris

    Outstanding article.

    You nailed the basics of social media marketing online. And let's face it. The basics will get us a long way when we stick to them and not be tempted to deviate.

    I learned a little bit more here too.

    Best luck!

    Michael Searles
    'The Luck Doctor'
    Expert in all things Lucky
  • Thank you for sharing your experience! I appreciate your business approach! I also think that without durable work your have no chances to achieve real success!
  • Carl
    Thank you, this post is absolutely great! Awsome ideas that will help me a lot!!!
  • Blog is doing the same work as news does, yes news have some formats and styles. So If you will post all news in blog style then it will read by so many users.
  • I get so much out of your posts Chris. It sometimes takes me an hour or more to finish because I can't wait to check out a suggestion you make and get side-tracked as I just did with Yelp. Very worthwhile side-trip though. Thanks!
  • Hi Chris
    Great Post. You have given us some great information and I especially agree with you about Twitter. I use it the most and find it worthwhile. Thanks for breaking things down so that we can easily assimilate them. Enjoy your day.
    Veronica Hay
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