Vanilla Forums Community Blog

The key to success in any endeavor is measurement.

I mean that quite literally. Without a quantifiable sense of where you are vs. where you were, you can’t know (in any meaningful way) whether you’ve succeeded or not.

When it comes to digital marketing, this truism barely needs stating. No marketer in his or her right mind would walk into the CMO's office without a set of precise measures indicating the success (or failure!) of last month's new campaign.

Sometimes, the internet seems like a sea of snake oil companies trying to scam others into buying their worthless products. This unfortunate reality of the internet has made us more vigilant and less trusting.

This is especially the case in B2B transactions, where prospective clients come looking for a solution to an important business problem.

Your prospects are looking for someone they can trust. While traditional advertising may help raise awareness, it’s no longer a driving force behind purchase decisions. Facing complex challenges and wanting to improve their own businesses, your clients are looking for recommendations from your other customers. They want social proof, and that’s where brand advocacy comes in.

It’s unfortunate that we have to revisit this once again. However, this topic needs to be addressed properly. Facebook is indisputably a powerful platform for building your community.

In a world where it’s increasingly difficult to get — much less hold — the attention of customers, Facebook stands out as one of the few place that can be counted on to keep people coming back. It's no wonder that the vast majority of community managers have come to rely on the platform’s interactive space as an indispensable tool.

That’s all great, except for one  thing — Facebook isn't the best place to start a community.

Long before the advent of modern inbound marketing, word-of-mouth has been an important motivator for determining where people are willing to put their money. Whereas people used to look to  friends for advice on which was the best brand to buy from, however, it’s now more common for people to turn to the internet for advice. That’s why price comparison and consumer review websites quickly rose to prominence back in the late 90s.

When running a gaming community, you always have fans creating blogs and pages about your game. It’s just another way for fans to form friendships with people who share a love of their favorite game.

There are various types of fan pages which people create. Some can be friendly, where they share and support your game, while others can be harmful, promoting the use of unconventional methods to find cheats and exploits.

I’ve seen my share of pages over the years where the primary focus is to cheat the system and even sell secrets or bots. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done about these pages and players unless you get a legal team involved or know someone at Facebook that can shut down each page – they will most likely just reappear later under a new name.