The Retail Social-ista Next Door: How to get more out of a Group

The Retail Social-ista Next Door

...everything I know I learned while shopping!

How to get more out of a Group

Now that we have opened Pandora's box and started unloading a bunch of social media tools that make conversation, collaboration, and communication easier, why has our conversation still not started? I have been out riding the waves of the internet and listening for that conversation and i must say most of it is coming from marketing and PR folks talking about brand building. Now i know that every company has (or should have) a brand but when these folks say brand, they are mostly focused on the Retail brand and how to reach, listen and sell to customers. Those of us behind the scenes of Retail know that while that is the ultimate objective, WE have to deliver products and services to enable the processes and that requires a 'whole nuther' conversation. (I have always loved that expression and wonder if it is a southern-ism) That's the conversation I'm talking about!

And the question is, "How do we start it?" Here's what i know. Many of us are already using tools like LinkedIn, MySpace, Face Bookand of course TheRetailTradeCenter for various reasons. The developers of those tools recognized our need for creating community so they enabled Groups. We thought that sounded cool so we joined some Groups or even started our own. What happened? Well from what i have seen and experienced from my Groups, not much! Some people post questions to the Group and may or may not get responses. Some people share documents with the Group but no real conversation. What's up with that? We love the idea but seems nobody does much of anything. Is there no pain to address? Do we think it's too much work? Are we waiting for someone else to start first? All of the above..plus

We simply do not know how to use the tools available. Let me pose an example for a Group and how it might provide both community and facilitate research. Let's say you are member of the International Council of Shopping Centers(ICSC) Real Estate Research Group. You guys love to chat with others in your field because there are so many interpretations of the data you use to make decisions..among other reasons. The problem is, you only get the chance to get together once or twice a year. You are looking for a way to keep up the conversation so you decide to form a community. I would of course suggest TheRetailTradeCenter as your platform and we will discuss the reasons (aside from the obvious that this is my business.

) in a later post.

OK, so you're off to a good start but to be effective you must appoint a moderator for the group. Many platforms, like ours, will offer to co-moderate with you. Once done a good starting place is to create a Wiki (I like PBWiki) that will serve as an agenda for the Group. This requires participation and that is precisely what has been the downfall of many a good group. No one steps up. So let me suggest that in order to be a member of THIS group, each participant MUST provide at least one form of training/sharing of content over the year. Each member is then asked to register their training/sharing topic on the Wiki and how/when they will provide it. This begins to take on the form of an un-conference.

This gives the group some substance! It also serves as an introduction for each member of the group; sharing who they are and what their specialties are. Members can then add others to their go-to list for ceratin topics and/or create direct links with them. This will also provide the group with a one year agenda and a structure so members can choose which topics interest them. Taking it a step further, you might also ask members to 'tag' on Del.icio.us any content they think the group might like to see that is related to an upcoming training/sharing session. You would simply agree to a tagging system so you could always find items tagged by this group.

And what if there are topics that some members would like to see but have not been posted? No problem, they can post their requests to the Wiki and see if anyone steps up or even allow the moderator to go out and find vendors or other outsiders to speak on the subject. This too becomes a 'whole nuther' use of groups.

By the way, we are building just such a group for the ICSC in TheRetailTradeCenter. Drop by over the next few weeks as we get things started. Or simply go create your own. I am always happy to help you get started! (ok another shameless plug but this is not an unbiased blogger)

Shopping is all about the 'find' and using a Wiki is another great 'find' by

Your Shopper Next Door