Unlocking The Value Of The Vocal Minority

By Ben LaMothe on June 13, 2011 12:00 PM

When you’re overseeing a company’s social media activity, there comes a time when you take stock of what has happened during the month, or a specified period of time, and create an analysis of that data.

During that analysis it may come to light that while there are a number of people active on the page during that time period, there’s one person, or a few people, who make their voices heard every day.

When you’re attempting to get as many people engaged as possible, having the same few people appear on your pages can cause a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss them, and possibly view their consistent interaction as an administrative failure to get a larger portion of the community interested and engaged.

While mass appeal is important, recognizing the value of the vocal minority is absolutely critical.

In a recent post on the Managing Communities blog, the author explains that listening and valuing input is important no matter who it comes from:

But, if you’re not actually listening, if you’re just pretend listening, acting like you care to build a fake relationship… well, then, you might get caught. And that’ll be even worse. So, if that is your goal, maybe you should just not bother engaging until you’re ready to give it a legitimate shot. Of all of the things you can do to build your sales, caring is a very affordable option. The question is if you’re ready to do it.

When analyzing the data from posts by the vocal minority, instead of focusing on the frequency of their posts, instead look at the content of their posts. If their comments and contributions are substantive, consider reaching out to them.

They care enough to contribute and interact every day, so they may have some valuable suggestions for how to improve the community.