Philip Wride – Social Media Marketer and Community Manager

Rest assured this isn’t another Community Management post linking back to a film as some of my others have. This is actually about what’s happening now; SOPA. With many sites and several social networks planning to “go dark” in protest of the bill it just highlights how important it is to have your own community space.

You may have a million “fans” on Facebook but if they can’t interact with you because that site goes down what impact is it going to have on your relationship with those users? I was asked a question the other day about where the best place to build a community is. My response was pretty simple; anywhere you own the space and can then manage accordingly.

From a customer support perspective, if you use Social Media to respond to issues what happens if those services go down for extended periods? I know I’m sounding all doom and gloom here but the biggest message I’m trying to give is that part of your community strategy needs to be about contingencies. It’s going to be interesting to monitor the impact of SOPA and which sites do decide to “go dark” in protest. I’ll also be interested to hear from Community Managers and whether they notice an increase in traffic / contribution across their respective communities.