Based in Buenos Aires, Looppa provides a set of social technologies that enable the creation of branded social communities built around passions, lifestyles, and causes. You can find out more about Looppa on the Web. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention I’m associated with Looppa as a shareholder and an Advisory Board Member.
Finally, at the top of the set of the core social-business building blocks is collaboration. Collaboration is a key inflection point in the realization of a vibrant community and the port of entry for true social business. Here’s why. The collective use of ratings aside, consumption, curation, and creation can be largely individual activities. Someone watches a few videos, rates one or two, and then uploads something. That can build traffic, can build a content library (hey, it built YouTube, right?), and can drive page views, all important aspects of a media property.
But they aren’t necessarily strong social actions. Collaboration is. Collaboration occurs naturally between members of the community when given the chance. Blogging is a good example. Take a look at a typical blog that you subscribe to, and you’ll find numerous examples of posts, reinterpreted by readers through comments—that flow off to new conversations between the blogger and the readers. Bloggers often adapt their “product” on-the-fly based on the inputs of the audience.
Blogging and the way in which participant input shapes the actual product is a deceptively simple example of what is actually a difficult process: Taking direct input from a customer and using it in the design of your product. Many effective bloggers take direction from readers’ comments and then build a new thought based on the reader’s interests and thoughts.
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This is actually a window into what social business is all about: Directly involving your customers in the design and delivery of what you make. How so? Read on.
