In 2008, we here at Social Media Today decided to extend our reach beyond our website, so we created Facebook and LinkedIn communities (In June and March, respectively). With a basic strategy of "Well, that's cool, why don't we go there?", we dived in. In the years to follow, 1.5 million LinkedIn groups and 50 million Facebook pages have been created, too. It's hard to underestimate the importance of both platforms as they relate to both publishers and brands. Meeting your audience wherever they are and giving them opportunities to connect with your business is a direct path to increasing virtually any performance metric imaginable.
Interestingly, despite the disparity in size of both networks, both of our communities have grown virtually in lockstep, with each now on the cusp of reaching 100,000 members. (Hence the inspiration for this post.) And while most members of each group are probably on both networks, it's perhaps even more interesting that some choose to engage with us on LinkedIn and others on Facebook.
Over the years we've learned what you want from each: whether they're lively discussions on LinkedIn or fascinating infographics (and occasional cat memes) on Facebook, we're more than happy to share the valuable, informative, and even entertaining content that keeps you actively participating in the larger Social Media Today world. We're also getting ready to announce an entirely new way to participate with us, which you'll hear about very soon. But in the meantime we're still glad to keep refining and improving our message, and from the looks of our numbers, it appears we're doing something right. So we'd like to thank our team, our contributors, and most of all, our readers. Here's to the next hundred thousand fans.