Pssst! Want to Own Your Own Social Network?

Human Capital League is looking for a corporate sponsor. If you’re a marketer who uses social media, here’s why you should be interested. HCL would provide you with a fresh daily connection to a highly targeted and self-selected audience of workplace professionals, many of whom are in a position to buy your products and services. It would serve as a trusted resource to leverage your existing marketing efforts–podcasts, webinars, blogs, white papers–while building new social and business relationships.

Here’s why you should work with me.  As co-founder and original chief content officer of Social Media Today (the popular web site and the community-building company behind it), I created more than four years ago some of the first successful sponsored BtoB communities, including MyVenturepad (sponsored by SAP), SmartDataCollective (sponsored by Teradata) and The EnergyCollective (sponsored by Siemens).  Nobody working in social media has more experience in building this type of community.  Now that I’ve am no longer affiliated with SMT , I’m applying my attention–and the knowledge I’ve gained–to a few selected projects. HCL is one of them.

I think what makes my sites work when many communities fail to attract much of an audience is that they are a hybrid of an active daily updated group blog and a social community. For example, HCL aggregates–with their permission–selected content from more than 40 of the best bloggers on the web on a variety of workplace issues, from leadership and management to payroll and benefits, from diversity and outsourcing to recruiting and training and talent management.

Because our software automatically pulls in new posts for review from participating bloggers within minutes of their being posted on their own blog, there is always fresh content for readers. In my experience, communities that depend totally on user-generated content are rarely successful. In addition, we Tweet and Stumble virtually every post to leverage exposure to the bigger social networks.

On the social community dimension, registered members can add their own blogs to the content flow; they can blog directly on the site whenever they feel like it; they can create a profile page, comment, and communicate directly with other registered members.

What’s the cost? An entire year for about the price of a one-time spread in Forbes ten years ago when I was selling special sections. Or, to put it another way, about half of what my old friends and new competitors are charging for an online business community with maybe 20 percent less bells and whistles which are probably things you’re already doing for yourself anyway.

This is the first time I’ve shopped HCL publicly but as you can see from the Compete chart, we’re headed in the right direction. If you’d like to know more, contact me.

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