The Power of Community

What if there were a magic box in your business

You know, whenever you needed to increase sales or drive traffic to your site or to your location

you go into the back room, you turn the crank on the magic box and boom, you get results

So what is this magic box and how do we get some of that

I'm Ivana Taylor, I'm the host of Bizapalooza Chat, and today we're going to talk about

the magic box that drives traffic, customers, and sales to your business. It is the power of

community. Our guest today is Sarah Christian, but you know her as Pearl Morbs. She's also known

as Peculiar Beastie on Twitter. Pearl has cut her teeth on community building in the global gaming

industry and has worked with Mod Squad, which is a global engagement company. And today

she's going to share her community building expertise with us. Hey, Pearl, welcome

Hi, thanks for having me. Okay, so people really want to know, you have one of the most

fun Twitter handles. Can you explain a little bit about your branding, your name, your Twitter handle

and the whole Pearl Morbs thing? Sure. Well, a lot of what I'm doing on Twitter now is relatively new

I've been on Twitter since 2015, but I started out writing a lot of gaming content, and there

wasn't sort of any cohesiveness to the content I was putting out. I tweeted anything about gaming

entertainment like concerts, different games I was playing, both online games and then mobile games

and there was just no, there was no focus really. Yes, it was all gaming, but the focus wasn't

narrow enough for anything to really gain traction, and I also wasn't doing any kind of engagement

which was frankly quite awful of me that I didn't even engage with other gamers in the gaming

community. So this year I decided to rebrand my entire Twitter presence, and I decided to focus

on what I'm doing in my career, which is social media engagement and working with communities

So I changed around my Twitter bio, and I changed it to be more about digital engagement

and about my position as a project manager in social media. And I changed my profile picture

before my original Twitter profile picture had been a screenshot of one of my characters in the

online games that I play. So in a sense, it was me, but it wasn't me. It was my avatar. And so I

decided, no, I need to have my actual face connected to this account. So put my face up

and I changed my Twitter banner to be at the Harrisburg cityscape at night, because I used

to live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So all of this made it look more personal. It made me look

like I was a real person. People didn't have to wonder if I was just some bot that was because I

I had no face to my account. So no one knew. Was I a real person? Was I a bot? They didn't know

And so with all those changes, with the aesthetics of my site, I also started tweeting more

about social media and about engagement and joining in Twitter chats that were

also talking about engagement and social media marketing. And that's where it just sort of took

off as I started applying what I knew about communities and social media to my own personal

account. So talk a little bit about Pearl. I mean, I think like Peculiar Beastie is a character

Yes, I've had many different character names and gaming community handles. That's just one that has

stuck. And it's one that I was already using across other social pages that are public

So for the sake of unifying all my accounts, I went ahead and kept the handle the same

We love it. We love it. So cute. Yes. And so Pearl Morbs is a little bit of an extension of that

It's still an alias. As you mentioned when you introduced me, my legal name is Sarah Christian

But Pearl Morbs is sort of close to me because when I was in gaming and I was doing things

with entertainment and like cosplay type things, a lot of people in those communities have aliases

they go under another name other than their own name. And I did think for a long time, maybe about a month

about whether or not I should change that handle or change my name to my real name

But I felt that part of being authentic was sort of keeping a little bit of those gaming roots

where I had come from. That's also the reason why I didn't start a new Twitter page. So I just wanted that little bit

that was still like where I came from. So I went ahead and kept that

Got it. So your preferences, we're calling you Pearl Morbs. Yes. Yes, that's fine

I mean, you can call me Sarah too, but whatever. I mean, what's in a name? I'm still the same person

Whatever you want to call me, I'll answer too. I can't wait

I think I'm going to want to talk to you again in about a year or two, just to hear where

you came out with this, because absolutely, I feel your pain in terms of personal branding

You know, because when I started on Twitter in 2008, no, no, no

in 2007, the thing to do was to use your blog handle. So my original blog was strategy stew

And I still have that. And I connected with some of the biggest influencers who were early adopters

through that handle. Right. Right. So then when I was more cohesive and of course I have even a

tailor too, but DIY marketers is the one that stuck. So I really resonate with that. And it's

really, really difficult to kind of manage that entire landscape. So good luck with that

Yeah, thank you. No, but let's really talk about communities because you said that you were in the gaming

community. And I think those folks are really, really engaged. That's a really powerful community

So why are communities so important? Well, communities are important, if I speak specifically from the gaming industry, because

a lot of games, especially online games, they're multiplayer. So players are interacting with each

other within the game itself. And then those players are creating guilds, which is sort of

like a small group. So you have all these guilds across an entire server. So there's all these

miniature communities within the greater gaming community as a whole. And then that sort of leaks a little bit over into things like your forums and your social media Forums is a big one for the gaming community because you often see guilds that have their own threads in the forums or guilds that sort of like do their own contests

or just like creative activities through the forum. But that's the brand's forum, like that's

their platform. And by the community interacting that way, they're also sort of boosting the

engagement for that brand as well. So it's mutually beneficial. Excellent. So what could

small businesses learn from that? Because I started this little video podcast saying that

there is this like magic box to me and engage community is like a magic box that you can always

go to. Of course, folks are familiar with that thousand raving fans scenario. You know

what is it that small businesses can do that they can kind of learn from the gaming community and

implement? I think outside of the gaming industry, it's important to remember that social media can

and engagement, and engaged communities can work for any brand. Because social media is so flexible

there's all different kinds of ways that you can think of how to engage your community

and the way that you engage with your community might not be the same as even like a competitor

or other industries might engage their communities differently, but there's always a way

to do it. Really, the sky's the limit. And I think once you find out what's working for you and for

your community, and you can tap into that engagement, then you'll see through engagement

you can actually boost almost all of your other metrics. I personally was focused on an engagement

based strategy for my Twitter page. And through that, I saw increases in reach and impressions

which you would expect. But I also saw increases in profile clicks and, you know, the amount of

traffic that was coming to my Twitter page, as well as mentions, and things like that. So all sorts

of things can be boosted through engagement. It's sort of like a domino effect. I like that. So you

know, one of the things that's real hard to do is as technology improves and changes, you know

words start to mean, become more focused and mean different things. So one of the things that we're

talking about in the chat is what's the difference between a network and a community? Is there a

difference, do you think? It's a subtle difference. I would say there's a bit of a crossover or some

overlap between the two. But in my mind, I see a network as a large group, and it's based on

connections. So a network might be the social media marketing network that I'm on, on Twitter

Now, that's a lot of people. It's like thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people

and so I'm connected to that network through people in that industry but I don't know all of

them intimately I might just be like oh this is another marketer let's follow each other and then

that might be the extent of it and that connection while it exists it's very weak you know there's

probably not a lot of influence there between me and some of these other marketers and then on the

other hand there might be people like you and I who have talked a lot and gotten to know each other

And then our connection with each other is very strong. So I would say a community is a smaller group of people that is really all about those very

very strong connections. It's more about relationships than just the fact that, hey, I know this person or, hey

we have something in common. It's the relationships you've built with people. And that's a much tighter knit community and also one where influence can go all different

kinds of directions. Like I might influence you, you might influence me

And the whole thing is very tight knit. That's, that's for sure, right

I like to think of it, I did an exercise years ago, where we actually mapped out our different

networks of conversations. And this is a very general exercise. But you know, you might have your network of conversations that is your family, your

network of conversations that is your neighborhood, your network of conversations, you know, that

or certain people and you talk about certain things inside of that network. So I really love

the way you describe that and that communities are really about relationships and stronger

relationships and they probably have a stronger level of influence. Now here's something that I

thought has been kind of interesting that I've been observing over time. In the past I would say

that offline communities were probably more influential and stronger than online communities

but I'm not so sure I feel that way. What do you think? Well, I think offline communities

traditionally anyways, were strong because you got to see people face-to-face and there were

people that you knew in your day-to-day life then for that reason. So you might see your neighbor

every single day, or you're sort of like chatting over the fence to your neighbor. So that gives you a lot of time to get to know them and to really feel comfortable with them

You may be like invested in each other and your successes and interested in hearing about

like how their day has been. And I think that that was a very strong way to have a community

But online, I think, I definitely think things are changing a bit, especially with my generation

the millennials and even younger generations, we're online almost all the time. We have so many

connections online. And now there's all different kinds of ways to connect with people online

Now, when I was in middle school and high school, Instant Messenger used to be the big thing

and that was all very text-based. You could do video chats. And then Facebook was just sort of

coming out a little bit. I mean, we had MySpace and we had some blogs, but everything was very

text heavy. And now with platforms like Instagram, we can be very visual. And with the trend in video

content, you cannot actually like talk to someone through text, but you can see who you're talking

to and you can get to know them. And, you know, like you can see where they're traveling to or

you know, where, what conferences they're at and just like where they are and how they sort of

exist in the world. And that brings this very deep element of humanity to the way that we connect

with people online. You know, you've just brought something up that I think is really, really

interesting, which is, you know, you talked about Instagram. I know my son who is 18 has a

has a really interesting closed community relationship on Instagram. So there are things

going on that I don't see, even though I follow him and all that other kind of stuff, right

their con their games that they play with each other about what they gonna post on any given day or whatever right How do I even ask this It almost like so for example like so his favorite

platform is probably Instagram, as is a lot of people's. I don't do so well on Instagram. My

favorite platform is Twitter. And is that somehow defining the community that you're part of? Do you

know what I'm asking? I don't even know how to ask the question, but like Twitter has its own

flavor and its own way of engagement versus Instagram. Right. It has its own like mores and

culture and what you share, right? Yes. I definitely see that there is a difference

between the platforms. So like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, those tend to be the big three that

everyone mentions. YouTube also for video content is pretty big. But each of those platforms have

their own demographics, I suppose. There's like different people that are attracted to each one

So with younger generations, Instagram and Snapchat are doing very well, and those are

very visual platforms. But those people aren't on Facebook, at least not as much as they used to be

Like they're not rushing to create a Facebook account like my generation was. They're just

very interested in Instagram and Snapchat instead. So if you're looking for like the teen market

then that's where you're going to be. Whereas on Facebook, you're probably going to catch the

millennials and some older generations as well. Twitter, I feel like, honestly, might be a mixed

bag because Twitter is very communication-based. So as long as you enjoy communicating in real time

which could be almost anyone, you can find them on Twitter. And Twitter is unique in that it has

Twitter chats. So there's all these different ways for Twitter to provide content to these

different groups of people. So I think you can, you can reach a large group of different people

through Twitter specifically. Have you ever seen a community thrive across platforms or do you find

that folks tend to, you know, like the Twitter chat community, right? We're all like Twitter

people. We like Twitter. We're always on Twitter and we hop around different chats. So there's a

lot of overlap between different chat communities, right? However, I don't know, even though I follow

the same people and I did that purposely, I don't know, do you know any examples where communities

are sort of sharing different content on different platforms? I really think that it depends on the

community. I mean, when I think of social media marketers, I would say there's probably a difference

between what they're doing on Twitter and what they're doing on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is sort

of a platform that is very professionally driven and has a lot of industry articles and industry

news being shared. Whereas Twitter, like, yes, you can share industry information, but it's more

casual. The tone of it all is much different. So I think you can expect to see different types of

content from the same communities, depending on where it is that they are on different platforms

even within gaming communities to go back to that example. They might use gaming forums

which would be hosted by the brand, the publisher, the developer, but they also might have like a

Discord chat and they might talk to other people in the game through Discord. That's very common

That's like Discord is the popular platform for gamers to be on right now to chat with each other

So yeah, I think you can expect to see different things depending on the platform that you're on

So let's talk about communities in general. What do you think are the core characteristics of a thriving community? Because you've got from like several different industries, you've got some experience. Is there a single set of criteria for what it takes to have a thriving community looks like

So off the top of my head, the ones that come to mind are strong community culture, active engagement, brand transparency, advocates that sort of sing your praises about your brand via word of mouth, and then co-created concepts that fuel brand innovations and improvements

I think those are the big ones that come to mind as far as thriving community

And I believe that also reflects how communities sort of interact with brands as well

It's not just the community and the brand in separate silos. Like there's this interaction between both of them

Yeah, I love that you mentioned this idea of co-creation. Can you give me some examples of what that might look like

So co-creation is anytime that you invite your community to help create something as far as like product improvements, or if you're thinking about some sort of innovation for your company, for your service, for your product

It could also be something as simple as like just grabbing feedback on the content you're putting out

So if you ask the community, like, you know, we've been posting this kind of content, we're interested, what type of content would you like to see more of from us? Or what's something that you would like to see that we've not been sharing? And inviting the community to have a discussion with you about that is co-creation

And I feel that that's especially powerful when you then follow through, like not just inviting them to give feedback and then not using it, but definitely, you know, taking a look and saying like, oh, we have a lot of people that want us to see, you know, they want us to put out more articles about a certain topic

And then you go ahead and you make those articles. That really resonates with the community

That's like, hey, not only did they care about what I thought, but then they went ahead and they're providing this for me like I asked them to

That is such a powerful connection. Oh, so true. So I got to ask this question. How many members do you need to have engaged community? Because like in the world of Twitter, I think there's a misconception between, you know, where certain numbers come from, right

We can be, we can be what I would call, uh, enamored with this idea of impressions and

reach, which is a function of how many Twitter followers you have. So in essence, you can have a community of four people with 300,000 followers a piece

and you've got all this, um, you know, you're getting impressions or whatever, but you've

actually only got four people. Like, to me, I prefer to have more people, but maybe not as many impressions

What are your thoughts on that? So I try not to focus too much on numbers or saying that there's some sort of range that is the right range for everyone

I don't think that there's a one size fits all for that. But as far as engagement, I think that as long as you're communicating

so first when we say engagement we talking about brands that are communicating to their consumers consumers that are communicating with the brands and consumers that are communicating with other consumers And that a two communication It not just one person broadcasting out to the

masses. It's two people talking to each other. And so I guess technically you would only need two

people to have a conversation. But what I will say is if you're concerned about how big your

engaged community is, know that if you're doing quality engagement and really making it meaningful

and having like long discussions with your community, you're going to see your community

grow as a result of that engagement. And also remember that even if you're only talking to

four people, like in your example, those four people could have a very large network. And so

if they retweet something that you've talked about, for example, it's not just you talking to them

anymore because now that person's entire following has seen part of your conversation. So that's one

good reason why you don't just want to look at the numbers. It might actually be you're getting

like a larger reach than you think you are. But I would definitely say that engagement grows over

time. So as long as you're putting in the effort, you're going to see growth no matter what, I think

So on the opposite side of things, what are some mistakes that you see folks making most often if

they're like trying to build a community? Because I think part of our conversation today is going to

be on, you know, does your community find you, does your community build itself or do you build

your community? But what mistakes do you see that folks make when they're intentionally building a

community? So I would say one of the most common is not engaging, only because I think that

brands are sort of all over the place in terms of how savvy they are to social engagement

some people are already know what the benefits are and they're just like they jumped on the train

they've gone with it other brands they're not so sure or they're not sure how best to imply

engagement for their community and for their brand so there's like a little bit of hesitation there

and for some people there's still this like demystifying of social media because

we've had so many years of traditional media and compared to that social media is is relatively new

still. So there's some people that we still have to demystify social media engagement and what that

means and what the benefits are. So that's probably the biggest one. The second one is jumping into

conversations to make a hard sell. And again, this sort of goes back to traditional marketing a little

bit. Traditional marketing had things like cold calling and like door-to-door salesmen way back

in the day. And that was relatively successful. I mean, it was something where you had to contact

multiple people in order to make one sale, or you had to go back to the same person multiple times

in order to finally get that sale. But I feel that that's something that's becoming more and more

a traditional marketing tactic and not a tactic that's successful in social media marketing

When you jump into a conversation on social media, and you're just there to promote your service or

to sell a product, that leaves a really bad taste in people's mouths. Like they want to get to know

you first. They don't just want to be wondering, why is this person randomly jumping into my

conversation with my best friend? And why are they trying to sell me something? It's very off-putting

So rather than doing that, you sort of have to have this mentality of, can I get to know this

person? Are they in our target network? And do they have a problem that we can solve? And then

through getting to know them and getting to know, like, what that person's concerns are over time

gradually, you get to the point where, you know, they'll post something like, oh, man, I really

am having trouble with X, Y, and Z. And you'll say, hey, we do this. We have a solution for you

We can help you with this. And then rather than it coming off as sales, you'll be like, oh, this is

this is some brand that I've talked to before or some person that we've chatted before in the past

and they're doing this to help me not to make a profit, even though that's essentially, it comes

back to profits, but it doesn't have the same feeling for people when you take the time to get

to know them and build the relationship first. Why do you think brands struggle so much with this

this feeling of really not knowing how to engage in this way? I think it's almost like overthinking

it. That's a little bit of a pitfall. The thing that we always say, we social media marketers say

online is that social media is social. And it sounds very simple, but it's true. And we say

that because we have to sort of roll it back and be like, okay, however close you are to this

that you're looking at it, take a thousand steps back and think about, you know, when you're talking

to a friend in real life and you're chatting, you're not just talking the entire time, you're

listening to what the other person has to say, and you're not necessarily listening to respond all

the time, but you're listening to understand, and that's a big component, and the second component

is obviously having that back and forth communication, that you're not just like popping

in once to say, hey, and then you don't ever talk to that person ever again

Communication in real life is something that we're doing consistently, and we're talking to the same people over and over again, you know, multiple times a week or, you know

even multiple times a day. So that's something to remember. The other one I would say is we don't wait for people to talk to us first in real life

Now, there might be some people I don't talk to them for a while, and so they'll reach out to me and then I'll reply back

But that's not always the case. There's definitely occasions where I have something that I want to share with a friend and I'll reach out to them first. And I think that's what we have to keep in mind on social media. We can't just be engaging reactively. We have to also put in a little bit of proactive engagement as well, because that also boosts our engagement and boosts our reach and make sure that we're getting in front of the people that we want to communicate with and that we want to have in our communities

well thank you so much i can't think of a better way to end this you guys uh pearl moribs thank

you for joining us today also known as sarah christian and follow her on twitter at peculiar

beastie best twitter handle ever thank you thanks so much for being with us yes thanks for having me