The content chesnut.

The old adage "content is king" is so oft-repeated it's beginning to become a cliche. I've been working on kicking off a social project recently and I've really started to believe the old chestnut applies just as well to this medium as any other.

Why should anyone want to socialise with your brand? Well, for some lucky brands, there appears to be a level of love and devotion among consumers that simply draws them in. I'm thinking about Apple here which, despite not pursuing an obvious social media strategy, has a huge fan base online (see eConsultancy's recent post for more on this). But we're not all as luck as that. Some of us have got to really work for a social gathering.

And it's here that content comes into play. Give people something valuable, something they want, and they'll come to you. Good content can form the nucleus around which your customers can socialise. Without it, you're not giving them much to hang on to.

I've taken this further, an even applied a bit of an SEO-methodology to it. We all know that good content can drive SEO but what happens if you adapt more of this strategy to social?

Get good content.
Let people know about your content.
Give them the means to share your content.
Let them collaborate with you/fellow fans on creating and driving that content.

I've labelled these steps as below.

Whilst I admit that this isn't the end point of social media (there's limitless possibilities from customer service, UGC etc), it's a worthy first step to ensure that your social skyscraper has sound foundations.