Although Facebook and MySpace get all the press, hundreds of smart marketers and leading brands are quietly putting networking technologies to work to grow their own businesses. Look no further than the explosive growth of these sites to understand their potential for connecting people in ways never before available.
By using events as a catalyst to collect profile information, share content and make introductions, events can live longer and build stronger relationships, leading to stronger communities and associations. Therefore, the real power of Web 2.0 technologies to connect individuals is best realized in conjunction with events.
Building a Community
Building a community is a long-term investment in the values and needs of an audience. It’s a great way to listen to member needs, design events around those needs and deepen relationships. This concept of community takes branding to the next level by encouraging dialogue, action and interaction among audiences of customers and partners in ways that traditional media simply cannot deliver. It builds trust and spreads by word of mouth (positive and negative) faster than any medium.
It is impossible to ignore the power of word-of-mouth dissemination, and if you don’t help define the dialogue it can define you. Credibility is key as the public becomes jaded by traditional marketing and requires more information before making decisions.
Building Communal Brands
Building communal brands relies on the sponsorship of community-centric festivals and events (such as MacWorld and Camp Jeep), the cultivation of endorsements of real-world users (such as has been done with the Toyota Prius), the supporting of uncensored blogs (see Linux), communal environments (Starbucks is an example), shared experiences (as seen with the iPod and iTunes), trusted networks (such as Craig’s List), tribal attitudes (as has been done by ESPN), community member suggestions (a valuable element of Amazon.com), impromptu gatherings (such as unconferences), community-only benefits (such as CVS ExpressCare) and the use of far more creative and less expensive methods to further share brand understanding.
Why Communities?
Ceding and seeding control. A community takes root for many reasons. Sometimes it occurs because the complexity of a product or service makes the buying decision so confusing and impersonal that participants look to social bonds and interactions to make it easier. Other communities spring up when the population of buyers is one that usually ignores or shuns traditional marketing tactics such as advertising. (The under-30 eco-boomers fall into this category.)
What makes building communities antithetical to so many marketers is that the process cannot be easily controlled. Communal brand building requires that executives actually give up hands-on, micro-management and try to become tribal leaders. They need the courage to go with the flow and make brand decisions secondary to customer relationships.
Consider the strength of the Barack Obama presidential campaign—early supporters were encouraged to gather and share ideas online. Gaining the confidence it takes to allow constituents to define your brand and what they want you to do is the biggest challenge marketers will need to overcome in the future.
Community Principles
Here are five ways to keep your communities vital and growing:
1) Use market research as a barometer, not a compass. Don’t force communities to head in any one direction. Listen to supporters and naysayers. Follow their leads and insights on new products and services and don’t constantly direct them.
2) Give members reason to meet and give them the encouragement to interact. Offer ideas and share stories. Events that educate and entertain can be the most powerful medium to turn prospects into customers and customers into advocates. Camp Jeep has proved to be a powerful customer acquisition and retention event for the brand.
3) Protect members. Your role is that of guardian, not policeman. Communities like eHarmony use compatibility matching to help their members find significant others, but they also create a much safer environment for doing so. Felons and habitual online stalkers need not apply.
4) Create discussions, not product sheets. Community members want access to the most useful and trustworthy information, not the usual compilations of features and benefits. Consider the power of the online Linux community in building the first meaningful competitor to the Microsoft technology platform. And consider the growing market for online communities of customers and peers to exchange ideas, provide insight and communicate issues before they become real problems.
5) Think lifetime value, not transaction value. You can’t build long-term relationships with too many short-term expectations. Once they take hold, however, the growth of communities can be exponential, as demonstrated by the current growth of the iPod economy.
Web 2.0 technology is not only a cost reducer but also the best means of collaboration with your communities on products, problems, messages and more. Companies that understand the means of building relationships (and consistently practice them with excellence) can be readily identified by their sustained revenue growth, improving profit margins and enthusiastic communities.
MICHAEL WESTCOTT is president of The Concentric Group. He can be reached via www.theconcentricgroup.com.
