Idea Spark: Social Marketing Use Case #8—Community Development

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The eighth (and final) use case in this series of discussions is Community Development. In our prior discussions, we talked about how social media opens the door not just for “media impressions” (aka Building Brand Awareness) but direct engagement with consumers. In this discussion, we talked about the new “community.” In the past, a brand’s direct consumer engagement was either initiated by the consumer, required the business to create their own hosted community, or was held behind closed doors (e.g. focus group). Community Development was focused on brand-hosted, closed communities that were only focused on the brand’s products and were often centered around customer support.

Today’s social networks are enabling organic and user-generated virtual communities to flourish. The word “community” may just mean a common thread amongst individuals—a conversation, a linkage, or an organic group like a Twitter list—and thus much harder for brands to identify, participate in and benefit from. How can they find these communities? What are the ways that they can engage consumers within those communities? What are the rules of engagement?

Here are the ideas sparked from the discussion.

1. How have communities evolved?
• Communities used to be focused on formal organizations on a local and national level. Before online communities existed, organizations formed on a local (and eventually grew to a national) level to bring people of like minds and interests together. The goal was to promote networking, education, and common interests and commerce. Trade organizations were the most prevalent, but interest-based organizations of all kinds formed.
• The online world expanded the breadth of interest-based communities. The online world enabled communities of all kinds to form and for people from all over the globe to participate on a local, national and global basis. “Community” no longer pertained to professional or trade organizations; community could now be people with common interests connecting with one another.
• Social networks have changed the notion of community. New, organic communities with both loose and tight ties have formed due to the growing prevalence of social networks. People are finding others with the same interests just through the content and conversations they share and post, and brands have the same opportunity to search for, find and engage these organic communities as a member of those communities.
2. How do businesses find these “organic” communities?
• It starts with search. Example: A dog food company looking for Dachshund owners for their special Dachshund food. The company can do a search (e.g. Twitter search, Google search) on the word “Dachshund” and start to evaluate the shared content, the crowd, the degrees of engagement, and the links and figure out where and how to start engaging the community.
• Many communities are very loosely organized. The threads of an online community may just be conversations. The definition of social community may just be people who share the same interests. That community may be linked by a single conversation, and the community might grow, change and even appear or disappear based upon current conversations. However, a brand can pick any point in time and find those community members with that common interest or thread and start following that thread for the people participating in the conversation, linked to the people talking, looking at blogs/websites/content that show a common interest, etc. These are the threads that bind these organic communities and a way for brands to find those who are participating.
3. Why do people seek online communities?
• Affinity. Finding others with a common interest to share common experiences. Finding people like you.
• Support. Finding information, answers, solutions or just comfort and assistance from others who have experienced the same situation, have the same problem (e.g. Intervertebral Disc Disorder in Dachshunds, repair diagnosis and parts for a vintage Mercedes).
• Information. Share or gain information on a specific subject or topic of interest.
• Ego. “I become the expert. People look to me as an authority.”
• Personal satisfaction. There’s an interest in contributing in a community for personal satisfaction; giving back to others; making connections with people; bridging a knowledge gap. Of course, even though a person is a member of a community, there are levels of engagement like the levels described in Charlene Li’s Book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (illustration to the right).
4. What are the “Golden Rules” for any business joining online communities?
• Contribute. Organic online communities are about common interests. Contribute to those communities with genuine, valuable insight, content and comments. Don’t let your membership in that community be about YOU.
• Be unselfish. Share information. Share experiences. Share content.
• ROI should not be your immediate goal. ROI should not be an immediate goal. Join the community without that expectation.
• Be genuine. People with passion about the subject matter should be driving the community membership. Fake interest in a community will show through. Be genuine and real.
• Be appropriate. Show that you GET the consumer.
• Build trust. Your participation in that community is the first step to building a trusted relationship with these new contacts. Once you start tooting your commercial horn, you can easily destroy that trust.
5. Online communities are not ALWAYS the answer.
• Online fallacy. Note that a brand can’t make the assumption that their community is online. The community is out there…just not always online and on social networks! It’s very market dependent.
• B2B vs. B2C communities. There’s a significant difference (e.g. HVAC business vs. Dachshund owners). What’s clear is that the people who join communities are generally passionate about the subject or interest, but that passion and level of engagement vary in intensity. There are also natural leaders that emerge…the influencers in a group.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our next series of discussions will center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion?
 
Photo Credit: biewoef