I promised a list of community don’ts in my last posting and I intend to provide that, but two things first, especially since it’s election night. In a season where the election was certainly “social,” these items were dramatically interesting from a marketing and sales perspective.
CNN decided to try a holographic shared news report live from Chicago. It was a fully amazing thing. I think this will be the dawn of rapid adoption for holograms in business as well. The first applications are likely to be media related, but retail will follow on rapidly (clothing, electronics, cooking…demo in many stores at one time…woohoo!) http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/11/04/blitzer.yellin.hologram.obama.cnn
The next is Jeremiah Owyang’s quick recap of how much support each candidate engendered using social media. It’s not a surprise that in every instance, Obama blew McCain’s numbers away. There is certainly a future for web strategists in the public sector. I predict this will become the place where citizens and constituents seek information – less from their governments than from other citizens driving the dialogue. That too, scares me a little. Since in these media, it can be hard to tell exactly whose voice it is that we are reading, hearing, connecting with. Lobbyists, already a powerful voice whispering directly to our politicians and bureaucrats, may meld the media to their purposes. I am going to hope that somehow this plays out for good and not evil.
On that note, let’s transition to the community don’ts.
1. Don’t police your communities too heavily. The community can and will rise up and do it itself. When we impose the rules, we actually censor the dialogue we are hoping to engender.
2. Don’t focus on the customer unless you have also focused on your employees. Allow your employees to be participants and advocates in your social strategy. When you don’t inform them about what you’re doing; the messages and the approach you are taking and WHY; you marginalize the potential support they can provide. You also disrespect them and the value they bring in working for and with you.
3. Don’t focus on the tools. Focus on why people may wish to participate around or with your brand in a social context. When IT leads the charge, there tends to be a focus on how the tools match the architecture – not how the customer wants to participate. There are tons of tools. We sell suites of them at IBM, and they’re good and cool and nifty and fun and I play with them. I like them. However, tools are designed to meet particular needs. Understand the needs and then match the tools.
4. Don’t make your communities hard to find. I worked with a really very savvy organization earlier this year. They are smart and innovative people. Except in some cases they were so busy selling things that they made it very difficult for the customer to participate in the brand. What’s more, their brand is such that they have – I am perfectly serious – scream-from-the-rooftop brand advocates. If I were thinking about a strategy for them, I would want those advocates to be front and center in helping me move people who are trying out the brand and who are new to it into more established relationships.
5. Don’t be one of “those companies.” “Those companies” are ones who are so busy selling that they forget people join communities to understand other people’s experiences and thoughts. They want to read and hopefully share interests and opinions. When we as marketers and sales professionals spend more time selling in our communities, instead of SERVING them, we risk diminishing participation.
Next post – Stephen King and new media experimentation (Preview what I am talking about at www.nishere.com) …until then, gentle reader, I wish you a successful, social and delightful day.
