Building a Customer Community

I gave a presentation recently to a client on social media when I was confronted by an interesting question. My presentation was designed to educate the group on the concepts, technologies and behaviors that prevail in today’s social web. I wanted to lay a foundation to help us brainstorm ideas on leveraging social media to make an impact in their business. About half way through the presentation, when most of the foundation had been established, I was asked: “So what?”


It is a fair question. Let’s face it; we don’t need to know that someone plans to nap during his train ride into the city. There is a lot of zero value information being shared in the social spaces. But what marketers must not ignore is the changing behaviors. We are all sharing much more information, thoughts and opinions with our networks and communities than we ever have before.


While you take this behavior into consideration, think about your own resistance to sales tactics both online and off. Think about how frustrated you get when you hear a sales pitch. Do you really want to hear the salesperson’s opinion whether or not this new TV is the best on the market? Why do you have to buy this car today? Your agent keeps telling you this insurance is a good fit - but how can you be sure? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear a few customer opinions to help you make an informed decision? Not references. Just to hear what a wide range of experienced customers have to say.

My clients often hear me say, “Nothing sells a product better than a happy customer.” If you believe in the quality of your brand or service, then build a customer community and allow your customers to share their experiences. Will there be a range of opinions? Yes, and that is okay. A blend of both positive and negative opinions will give the conversation greater credibility. In addition, your existing and potential customers will become even more loyal to your brand as you show your willingness to accept criticism.

Depending on your product or service, your customers can also serve as a valuable resource to one other. They can share different uses for your products, assist one another with technical questions, and offer opinions and guidance. These are all benefits of building a user community. The Open Network by American Express is a great example of this - and there are many others. By building a community in which people can share their thoughts and opinions about your products and services, you can gather the information you need to take action. Assisting an unhappy customer by using a public forum can, in fact, build enormous brand loyalty.

Another benefit to building a community is the emergence of brand ambassadors. As the community develops, you will find some customers love you even more than you thought. They will want to share their experiences with many more people than you imagined. These brand ambassadors will help your customers solve problems and encourage the undecided buyers to select you. Without realizing it, you have just expanded your sales force.

So what do you need to know before building this customer community? Again, first do remember that this is a conversation. Don't use this forum as a podium for sales. Make your strategy one of offering assistance by volunteering useful information. Answer questions.

And be transparent. If you make mistakes, admit them. If you do, your customers will feel better about doing business with you.

Finally, if you are a thought leader in your market space, this is a splendid place to showcase your forward thinking. The ideal strategy is to offer thoughts and opinions that encourage a dialogue with your audience.

Social Media vs. Email Marketing

I have often said that eMail newsletters will eventually be replaced by company blogs. While that has not yet happened to the extent I thought it would, I definitely do see the trend moving over to social media in the form of company FaceBook, LinkedIn & Twitter pages.

The reason for this should be clear to anyone who opens their email client on a daily basis. Competition for the inbox is fierce. Because we’re all faced with so much clutter, we are forced to delete or ignore many of these communications. How many times have you said that you’ll come back to read a newsletter when you have more time – and never did so? The messages that once were getting through, loud and clear, are now getting lost in the spam filter or are simply being ignored.

While I am not advocating that you stop sending email newsletters, this strikes me as the perfect time to test the utilization of your company communication in social media. Building a company profile page on FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are quick and easy tasks. Once they are live, all you have to do is post the same content that you would ordinarily have posted to your newsletter.

There are additional benefits to using this medium for company communications. The social media channels are easily indexed by the search engines. Content that was once sent via email and never found by the engines now appear in the organic search listings potentially exposing your thought leadership to a much larger audience. If you begin looking for social media listings in all your search activity you’ll notice a growing presence on page 1 for sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and FaceBook.

Posting your content in the social spaces is significantly more effective if you have an audience. So I highly recommend sending an email to your existing list letting them know where they can find you in the social spaces and encourage them to become a FaceBook fan, a LinkedIn connection, or to follow you on Twitter. It is also sound business practice to include the appropriate icons on your Web site as well as links in your eMail signature. Just remember, social media is about dialogue and is a great venue for sharing your thought leadership. Encourage your audience to participate in the conversation, ask questions, request information and share their thoughts.

By utilizing this marketing channel, not only will you be able to easily keep your clients, prospective clients, vendors, friends, and others updated, but you will also expand your network via exposure to the friends of your fans. Spending a few minutes each day on these tasks will greatly expand your reach beyond the size of your eMail list.

The FaceBook Phenomenon

It was only last October when I finally got around to creating a facebook profile. My sole intention for doing so was to learn the intricacies of this social networking site for business purposes. As I grew my network of friends, many of them took the opportunity to break my chops about being late to the party. One of my friends even said, “Welcome to 2006.” OK, so I was a bit late to embrace but I am a quick study so I’ll get moving and catch right up.

I started doing searches for friends, colleagues, old classmates, etc and found that many of they were not yet on FB. I wasn’t as far behind as I thought. Well over the last 3 months I have been blown away by the number of people that have just started their profile and are beginning to accumulate friends and build their network. And the demographics are really expanding. This is not just a teen thing like MySpace. Just goes to show that grow ups can play too.

So what’s the phenomenon? In my opinion, the growth numbers are really impressive. According to the statistics found in the FB press room, they have over 150 million active users (defined by logged in within the last 30 days). More than half the users are outside of college and the fastest growing demographic is over the age of 30. The average user has 100 friends and there are over 3 billion minutes spent on FB each day. Here is the stat that surprised me; over 70% of the FB audience is outside the US. That tells me that the growth rate will continue as the US audience gets onboard. So I really wasn’t that late to the party…

While these numbers are pretty amazing, my favorite part of FB is the behavior. I have connected with friends from elementary school, high school, college and of course, my business colleagues. And no matter what our relationship was then, now it is nothing but pleasantries and genuine excitement to connect. Seems like everyone is on their best behavior and why not, it’s all public and we all want to be liked! We are organizing reunions, sharing pictures of our kids, telling old war stories and, here’s the kicker, doing business. Yes, I said it. We are using FB to find business & job opportunities. We are connecting with influential people and using this public domain to ask for help in advancing our careers and businesses.

Don’t believe it? Fine by me but at least I did my part in sharing my opinion. In the words of Judge Smails from Caddy Shack, “The world needs ditch diggers too.”

Companies are going to have to really start embracing FB and its power. I’ll begin sharing some of my thoughts and ideas for business marketing on FB in the weeks to come. As always, comments welcome.