Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

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: SOCIAL O

BJECTS

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a decision to build around an existing social object versus creating one of your own—

and remember too that you can do both—think through the decision from the perspec-

tive of your customers and other expected participants. Does your brand represent a

“near-lifestyle” aspiration? If so, consider building around that. Are your customers

interested in sharing their knowledge around very specific applications of your prod-

ucts or services? You can build around that product or service, and then facilitate (and

learn from) those conversations.

Connect Communities

Building a community around a brand implies that the brand itself is big enough—or

has been made big enough—to anchor the social interactions of that community. For

brands that are either sufficiently big themselves (such as GM) or sufficiently novel or

talkworthy (such as Cannondale’s commitment to cyclists or Tesla Motors with its

electric automobiles), a brand-based community may well be viable. Tesla, GM, and

Cannondale all connect to their customers in sufficient ways to support social interac-

tion. Cannondale might build a discussion forum around terrain exploration and rid-

ing safety, while Tesla and GM might build around their own insight and innovation

programs for future personal transportation using an ideation platform. For business-

to-business applications, a company like EDS (now HP Enterprise Services) might build

a community of suppliers and contractors, for example, who have a direct stake in the

benefits of collaboration aimed at process improvement in the delivery of higher-valued

IT services.

In each of these examples, the key is placing the community participant at the

center, and encouraging interaction between participants that offer a dividend—like

learning, insight, and a spreading of the brand presence—to the company or organiza-

tion. If your strategic plan for a brand-based social community includes this specific

provision you are on solid ground. Note the nuance here: The community (in this case)

is built to emphasize a specific aspect of the brand. However, it is the participant, and

not the brand, that is at the center of design and the activity that follows.

Product (or Service) Communities

By thinking about participants—rather than your brand, product, or service—as the

central element you will avoid one of the biggest mistakes made when approaching

social media marketing from a business perspective. That mistake is putting the brand,

product, or service at the center of the social effort and then spending money—very

often a lot of money—pulling people toward what amounts to a promotional program

in the hopes that they will talk about it, and maybe even “make it go viral.” This rarely

if ever works over the long term, and even when it does it still fails to drive the sustain-

able social bonding and engagement behaviors that result in collaboration and ulti-

mately advocacy. Be especially careful of this when implementing a community at the

product or service level.