Don’t Ignore the Sheer Power of Social Communities
There are many uses for the Internet and social media. One of its real powers is the ability to connect people, businesses and experiences together. Enter the online community that delivers value for both customers and businesses alike.
Before I go on, let’s identify one risk. We’ve witnessed how people and the digital age can make or break a brand. Online reputation management is one phrase that is receiving a lot of corporate attention lately. This is because while businesses can use communities to promote their brands, people can create their own communities - or use preexisting communities - to exchange negative views about a brand. This is where being proactive is important.
If budget and strategy permits, you should look at creating an official community that allows your customers to exchange experiences and feelings towards your company, both good and bad. By doing this, you will shrink their urge to create or rant on their own communities. You’ll also be able to develop long-term relationships with users by responding to the negative experiences (and turning them to positive experiences and business improvements) and be able to use positive experiences as one of your tools for ongoing product or sales promotion and publicity. But there are other examples…
While one intension may be to control negative publicity, social communities go beyond the bad. One such example is the creation of customer-centric communities that make it possible for customers to become more engaged with both your product and your brand. This in turn leads to peer-to-peer conversation and user support, which can be more effective than managing it all internally, both cost and efficiency wise. By going this route, you’ll then be able to identify those customers who offer the most value to your customer, reward them for same, and again develop meaningful relationships.
Conversations are and will happen regardless of whether you embrace them or not. It takes place offline. And it takes place online. However, there are many reasons why bringing those conversations into your own domain or realm make a lot of sense for people-centric companies.
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Gino, thank you for including Customers Rock! in your post. Communities that support each other can be very powerful and can indeed help to identify some of a company’s best evangelists. Hosting the “customer party” at your own house (or company) provides an opportunity to truly participate with customer conversations.