PRESENTED BY: Spike Jones, Group Director of Engagement at The WeissComm Group
RECORDED AT: WordofMouth.org's Supergenius Conference at New York City on July 20, 2010
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A fan community can be an incredible force for spreading love for your brand. Bring people who genuinely love your product together, and amazing things will happen.
It's hard work, but it's worth it.
Spike Jones knows the ins and outs of creating long-term, sustainable word of mouth communities based on his experience working with brands like BMW, Best Buy, and GM. He’s an expert at creating word of mouth movements.
Below is live coverage from the presentation:
-- Social media is both online and offline. But word of mouth is what we’re here to talk about. 90% of WOM happens offline. We’ll talk about offline components of online communities.
-- What does sustainable mean? That it keeps going. Fan communities, hold up, support, and endure.
-- You will sometimes have to endure your own community! You will run into influencers, divas, and all kinds of talkers who will tell you what they feel and how they feel it. And it is not all sunshine and roses. There’s a lot of hard work involved.
-- Communities take time to grow. They do not happen overnight. Member by member, bit by bit, they grow.
-- Throwing up a forum and just hoping people talk is not the way to build a sustainable community. Communities need WOM and they need sustainability.
-- Do your homework! You’ve got to know your customer, not only think that you know your customer. Use Radian 6, or Scoutlabs to listen to what people are saying about your product and service. What do you do with that information? Listen and act!
-- Be anthropologists. Participate with your customers, live their lives. Live side-by-side with them -- really understand what makes them tick. Learn how your product fits into their lives.
-- WD40 is a boring product, but there’s a fan community for WD40. People say all sorts of things about it -- from killing wasps to spraying it on bait for fishing. They tell you how product fits in their lives. Now WD40 knows about their customers.
-- Influencers? Spike doesn’t subscribe to the influencer thing. They’re highly connected people, but aren’t necessarily real lovers of your product. Real product lovers with passion might not be social media influencers. Social media influencers might talk for a day or two, but might be followed by zombies who don’t really pay attention to the conversation.
-- Spike’s advice: Go for people who are realy talking about your product, not a social media influencer. Go to those who care about your product industry.
-- Who is your kind of influencer? It’s an individual decision for each company.
-- The Carl Popper theory that everything can be devided into clocks and clouds. In creating any digital community, think clocks and clouds.
-- Clocks are the parts of our lives that are predictable, things that happen on a regular basis that we can count on. In a community, our clocks are mechanisms. Blogs and other tool are the clocks.
-- So, what are the clouds? The people! They’re unpredictable and will have good and bad days. They are organic and will respond in different ways. There are happy people and crazy people (Mel Gibson). They will tell you what clocks to put in place. Why go on Facebook if your fans aren’t there? Let them tell you they want it. Start with people and the tools will follow.
-- Ask your customers to put some skin in the game. This is counter-intuitive to what compnies think. Make it feel exclusive without being exclusive. People will feel special. Throw up hurdles to test the commitment of people before you pick leaders. Don’t let them get status too easily.
-- You have to promise to put skin in game, too. Share information and fully disclose everything. Show the bumps and bruises of company to show that you are a company of humans, and not perfect all of the time.
-- Give them something to identify, a badge of honor, something that says that they belong to something. “Don’t mess with Texas.” Texas is a strong brand with lots of rallying cries.
-- Patagonia is good at this. They stand for enviormental causes, not just luggage. When you buy from them, they have a cause. People want to be associated with something.
-- Livestrong was a conversation starter and a badge of honor. What is the bage of honor we can give our customers?
-- Intuit created a fan community around taxes! This scares the crap out of Spike! But his dad loves it and loves to talk about taxes at TurboTax InnerCircle in order to make the software better.
-- Maker’s Mark gives their ambassador business cards.
-- Listen! 90% of WOM happens offline. You cannot read faces, have drinks online, etc. Online has to support offline and offline has to support online. Talk to customers and find out how to work both together.