Tag Archives: wordofmouth

Top 5 Reasons why your brand should have a community

11 Replies

Community
People love connecting with others who share the same tastes, goals, beliefs, lifestyle, social status, locality and even dislikes. Essentially (most) people  are on a lookout for new groups to join and satiate their innate desire of belonging, of being a part of something along with others for all sorts of reasons.
Brands are one of the many possible threads that connect people in many ways and it’s not limited to just those who like the same brand of alcohol or the same brand of cigarette but even to kids who like the same brand of candy.

Brands, because of the way they are intertwined in our daily lives offer tremendous ways(even unconsciously) for their customers to connect and luckily for  them, people want to connect with the brands they love. They connect to find like minded people, to know more about the brand and their latest offerings, in hope of availing some offers/discounts or just to broadcast their choices to the world. Since the advent of social software , the grouping  of  people into communities/tribes has peaked a new high.

Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs. Now that group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy, we are seeing an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups – Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody”

What does all this mean for brands ? Yes, if you are a brand that people love/like and you’d like to take your relationship to the next level then you should also think of  having your community.

Here are the top 5 reasons why your brand should have a community.

1) Feedback:
According to me, the most important thing a brand can get from a community is honest feedback. Be it a new product or a new ad campaign, it’s extremely important to know what your customers feel about what you are doing. Forget market research, a community gives you a direct channel to know more about your customers, what are they like and what they like. This can be immensely helpful in improving the existing products and services and building better ones. This group can also be used to beta test a new product/idea.

2) Audience:
Community, means audience that likes your brand and wants to stay connected. A small but focused audience is a lot better than large but unfocused audience. The difference here is that this audience wants to know more about your brand/products/services as much(if not more) as you want to tell them. This means the conversion rates for any campaign here would be higher than that of a campaign aimed at a randomly chosen lot.

3) Brand Image:
Everyone loves a social brand, a brand that’s closely connected with it’s customers scores better over one that isn’t. Having a community around a brand will better the brand image in general and lend more trust and loyalty to it . If a brand is spending resources to build and foster a community it shows that it cares. Cares for its customers and is willing to give them back some love.

4) Buzz:
Will you feel nice if you get a birthday greeting from your favorite brand ?
Will you feel nice if you get a discount offer on the latest product from your favorite brand ?
Will you feel nice if you get a sneak preview about the upcoming range of products from your favorite brand ?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, you are highly likely to talk to your friends(online and offline) about it and that’s how buzz starts to build and spread.  The way communities work naturally supports word of mouth. In a group even small things aren’t small. Also, there are other factors associated with a brand’s community that add more credibility and virality to the buzz ,which in turn helps it to spread faster and wider.

5) Crisis Aversion/Management:
Think about it, would things have been a bit better had dominos already been on Twitter or Youtube ? I am sure things would be been better(even though slightly). By having an account on any of these services would have helped them in connecting with a small fraction of their customers who spend considerable time online and if there online interactions with the brand had been good, they would have definitely(on their own) taken on the task of dozing the fire and maybe prevented it from snowballing and this is just a small community on a third party tool.

I am by no means suggesting that every brand should have a community, these points are just to share why I feel it’s important for brands to have communities. What do you think ?

Pic Courtesy: http://www.ccfa.org/

Word of mouth is no longer just about words

1 Reply

One fine day while browsing at a bookstore I stumbled upon this rather intriguingly titled book “The Anatomy of Buzz“. I acted on my hunch, picked this book up and started reading it’s blurb. Half way into the blurb I realized I should buy this book and I did. “The Anatomy of Buzz” is a book about “Buzz aka Word of mouth” and it’s undoubtedly one of the finest books on the subject. A couple of months back Emanuel Rosen, author of the book, released “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited”, with lots of new content and case studies focused around online buzz. I so liked the book(first one) that not only did I decide to buy the new one but also to Interview the author of the book for all of us. Here’s the interview, as it is. Thanks Emanuel for sparing your time to answer these questions for us.

Mayank: Why a book on Buzz ?
Emanuel: A lot of our decisions on what to read, watch and buy are influenced by buzz. There are thousands of books about advertising, but only a few about word of mouth marketing and buzz. It’s important for marketers to learn about how they can stimulate customers to spread the word.

Mayank: How has “Word of Mouth” changed since you wrote your first book (back in 2000)?
Emanuel: The basics have not changed, but now word of mouth is no longer just about words. We have many more opportunities to show our friends the products we like and not only to tell them about these brands. This is done on Facebook, flickr, Myspac, YouTube, and other forums.

Mayank: How are online and offline “Word of Mouth” related ?
Emanuel: They are both part of what I call “buzz” which I define as all the person to person communication about a brand. Most of this communication still happens the old fashion way–in face to face conversation. But online buzz is still very important because it accelerates the process.

Mayank: How did you try to build buzz for your first book and what all are you doing(plan to do) to build buzz for your new book ?
Emanuel: To promote my first book, Doubleday sent advance copies to over 2000 people, and it worked very well. The seeding for the new edition was more modest because we could afford to send the book to only about 300 people, but it’s working pretty well. I’m also running a unique book tour on a bus powered by recycled vegetable oil. This bus is mentioned in the first chapter of my new book, and it is being used by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to promote their organization and alternative energy. You can read about the tour on my blog at http://anatomyofbuzz.blogspot.com/

Mayank: Are you working with a team/organization for spreading the word about  your new book or you are doing it all by yourself ?
Emanuel: There’s a team at Doubleday that helps and provides resources and I do a lot by myself.

Mayank: Are you just relying on “Word of Mouth” or do you plan to advertise the  book too ?
Emanuel: I’m a great believer in advertising as a supplement to buzz. Sometimes you have the budget to do it, and sometimes you don’t. My publisher advertised the first edition in the Wall Street Journal and New York
Times. The new edition may be advertised in smaller trade publications and online.

Mayank: How are you measuring Buzz for your new book / How can one measure Buzz(online and offline) ?
Emanuel: There are tools such as Scoutlabs.com that allow you to measure online buzz. You can also search Twitter, blogs etc. separately. We’ve made a lot of progress in this area and I added a chapter to the new edition
on measuring buzz. I also talk to many readers face to face before and after my lectures

Mayank: How has been your experience with Twitter and Blogs ? Are you using  other tools too ?
Emanuel: Of course. I use both Twitter (@EmanuelRosen) and a blog to let people know what’s new. I also regularly search these tools to hear the buzz about the book.

Mayank: Where do you see Buzz(online and offline) in the next 5-10 years ?
Emanuel: Online buzz will increase as more people on this planet get better access to the Internet, but face to face will still be the dominant form of buzz.

Mayank: Do you plan to write another book on Buzz ?
Emanuel: I think I will.

You can read more about the author and the book here and here . Hope you all liked the interview

“The Anatomy of Buzz” is one of the books I recommend everyone to read.Here’s the list of  other books I recommend.