This is an exciting week and I’m running like crazy to try to set things up for this new company which I‘m starting with three very intelligent young men and woman. Yesterday was the first day of planning and we had that meeting in my living room. We have no local or international offices, no server room, no corporate credit card, no blackberries, no personal assistant, no espresso machine or giant HD projectors. Well, hopefully all these will magically appear in 3-4 weeks.
Today I want to write about an interesting topic. The 3 most frequently asked questions from clients and prospects:
1/ How do I get people to come to my community?
2/ How do I manage the conversations that being carried out within these communities?
3/ Does it mean I am now a media company?
The answer to question one is you must give them a good reason to come, and more so a reason to come back. One good way is to provide good stories, good personal stories. The answer to the second question is simple. No, you cannot manage those conversations. You shouldn’t even try. The art is to get people to talk about issues directly, confronting the unpleasant reality…rather than obliquely surfacing the issues. For question three, the answer is a simple “no’. That’s a silly question, please don’t ask that.
Promoting communities are a big part of driving “customer engagement”. This term is becoming mainstream and is now included in many of the marketing and agency people vocabulary. But what does it mean? Honestly I’m not sure if people even know what it means.
Getting people involved is becoming harder and harder for many of us, “Attention Deficit” is now a common condition. Loud design and a bold headline does not make the cut anymore, since it works when you’re the only few in a crowd who is yelling. But now the market place is like a heavy metal rock concert, music is loud and everyone is shouting. No one hears you. Your studded heavy metal punk jacket doesn’t get you the attention you want. Not even your full-body tattoos. Too bad.
The most important thing you need to remember is if you can provide an environment that your customer is comfortable in sharing their stories, you are off to a very good start. You really don’t have to worry much. It is those content that sparks conversations and conversations drive communities. The best content or stories are those that:
1/ Reads like my life experience
2/ Relates to my life experience
3/ Speaks to me in my language and
4/ Something that makes me want to share them with my friends.
All communities compose of many interactions; otherwise they shouldn’t be called communities. The definition of interactivity recognizes different levels of communication: 2-way non-interactive communication; reactive communication (or quasi-interactive); and full interactive communication. 2-way communication is present as soon as messages flow bilaterally. Reactive communication is when in addition to a bilateral exchange; later messages refer to earlier ones. Fully interactive communication requires that later messages in any sequence take into account not just messages that preceded them, but also the manner in which previous messages were reactive. In this way the interactivity forms a social reality.
Who gets it? Netflex. This is a company that consitently did it right. Netflix currently offers an extensive recommendation engine which covers movies suggestions, but they take it that a step further. Netflix has always allowed you to see the movie reviews of those who you have designated as Friends, now the new update includes what they called Latest Reviews whichallows you to see a live, rolling list of the most current reviews being posted by other users, right on the community page. The list of the reviews includes information on who posted it and how they are similar to yours, based on previous ratings and reviews etc. The really cool part is it can show 4 users that are the most similar to you in taste. What thay are doing is extending from communities to social networks. Hats off to the Netflex team.
