Here's a not-so-little secret: Your customers are talking about you online, whether you like it or not. And there are very few companies in a position to ignore these online communities. The potential to gain valuable customer insight and feedback is too important to pass up.
What's the best way to engage directly with current and potential customers online? It varies by industry, goals, and customer base.
Sony creates a gathering place Sony, for example, created its own online network. The electronics maker, which works with social commerce platform Powered, believes in a "3x3" approach: advertise on social networks, place interactive elements like widgets within those networks, and create a branded community.
Its community, My101 (soon to be called Backstage101), educates consumers and creates engagement at the same time. "Our customer surveys show that people want information about our products through formats like video, tutorials, and illustrations online instead of just reading," says Mildred Center, director of corporate marketing for Web services. "We want to educate customers so that they'll go into a store wanting a Sony and come out with one of our products." The site, which covers all Sony products, is split into four categories by product uses—digital photography, digital video, home electronics, and personal computing. It answers questions like "What is HD?" and "What does 1080pi mean?" After customers view the flash tutorials or attend one of the live or archived courses, they're asked to rate the content, write a review, and discuss its usefulness with others.
"The people who use the site have a very high word-of-mouth recommendation rate, and 77 percent say they're likely to purchase as a result of visiting My101," Center says. "We do have some merchandising links on the site, but the emphasis is really on the content and driving conversations."
Listen, learn, and leap Sony created its own community, but other companies benefit from participating in established, independent communities. It may be tempting to jump in and respond to every comment on every discussion board or blog, but don't give in, says Albert Maruggi, a senior fellow at the Society for New Communications Research. "Just listening to online communities can be helpful for understanding trends, gauging reputation, and seeing who's buying your products," Maruggi says. "It takes patience to develop customer relationships and start interacting regularly, and it worries me sometimes that the corporate culture doesn't let marketers take it slow." PerkettPR knows firsthand that patience pays off. When the company wanted to engage prospective clients using blogs, community forums, and other social media tools, the company had to develop an understanding of how they worked.
"We started a blog, got onto [instant messaging blog site] Twitter, and searched for communities we could be valuable to," says PerkettPR's social media director Jeff Glasson. "First we had to get a feel for who the influencers were by listening and learning the etiquette of the social media world, and only then could we actually start participating."
Maruggi points to Bawls Energy Drinks as another example. "It targets BMX racers, gamers, and paintballers," he says. "The company found existing conversations with simple searches like Technorati or Google, went to in-person events, and created Myspace pages," he says. "It found the right combination of existing platforms and complemented those by creating new ones."
Most important for companies to remember, Maruggi says, is that social media today doesn't come with identifiable revenue because it's rooted in building and strengthening relationships. "Marriages take time, work, and flexibility to last," he says, "and so does this."