Virginia Miracle

I am excited to be in planning mode with my co-presenters for an upcoming workshop at WeMedia ‘09 next week in Miami.

BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens, Divine Caroline’s Suha Araj, the Washington Times‘ Chuck DeFeo and I will be leading a workshop on growing community in a variety of different business contexts.   While prepping for this, I started thinking more about Mack Collier’s thoughts about Why Your Community Building Efforts Aren’t Working.   In this post, he hits on the disconnect between what most companies want (to market) and what their customers do not want from a community (to be marketed to).

So what is a brand marketer, digital strategist, or even a brand FAN to do to cross this chasm?  To address this in the positive, I want to quote another great thinker in the space – the head of creative for Ogilvy Interactive Jan Leth.  In a recent presentation on the future of advertising, he discusses the new organizing principle for brands and communities: Value Exchange

“The key to engagement with consumers is reciprocity or “value exchange”.  Consumers must get entertainment, utility, or information out of their engagement.”

So begin not by thinking about what you can “get” from your customers in a social media environment, but what you can provide them.  This could be great stories, the chance to know things first or you could simply be providing them with the utility of a place to congregate and talk amongst themselves.  The key is in the audience centric approach.   This same principle (the JFK “Ask Not…” principle) applies to any strategy involving blogger outreach as well.

My one potential addition to the list of ways to provide value through entertainment, utility, or information is validation.  I believe that a brand demonstrating it is listening and human, even when it can not change or solve a business issue, can drive loyalty and continued community.  Projects like MyStarbucksIdea and Ideastorm demonstrate this on a large scale – thousands of ideas, only a few of which make it into the business model, but all with their day in front of the brand and to be judged up or down the priority list by the court of public opinion.  Validation has emotional value only, but people will keep coming back for it.

For those unable to join in Miami, I’ll publish our collective list of killer community growth principles later next week.

…recession retail marketing that is.  On Friday, I was lucky enough to come home to this:

It also came with a beautiful matching Valentine card.  Totally totally unnecessary, but lovely – like all of Harry & David’s gourmet gifts.  I haven’t actually sent a gift from H&D since before I was married and changed my name, so I am sure I popped up in their database as a new name.

Whether its because of this or the beating they have been taking due to the economy, they also included a truly compelling offer:

This is an offer so good that it has already driven me to their website to peruse options for my $10 off $20 savings card.  Do they make any money off of this?  I have no idea, but this is certainly an offer worth talking about and something that will drive trial.

I’m off to devour fabulously delicious pear.

If you have any curiosity of what I’ve been up to while I”ve been AWOL here for two weeks, I invite you to check out my post on the 360 Digital Influence blog about the work that Ogilvy has been lucky enough to begin with the Lance Armstrong Foundation in taking their LIVESTRONG movement global. The first piece of this, the livestrongblog revamped as a social media platform, is now live and inviting your participation!  Check it out.

Check back soon for the return of Brands Worthy of a Weekend where I’ll be featuring the inspiring Italian coffee company Illy.

Spurred on by a post from Mack Collier, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell posted an interesting vlog post yesterday on the idea of authority.  I believe this concept of obsessively counting Twitter followers is the idea that touches off this debate.  For example, if you have 25.000, does that mean you are an authority?  I think Mack, Jackie, Ben and many other are all agreed that the answer is no.  Alone, Twitter followers doesn’t even necessarily mean you have great influence, it is only a  base brute measure of “reach” (you could also add in reach of the RTs for total reach) in the same way that media has measured reach for years.

There are some other interesting nuggets in the Ben/Jackie interplay in that video that piqued my interest.

Does a book indicate authority?: When Perez Hilton comes up, they reconsider whether or not he may be an “Authority” when the fact that he has a new book up gets mentioned.  Initially I chuckled at the idea of having a book giving you street cred in the church’s eyes, but then I reconsidered.  Writing a book usually indicates that the author has done a huge amount of research into a particular topic and (often) has some personal experience or connection to the topic that gives them further credibility.

Are authority and influence the same thing?: Jackie asks this as “Are the things that you say retweeted?” Ben by positing that “You are an authority if you have people who take your word and take action”.  I think both of these are less about authority and more about influence.   From the wikipedia entry on this authority: “What distinguishes authority, from coercion, force and power on the one hand and leadership, persuasion and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy.”  I do think that its possible for an authority to not have a large group of people listening to them.  Similarly many people can take action on what Britney Spears telegraphs, but I’m not sure this makes her an authority at anything other than influence.

Have online celebrities convinced themselves they are real celebrities? Ben and Jackie included some fun Twitterati mentions of folks that I really enjoy who really are caught up in their follower count.  Stay tuned for G4’s “Twitterati: Where are they now” series in 2014.

Thanks to Ben & Jackie for the inspiration this morning!

I am rounding out a truly amazing 2 weeks off.  And yes, I may have done a few hours of work during that time, but physically and psychologically, I have truly been present with family and friends in a new way.   With the reality that work is gearing back up, my mind is now on how best to spend my 2009 online time – to squeeze the most value, quality and fun out of every moment of the day.  Here is my very unscientific list of changes for 2009:

1) CHECK RSS TWICE A DAY.  Not 100x/ day, not 0x/ day.   I have a tendency to either get totally engrossed in other work and forget about the outside world, or to obsessively look for each incoming update.   Moderation in all things.

2) TWEET MEANINGFULLY.  This is hard.  While I believe slice-of-life entries are a great enhancement to your Twitter profile, it is important to keep the “signal to noise ratio” (in the words of Jeremy Epstein) high.  These last two weeks off have been primarily noise – beautiful noise, but noise nonetheless – but 2009 is going to be all about signal!

3) ENJOY CONNECTIONS; NOT COMMERCE.  Pre-Christmas browsing started me down the road to acquisition obsession.  Every luxury e-tailer having unheard of sales was more fuel on the fire.  It’s over. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twit2Fit, and SWOM provide shared value for me and my network and are about connections, not commercialism.

4) NO CASUAL GAMES.  These are the online equivalent of the junk food french fries that I vowed to kick in 2008 (and 2007, 2006, etc).  My current poison, having graduated from Bejeweled, is a little something that I like to call Big Money. (Warning: Click link at your own time-sucking risk).  Similar to Wesleyan Tetris that came within a hair of preventing me from completing my Junior year independent study in college, I need to go cold turkey.

5) MAKE BLOGGING A ROUTINE PRIORITY.  I am fairly regimented and take great joy in going to the the gym.  Because of that, I make time for it.  I plan to do the same for blogging in 2009.

6) REFOCUS. I also plan to return to the core purpose of this blog – highlighting the great work of specific brands in connecting with their customers.  This is the true meaning of “Marketing Environmentalism” and will be particularly important in these tough economic times.

My biggest offline resolution of 2009 is to have more fun.  I believe that trying to cut some of my “junk” online time – focusing on strengthening my knowlege, skills, and interpersonal connections – will help create the time to do what’s important offline: going to the playground with my son, to a restaurant with my husband, or outside to enjoy friends and DC.