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John Manoogian III, Director of Experience Design at Organic, Inc, is fascinated by the notions of transparency, privacy, and authenticity in the online world. As online experiments he created the social bookmarking site feedmelinks.com in 2002 for voracious linkers and open-sourced the design of his home. John leads a world-class team of UI designers, architects, strategists and mad scientists at Organic. He sleeps rarely and with great reluctance.

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Closing the Community Loop: How Marketers Can Join Customers in Social Networking Conversations

Written on
August 30th 2006
Author
by John Manoogian  |
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How can we listen?

Your customers are using social networks to make themselves visible to the world, just like you are. When customers communicate with you, they’re not just telling you their opinion of your product… they’re telling you about themselves. By utilizing this data (demographics, popularity, etc.) you can make decisions that respond to the specific concerns of your target market… or refocus to meet the market that’s interested in you. Simplistic examples are included:

1. Example 1: Company A is launching a music recording product designed primarily for the home-studio musician. Company A has given its product a Myspace profile, and posted songs recorded by studio musicians with the device. The company wants to earn credibility with young musicians, and build awareness prior to the products initial launch.

a. Ok, so this is a pretty easy one… but it does give lots of opportunities to begin a truly two-way social networking endeavor. One option would be to find appropriate bands on Myspace, or another social network… most likely popular but unsigned bands. Contact the bands and offer a free product in exchange for one song recorded entirely with the device, and honest feedback about the product to be posted both on the individual band’s site as well as yours.

Some of it might be negative, but your site gives you the perfect place to respond to criticism and keep potential customers up to date on the design of a product hand-in-hand with your real customers. Throughout the process, reviewing the popularity of the musicians that both criticize and praise the product allows you to tailor responses to those that will (hopefully) be the most helpful in supporting your product.

2. Example 2: Company B is a large technology company with a somewhat stodgy image. Long know for business products, Company B is interested in developing products aimed at college students, and wants to begin working on its image, even as product development is just beginning. The company has purchased ad space on social networking sites popular with the target market, but is currently only supporting a marketing heavy branding site.

a. So far, Company B has made the decision that many companies do when approaching social networking… they’ve viewed it as a demographically attractive pile of eyeballs on which to pour a rich sauce of steamy marketing. If they want to have a substantial effect on the brain behind those eyeballs, however, they need to offer real engagement with the customers, centered around the development of their upcoming product. This doesn’t mean they need to publish piles of proprietary development information. They could create a conversation around a series of “what-ifs”… “What if the device did this? Would that be helpful?”

Again, respondents can be evaluated based on their self-published profile. While this doesn’t mean the company shouldn’t have any more traditional marketing on social networking site, it does itself a disservice if it doesn’t attempt to establish a conversation with its new target market as soon as possible.

As long as we think of social networks as individual sites, and plan advertising accordingly, we will continue to realize a tiny fraction of the benefit to be reaped from those ad dollars. As long as we see social networks as just another venue for our awesome advertising idea, we’ll continue to be the loudmouths at the party that don’t understand why no one invites us back.

When we’re able to step out of our noise-machine shoes, however, and use social networks like the rest of the world, and join the giant asynchronous conversation, we can begin to connect to our customers in previously unimaginable ways… like a collection of regular, real, people.

Special thanks to Christian Dodd, whose insights were critical to this article.



Reader Comments.

The two examples given here make sense for the point you’re making. A home music recordig instrument for musicians and a technology offering targeting college kids. Both types of products can evoke a certain amount of passion. But most products don’t. Paper towels, hamburger buns, etc. Those products, and many more like them need to be marketed. Is there any room for them in social media?

In other words, how does the run of the mill product - which I would say describes the majority of products - take advantage of social media?

Posted by Jonathan Trenn | 10:09 pm on August 30, 2006.

This is well-written and thought it was headed down the path of RSS which will allow online merchants to target more clearly the customers opting-in to their offerings. Amazon, eBay, and Offertrax are all building or testing RSS now.

Posted by ron pruett | 5:40 am on September 7, 2006.

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