One online community for young-ambitious-SEC-A-males coming up!

Sit down. Take a deep breath. Know that this is not the end of the world. You will not lose your job over this. Another deep breath please.
It's official - most of your branded online communities are doomed.

According to a recent Deloitte study that I read about here, '35% of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members despite the fact that close to 6% of these businesses have spent over $1 million on their community projects.'

Now before you scroll right down to comments and begin to stab at your keys, let me assure you that I am not against online communities. Now, who in their right mind would be!

But I do have an issue with brands deciding to just 'create' an online community in the hope of building a loyal fan base. It's like they think online community's their jackpot. As if those 100 people in their community are like zombies waiting to watch every piece of advertising they send out.

1. Add value
If you're a client and your brief to your digital agency is 'i want an online community for young ambitious SEC A males' then let me assure you that you're not going to get anywhere with this social-media-thing.
Any community must add value. Must provide info/entertainment that the person actually needs.
No, wallpapers and screensavers of your latest canned juice don't help. No ambitious-SEC-A-male wants to stare at wallpapers of your often not-so-cool product.
And adding a 'send to friend' link cannot help your cause if that's all you intend to offer.

2. Know 'why'
It's really important to figure out why you're asking for an online community anyway.
Is it because
- You want to do something with this social-media-thing
- You believe that people who join your community will just go nuts about your product
- Gang of Girls did it (personally i could write a book about why GoG isn't a great case study, but whatever!)
- You just want one and that's that!

If you want a community because your aim is to just spread the magical powers of your brand around, think again. Communities that are created without any clear value-add don't really go anywhere. And if your community starts and ends with your brand then your entire process is oriented around how many more people can you attract, instead of what you're giving to all those people who are already a part of your community.

Communities grow when people who are already in them decide that it's a damn good place to be in and call-in their friends.

Couple of things you may want to do
1. Be specific. What kind of people do you want in your community. It's great to want millions in your fanbase, but then often a handful of strong believers are better than hordes of drifters.

2. Or else just use existing communities to peddle your goods. Why create another facebook when it already exists. You don't always have to start from scratch. Don't reinvent the wheel as Manish always says.

And no, you cannot blame your digital agency if your community doesn't pick up.
We'll just re-direct you to this post!

I <3 Tag Clouds

I must confess I love tag clouds. I think they’re an amazing way to visually compare factors. They show the importance of one factor by making it bigger than the other words and often even changing the colour of less important factors.

Wikipedia says: “ A tag cloud is a visual depiction of the word content of a site. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color.[1] Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.”

Brand Tags

Recently I was introduced to Brand Tags. Yes, I know it’s been around forever and most of you use it already… blah blah
For those who don’t know brandtags read on.
It’s a cool little site (experiment) which asks visitors to type in one word that they associate with a particular brand name. So if Colgate pops up you type in one word that you most relate to the brand (I said white).


You can also go through the brand list and see what people have to say about a brand. And it’s all shown to you in the form of a cool tag cloud like this one for casio ---------------------------------->>>

There is an option for you to add your brand to the list to see what people have to say about it.


Wordle

I found wordle through Gautam and I think it’s very cool.

All you need to do it type out words and the ones that occur most in your write-up will be showcased prominently in your tag cloud. It’s fun and looks very cool.

It’s great for client presentations when you want to show brand perception findings. For example I can put the findings of a recent FGD done for a hospital to showcase what people generally think of hospitals-




PS: this is a wordle of this post :)

zappos. doing it right.

There are very few companies that seem to be making a concerted effort towards engaging with their online audience... perhaps it's easier for companies whose business exists in the online space.

I've been pretty impressed with zappos.com. It started in 1999 (wikipedia) with zero sales and is today the largest footwear selling business online.

So here are a couple of things they've done online (and done well I might add)

• They have a blog.

• They also do cute and crazy videos called Zappos TV on youtube. Their video on 'why do ppl work at zappos' is a fun way to impress potential employees.

• Their CEO is also on twitter and sends out regular tweets. This is a video of him asking an employee to slap him :D
  
  
  
  

• They also ran a contest recently where people had to make videos about what's the craziest thing you can do with a shoe. They received some 17 video responses. It's not much, but the energy around the brand is just so cool and fun.

The company of course is hugely popular because of their free shipping policy and some 365 day return policy. I haven't bought anything from them since they don't ship to India (bummer). But I sure do love the brand.

twitter article in the news

An article on twitter that I and my boss wrote was published in livemint and is now also on scott goodson's blog. how cool is that!

One Ferarri please.

I would like to inform you that I want a Ferrari and shall wait for you all to make it come true. No, i'm not being silly.

Turns out that a man in the US got laid off by Yahoo and soon started to twitter about his unfortunate 'day of firing'. This got many people involved and some thought of it as quite 'engaging'.

Needless to say help poured in and now he not only has many job offers but a new business partner.

So now, where's my ferrari?