It’s taken a couple of days, but I’ve really had a chance to think about my main takeaway from BlogWorldExpo 2009, and its simpler than you may think.
It’s this:
A shared experience is the best way for brands to create real relationships with consumers.
For brands to be successful in the digital space, they must inspire people to connect not just with the brand, but with each other through the brand.
One of the event’s sponsors, Fatburger, created an eating contest, “The Fatburger WTF Challenge,” around its 3XL burger. The event itself only lasted 20 or so minutes, but people who participated in the event walked away from it talking about the burger, and moving forward, they all had a shared experience, provided by the brand. (If you’ll watch the video, you’ll see why people were talking about it.)
As brands create more shared experiences for their consumers, they’ll find that they are building a tribe, not an audience. They’ll create an “army” of engaged advocates, who will:
• create content for them if they need it
• provide an ongoing stream of customer feedback, suggestions and other ideas
• be a brand’s conversation agents in the real world
This isn’t to say that the conversations aren’t already happening. We know consumers are talking about their brands and products on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, Google Wave and other digital forums. The brands that spend time talking to people away from their home turf are the ones that will win out in the long run.
From here, brands should create processes to branch their social media efforts into other parts of the organization. If you look at companies that are widely recognized for using social media successfully (Zappos, Comcast, Starbucks, etc.), the one thing they all have in common is they are sharing their social media philosophy – and technology – within different parts of their companies.
Those like Comcast and Zappos – brands who have demonstrated good customer service – have in turn benefitted from good word-of-mouth and good PR. The more that companies create processes and workflows that connect those two departments, the better off they’ll be.
At the end of the day, the more companies break down their silos, the more quickly they can address customer needs. But it all starts with shared experiences, both with customers and within a company. Create opportunities for people to talk to a brand, through a brand and about a brand, and there will be no limit to what the brand can do in the digital space.