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Losing Control to Go Viral

September 30, 2009 The most powerful approach for distributing a brand message through a community is outside of the company communication structure.  Communities give more trust (and value) to a voice that is (or appears to be) un-tethered to traditional brand marketing and sales efforts.

Blogs, webinars, customer and industry communications that are distributed outside of web assests and social media tools owned by the organization become extremely influential. While this means losing control of the content, it does require some thoughts on how to leverage and promote these messages.

For example, suppose Stephen Nold writes a blog post describing the new media push by Registration company A.  That company wants to have a process that grabs key highlights of that discussion relevant to their brand and promote it to the rest of the world.

Additionally, Registration company A should consider investing into industry tech blogs & webinars that they can sponsor. This ties the brand to thought leadership and gives strong association (and influence) with important communities.  The result is a minimum investment offering major results.

Right now most brands and associations are suffering from an overbuild of community tools without a correlation to community participation.

Becoming the facilitator of 'Thought Leadership Content' is one of the most powerful ways to impact a community.  Most of the work should be managed by volunteer leaders who are passionate about the community.  This approach allows a brand to gain visibility with new prospects and allows further interaction with key prospects, often delivering an experiential marketing connection.

Posted by Stephen Nold on September 30, 2009 | Comments (0)