People may love your product but is that enough to get you selected as the brand they follow if you don't tell them why?

Step back and think about it… the call to action “become a fan” has got to be one of the most loaded statements in the history of marketing.

- A lifetime of purchases and evangelizing, was I not a fan before I joined your Facebook page?

- Is my “like” that strong of an endorsement that it makes me a fan versus just a follower?

- What is a fan? What’s so special about being one?

We can do better.

Exclusives, Useful Updates, Coupons, and even Just Brand Affinity can all be reasons to join up. But we have to spell them out so people know what they're getting.

Joining your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other channels may joining something on a “social” site but it’s still a conversion action just like any other to the user. They’re a person, you’re a business. Thankfully, all that time we spend in building content strategies, making the right branded applications and offering a strong combination of “value” from discounts to inside looks to contests is all the ammo to sell joining up. It just needs to be sold.

So let’s stop telling people just to “fan” or “follow” or “like” us and tell them the full message.

1. What is it you want them to do exactly?
2. What does they get for doing this? What’s in it for them?
3. What does becoming a fan really mean? What do you expect out of a fan? What can they do?

Without a defined offering for why someone should join it’s hard to know their value as a business either. How are you measuring likes versus loyalty in Facebook if the only goal is one action?

Thankfully the YouTube community has held onto some sense here and I’ve found a great video explaining how you get followers by PhilipDeFranco, a top followed channel. Not surprisingly, aside from a few gimmick ideas it all comes back down to having a clear offering that lets you stand out. Surprised?

Later this week I’ll be posting up a few examples of campaigns that successful brands are using to drive social interaction but if you have your own story, leave a comment.

Of course anyone working in ecommerce, or any corporation, could have told you there would be problems. Tens of millions of flower orders , dozens of companies, and just 18 or so hours  to get them all there on time (but not too early), it’s only logical that some orders would fail within the process… Some complaints were inevitable.

And some level of complaints are inevitable for almost all b2c companies. No matter how perfect the process is, something will fail at some point and whether it’s the fault of the company or something entirely out of their hands, like the weather, it’s all going to come back on them, and these days back to social media. So knowing that something bad will happen, it’s up to us as marketers/ social strategists to insure that when problems come up we have the right plans to respond, but also that they don’t dominate the conversation or become the purpose of our page. We need to be more than just support channels .

Going back to my Teleflora example (and to be clear and not just pick out one company, the same issue is happening with ProFlowers and others that I checked), something is missing – balance. On the pages of most flower brands I visited just about everything was negative and support related. If these companies had happy customers (and I know they do because I am one) they were nowhere to be found and likely for good reason, no one had asked them to join up and share.

My suggestion to flower business earlier in the week was to provide an insert with orders for people to evangelize their great orders (or their bad ones, a review is what it is). All it takes is a simple note to remind people to comment, to tell them where you are, and out of the millions, thousands or even of just hundreds of customers you touch, you’ll get some balance… You’ll get light advocates.

Take this a step further, build a social program that encourages fan participation before the issue and you’ll be far more prepared when one does strike. This is where best practices really kick in – buying fans in masse with discounts, coupons and giveaways is easy and gets numbers, but successfully cultivating them takes a great deal more than good offers, it takes useful content, engaging directly around posts other than support, even how the business goes to market, the policies and programs that you have and how your fans react to them. But if you can build a dialogue and a regular flow (and yes, this is possible for even seemingly mundane brands) then you have moderate advocates on and around to help when there are negatives, to explain that there is a good to the bad, and to be talking about things other than support and trouble. And of course if you really go all the way, develop that full advocacy program and engage customers to become brand evangelists, community leaders, and the like, well now you have a whole force of people to balance and even better, aid.

Now don’t get me wrong, the issue customers are having with their flower orders are certainly very real and need a response, not to be buried or hidden by a flood of off topic discussions. Transparency is good, real responses are what matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have both – it is again a balance of what your social media channels do for you and your customers.

As for the support side, we all know it isn’t easy, or cheap, but it is something which companies tend to get… and here, the flower companies are doing a good job of responding 1:1, giving direct email addresses, and all of the other support processes you’d hope for when customers are upset and support lines are backed up with callers… they may not be perfect but they’re on it for this part. But while the support side is going well, when all people see is bad, they get more upset, the assume nothing is going right, and they lose the benefit of peer to peer support or comments to turn too.

And that’s why you need your fans to know, connect and be involved with your social media presence now, when things are good. Social media is not just about offers and sales generation, not just a support system, but when used right, it can be a dialogue platform to get insights, have the right discussions that curtail or stop issues early on, and yes, be a place where people share all the great things your product / service / brand are doing that may them advocates and repeat customers.

Rather than trying to explain a particular reason for why she may have left, I commented to my coworkers that this individual was a builder while they were maintainers. Given that these terms were my own on-the-fly creation, this lead to a lengthy discussion about the role people play within their organizations and how a smart organization looks at people not just as long terms resources, but as fitting into an evolving puzzle.

Whether it was the Internet, social media, or the printing press, the one thing that is certain in business is that trends and tactics will change. The smart companies are the ones that adapt to these new concepts fast, ideally before they are even seen as true evolutions, while companies that conservatively wait, end up struggling to remain relevant and, oftentimes, to remain profitable. People play a major part of this cycle as well — like the marketer who I mentioned before — her role was critical in bringing a certain amount of strategy to reality; something which other types would not have been able to do so swiftly.

The evolution within a business comes through a continuous cycle comprised of four distinct, although potentially overlapping, phases. It is a company’s ability to understand, staff, and adapt at each of these stages that dictates its success in transitioning into new marketing eras.

 1- Change -

 When a new business method begins to take root, it’s difficult to embrace and understand. These ideas, from the printing press that took businesses into a mass market world, to Television replacing Radio and Print as an awareness building tool, or the most recent example of internet and social media empowering consumers to learn and engage outside of the corporate gates, it’s almost always scary times to the establishment. Change is frightening personally as it may mean a role is no longer needed, a person is no longer relevant and corporately, as it is almost always costly and significant to shift an organization.

Thus when it comes time for a significant shift there is usually conflict. The first person who introduced a direct response TV buying to the Marketing VP was probably shot down a dozen times… In hindsight it seems silly, after all, who wouldn’t want more targeted media at better rates, but at the time it was an idea that risked harming what was working.

The change agents who stir up the status quo and suggest the new idea face an uphill battle. Generally they are coming from the middle or lower ranks, younger, and newer to the organization, having seen an idea in their own lives that they wish to bring to their organization and are passionate about (although this is not a requirement as evidenced by Steve Jobs who changed apple to a music, media and portable company in his 40s).

The individual or individuals who introduce a new idea must have immense passion for it to withstand the inability of their peers and organization to change. Often this is not possible and the person who introduces a new approach or new idea finds itself moving onto an organization that’s already clued in and read to move. This is the toughest role but without a change agent it is impossible for a company to adopt a new idea early on and instead it is only when it has become beyond mainstream that the organization brings it in.

 2 – Build –

It maybe days or years from the time from which an idea transitions from introduction to acceptance, but once it has been internalized, the desire to act is usually very swift and may come with little thought or planning… This is the fire-drill reaction now that the business realizes it has something hot on its hands.

If a change agent has the patience and fortune to be able to stick around, he will get the benefit of implementing, but if not the company will go out and look for an expert, a person who can champion the idea. Of course, if the concept is new, say paid search marketing in the very late 90s, the talent pool is extremely small, if any experienced individuals exist at all, and requires the company to be very flexible in who they bring in (internally or externally) to take on the challenge… If they wait for perfection the business will miss any early advantage.

The build phase is one of constant trial, retrial and ultimately great success (or dismal failure). During this period companies are building up their new approach and running in multiple directions as they struggle to figure out a strategy rather than just using tactics. For a truly early stage, innovative company, this is the period to lead an entire industry.

 3 – Maintain –

After enough time of running around and building various programs, the winning ideas emerge over lesser thoughts and a program emerges to be pursued. This is the start of the maintenance period–an indefinite time in which the company thrives as their proven program drives continued success.

This is a period of steady growth as investments made during build pay off, marketing, production and operational triggers are optimized (rather than being invented) and small adjustments propel the company to see even better revenue. Boards, shareholders, customers remain content as everything progresses…. It’s not about excitement or headlines, but instead, it is a time of stable growth.

 While they may still exist within the organization, few change agents are seen during this time and those that are present bring forward smaller ideas, often facing strong resistance, after all, everything is going well.

 4 -  Stagnate - 

 Eventually, whether through laziness, blindness, or simply marketplace innovations which are not matched, companies start to slip. What was a steady, albeit slow, evolutionary process, turns into treading water as the company leaves maintenance and begins to stagnate. In the right conditions this transformation can be so subtle initially that revenue and other key metrics continue to grow.

Stagnation is, of course, an eventual path towards death and what companies and marketers fear and fight to push off.

If the organization is truly open, the early signs of stagnation can be identified quick enough to avoid the most impact as the company, seeing a marketplace challenge, jumps into conflict with both feet to embrace what is new. Even more successful businesses parallel process the entire cycle and are already conflicting while maintenance takes place allowing themselves to evolve before they even smell an issue… This level of prepared growth is something I will explore further later in this post.

However, these are the exceptions, not the rule. For most companies, and the examples are too numerous to count, stagnation is already occurring, even as a company sees itself as succeeding.

The issue of course is complacency. The best ideas can quickly become the last idea, but to those who launched it, this is often impossible to see.

Take the evolution of social media sites. While geocities and private communities had been around for over a decade, it was Friendster that started a mass network and then Myspace that, leveraging Friendster’s network issues, grew to dominate the “social” landscape in 2006. Myspace honed in on users’, especially young ones, desire to have their own profiles connected with people they knew offline and on. Enabling them with a simple, yet highly customizable solution, sign ups seemed unstoppable.

But within a few years they had stopped. We all know the reason — Facebook. But it was not that Facebook was better that doomed Myspace, it was that Myspace had already failed itself by stopping true innovation.

Myspace believed their platform was what users wanted and rather than developing better ways to connect or evaluating the implications of their open (and therefore very slow, very cluttered) system, they focused on new content. In all likelihood, this was where research led them — users wanted more music, more goodies, but behind the scenes they didn’t realize that what they were really looking for was something more connected.

Facebook came in, without any expectation of being a half billion member site 4 years later, and put better features in place that met the user’s needs. To be clear, it was not a feature war as much as an ideation one… Facebook got that people wanted a sense of exclusivity and used schools to launch. They understood that it was the actions of people’s friends over that of their own that got them to come back and they used what really amounted to less features, less control to win. And still Myspace didn’t see the writing on the wall. They remained confident in their size, their solution and direction. They didn’t return to conflict fast enough, or to a wide enough degree to regain the upper hand. And that was that.

Speaking of social networking, the evolution of digital and now social properties has vastly changed the concept of a stagnating business. 50, or even 15 years ago a business cycle just like the one I have described existed, but it took time, lots of time. Information flowed slowly to companies, which could, and in fact had to, develop slowly to allow consumers to keep up with their innovations.

But just as digital gives us new challenges in how we go to market, it also changes how we have to evolve within the market. The ability to rapidly connect to millions of users is a tool that may not have existed a week ago, but changes everything. It’s no longer about years, products, services and information that can change at an amazing rate. This requires organizations to look at their cycles differently and recognize that as quickly as they innovate, they may be out of style, especially in larger organizations where shifting still means embracing paid search, let alone the latest twitter trends.

Stagnation is what kills, but it’s also what starts the next step as companies drive to react to the new market, the new products or whatever else has changed and so we jump, fall or get pulled kicking and screaming back to conflict and restarting the cycle.

——-

While understanding these stages, it is inherently vital to addressing them, it is equally, if not more important to grasp the paradox that they reveal in business — the need to innovate and the simple desire to thrive off of what is already working and proven. More on that next week…

Coming into the social space is not a selective engagement; the second a twitter account is established, a facebook page launched or a video uploaded, customers gain a new channel by which to respond and respond they do. Unfortunately many organizations in their rush to get on the social train forget the purpose of social and therefore abuse and ultimately suffer as a result of their participation.
With twitter it is common for companies to setup shop and blast out special offers and discounts but remain silent when a question is asked. Instead of benefiting from a relationship these companies look clueless and add to the frustration that their customers already often have about reaching someone for help. On the other hand companies who respond are often praised and certainly preferred. People on social expect companies to act much like their personal contacts.

Getting it right is not a difficult task. In an ideal world both marketing and customer service should utilize the same social channels to sell and serve but even that is not always required. So long as someone with information, awareness and a list of support phone numbers can do a great job in connecting customers back to whatever it is they are looking for. Responding to questions asked directly is the first step but over time reaching out into conversations to provide assistance not only helps build a relationship with one customer but can quickly add to the overall visibility and positive impression of the organization. Companies who “get it” commonly see comments about how great their service is, even if phone or email users may have another opinion.

While acquisition marketing is a benefit of social, it’s wrong to make it the only focus or even the main focus for most companies. The true value of social as so many great case studies have indicated is in engagement, brand visibility and loyalty. Thus while offers are definitely successful it is ultimately about using social to reach out and be reached that brings real results. For companies who lack the resources, or simply are unwilling to go from talking to a customer to talking with a customer social is the wrong vehicle. As a customer of many businesses we all know that going without any response is one of the fastest ways to be turned away from a business. On the other hand the companies that get it, connect and are on our level are the ones we trust, chose and pass along to our networks.

If you run a big, or even just an older brand’s online presence you’ve probably had the “viral” conversation at least once and are downright sick of executives asking you how the company can get more “social”. While a lot of companies have put a great foot forward in building their own communities, this is a difficult proposition and even if it succeeds, it’s only going to reach a small slice of the viral world. The truth is, most user’s live on big networks (social networking sites) and niche sites (the independent forums, blogs, etc…) so let’s talk about some ways to reach out in someone else’s field.

Before I start with specific tactics I’ll begin with a single rule which I consider to be the guiding principle of involving your brand in a community. At all times the community and the user will be in control, not you and not your brand. This goes for external communities and generally for your own as well. Not willing to swallow that reality? Don’t bother trying to get into the space… it will end bad (either a wasted effort or a very bad PR outcome). Why do I say this? Because many, many, many good companies have gone in foolishly thinking they can control the consumer. I don’t care if the consumer is using “your” site or a third party site… if you come in and crash their parade in a way they see offensive (censoring, deleting, spamming, etc…) you’ll have more bad posts going out there than you’ll have time to read and even if there was something erroneously said about you, you’ll have given the poster enough ammo to drive a nail into your name overnight. There’s too many ways for consumers to talk today for you to control them, so don’t bother.

If you’re willing to accept the potential bashing and have a good air conditioner in your building (plus a few sleeping pills), there’s a ton of opportunity to be had to bring people into your customer for the first time, for a repeat purchase, to keep them engaged and simply to grow the reach and awareness of your overall offering.

User Reviews: These days most sites have user reviews if they offer products, so let’s forget on-site reviews for a second and talk about reviews that live off site. Getting involved here is tricky to say the least. You should never be in the business of “seeding” or “faking” reviews but that doesn’t mean you can’t throw some weight in. Got a new product offering?

• Why not having some of your past customer or early adopters get a free sample in exchange for a review. This is an old PR tactic but it works wonders online and even translates out into the blog and forum worlds. Most people never expect a company will notice them and just talking to them can give you a huge response and build a very loyal following.

• Another popular interaction with reviews is to post responses. Some sites clearly allow this (i.e. BizRate) and others may not do so yet, but if there’s a lot of discussion about your offering, now may be the time to ask and/or suggest they do it. When you’re responding to reviews you gain the chance to show that your organization does deliver service and is there for the consumer in the event of a bad review but good reviews are where you can really shine. Use good reviews as a place to respond thanking the consumer, offering ideas and involving them in the brand. When someone reads a good review it’s a positive tick for your business versus the competitors but what if they see you encouraging and supporting that user proactively… what if you suggest more ways for them to use your products that resonate with the reader? Boom. You’ve increased the power of the review.

• Harvest reviews (with permission of course) from sites and include them in your own materials. This works with all types of reviews and is really amazing when taken offline as Walmart has recently done. Harvesting reviews can also be very helpful in building up your own review library initially or just as a means of showing your consumer feedback on truly “independent sites”. You don’t even have to take the reviews to accomplish this… if you have a 5 star product on Amazon say so. They’re independent enough to the consumer and hold great brand weight so why not use that to your advantage?

User submitted video: Again I want to start this tactic with a rule. Video is not applicable to every company, period. Let me clarify that because it’s not accurate perhaps, user generated video is not acceptable in every context but it may be overall. If you’re Boeing airlines, video could be a great way to attract potential employees but that would likely need to come from verified employees, trying to use YouTube to get videos about working at Boeing from the public – not as smart a move.

• Open the doors to video submissions that will make it somewhere. The weight loss industry has used real clients for decades as a means of proving efficiency; online video has made this applicable to everyone. If you have a strong tv brand using video to recruit talent can be an amazing way to build a campaign and save a few bucks on casting. Just think about it, you get the chance to have thousands of people “audition” (with exposure) and the result is that they get to become your star, or one of your stars, or just a star you push over to PR for coverage. Either way it’s the best contest I can think of.

• Not every brand can put people on tv or the front of their catalogue but you can always run a traditional contest promotion. At this year’s eTail I heard someone from Ice.com talking about a few campaigns. His comments indicated that some promotions worked better than others at driving ROI but that most had good impression rates. For a jewelry company, something about posting your love story or why you deserve the perfect ring which people can vote on. For an online dating site, user submitted stories and experiences that let you win a romantic trip. For a software vendor, an example of art or a module created. For a show or movie, reactions from fans. And so forth. There’s an endless number of options of how to get these going and get them viral but the idea is to get people posting their own thoughts and expressions which they’ll want to share through any means available (email, social profiles, blogs, everything) and then let people vote or rate things to bring more activity and more involvement into the mix from the “fans”.

• Create your own videos and post them. It goes without saying that your videos need to be interesting, unique and posted to the right site but for a lot of companies that’s not a problem. Years ago I remember a dive business I worked with had an issue where their website got turned off for using too much bandwidth – people were viewing their video too much. At the time no one thought much of video and there wasn’t even an inkling of YouTube – bandwidth was at a premium too — but man, just think about that; too many views? Too much traffic? All this company did was posted an interested video on their site and the word spread all over dive forums and inboxes. What if they took that same (or a new video of a similar nature) and threw it onto a Dive Video site or YouTube or both? Put up a little profile, a link at the end and wrap the product in a bit and suddenly you’ve got a ton of exposure from something with a very low production cost. Even if only a minute fraction were to become customers that’s still a great branding opportunity and as was the case for this business, they were already shooting video so just about any sales would have made it profitable.

  If you can’t afford to shoot new footage but shoot for other mediums, consider repurposing or creating “b roll” footage. Repurposed video doesn’t tend to get as far although I’ve seen it get a few eyeballs but “b roll” can do really well, especially if it’s slightly humorous, shows a celebrity or is just unexpected. Coming from a world of “managed” brands it’s hard to think about showing your company’s goof ups, interactions or side remarks but that’s part of your face, your voice, and can lend great credibility to showing that you’re not just about overly priced commercials.

Forum communities: Involving yourself in most forms of social media is tricky but forums often take the cake. Successful forums are generally home to deeply attached members, long standing leaders and may be founded entirely without commercial goals making them difficult to approach both from a user and owner side. That’s probably why the best results come from companies that take the time to engage the forum owners/ leaders before they step in. Some promotion tactics may not require any formal discussions as many won’t require financial contribution but it’s always a good idea to introduce yourself, to find the lines and to get ideas from the leaders… asking them lets them know that you’re not here to push your name, you’re here to participate.

• The best way to get buzz on a forum is to participate and I do mean participate. The deeper the participation, the better the relationship, but even a casual conversation is a start. Just bare in mind that if your brand has a negative reputation, even if it’s mostly positive, you may open yourself up to a lot of bashing and will want to have a response strategy in place before you jump in. This shouldn’t scare you away from participating however – people are already talking about your brand and while responding may draw a few more flames, it’s also an opportunity to set the record straight, much like issuing a press release about an issue. When you participate by name you get the chance to explain your policies and offerings, your benefits and the reality of your business.

  But when you participate in a forum don’t limit yourself to just talking about your brand (unless requested by the site owners of course). Most companies have experts who know their fields and if you’re on a forum it’s because people are talking about the topics your brand knows about, so help others, respond and show your expertise. It’s amazing how positive this sort of interaction can be and chances are you don’t even have to mention your own url to get a benefit out of it. Just by having a username and signature that refers to your company gets you noticed but when you show that you’re an expert and valued resource willing to interact with customers, you’re showing them that you relate to their needs and aren’t just about keeping to the old-world relationship of customer and store. Chances are not everything you do is perfect but when you open up your brand to communicate with your customers, they tend to be grateful for it, and even if there’s some negativity, there’s generally a lot more positive reactions going on, even if they aren’t all stated.

  If you’ve got the resources, kick this up a notch and see if you can get your own forum, moderators or other means of being a fixture of the community if not a pillar. This ultimately means tying your brand to the community (you don’t have to be exclusive but if they go down in flames, you’ll have an issue) and it also means you have to get into the promotion side of things to get people using your area… luckily that generally means being active and useful rather than doing anything considered typical promotion.

• Supporting a forum in a visible way is a great way to get recognized and be seen as a positive influence rather than a negative one. Of course this can mean traditional banners but those are far less interesting than a deeper dive… say sponsoring contest by providing a trip or one of your products or building/ sponsoring a tool with your branded logo that powers it as opposed to just having a banner on the top of the page. This opens the door to you being seen as a part of the community rather than a logo on the top and extends your participation, if you are indeed participating.

• Many communities have a lot of photos, videos and other posted going on and if you’re working with these for other purposes, social or brand, they can be wonderful to repurpose on a forum. Pushing out photos of new product offerings, b-roll video from a shoot or extra shots of a item at a tradeshow or around the office is all great stuff to do on any viral site but when you do it on a forum, there’s a lot of chance for consumers to respond, to throw in their feedback and to start getting hyped up about the offering. You can tie in these postings with initial notification lists, find beta testers and get the word out quickly and easily.

• No matter what you do, even if it’s running banners, relate them to the forum and its needs from the message & creative to the landing page and the offer. Your forum campaign is likely going to be a whole lot different than the banners you may be running on portals or your AdWords campaign so don’t kill the experience when the user clicks off to your site. Instead build out messages that extend the experience and keep it obvious that you’re specifically working with this community so they feel like there’s a shared relationship when they hit your site. And that helps push them to convert.

On a final note about forums, while it is important to be willing to take some criticism and negative backlash, you also need to be careful about the community you chose to stick your neck out in. By their nature some communities are more apt to bash than others and some end up creating cultures that almost encourage ripping on companies. Unless there’s a serious shift that you want to get across, spending your time in a community that hates your company, or just likes to rip on all commercial entities isn’t the best use of time so do some evaluations before you reach out.

Social networking sites: They’re hot, super popular and according to the media, somewhere your company has to be. While the first two are definitely true, the third is something that really depends. To be crystal clear, I say this as an avid user of FaceBook, formerly of MySpace and a few other smaller social networks. While most of these sites have done a good job of branding into older demographics they still are not for every company and for many companies, getting into other social sites that fit a specified niche just makes more sense, even if the consumer base is larger on the top networks. However, if your brand is applicable, wow… the reach potential is amazing. The difficulty is finding ways to get people to you.

• Applications and widgets have become the hottest part of the social networking world in recent time but again, proceed with caution. This isn’t field of dreams… build it and they may come, or they may not, it needs to be interesting and that often means very little in the way of commercial. If you look at the top applications on FaceBook this is perfectly evident – there are no retail brands running top 10 apps. Sure these apps are almost all commercially developed but they’re developed for use and engagement which drive ad revenue, not brand recognition or sales.

  If you do decide to build your own application, be sure to do your homework first. There’s a lot of tools out there so it’s fairly rare to see something truly unique and if there’s already an app in your space that’s failing, ask yourself why (is it a bad app, poorly marketed or something great but there just isn’t interest). If you’re developing something new, get some feelers out there to see if there’s truly a marketplace and look at similar apps to help gauge how big it is. When it comes down to actually developing remember that apps do well when they’re subject to sharing and have a lot of collaborative elements. Building the coolest game in the world is great, if it centers around your value proposition that’s even better but if there’s no way for people to tell each other about it, it’s a lot less useful to you.

• If you can’t find the IT resources or don’t have a good pitch to create your own application, renting space or advertising in an existing application can be a great way to get exposure and unlike with your own app, you don’t have to attract the users. With so many applications out there, you want to be sure your partnership is actually beneficial so be sure to look at the number of people using a program as well as the pageview and unique visitor metrics. Unfortunately for advertisers, many of the apps on the market do very well at driving in revenue and may want CPMs that just can’t be justified but there are gems out there and with the right type of promotion, you can get some nice traffic out of the partnership. After all, who wouldn’t use a Victoria’s Secret sponsored superpoke or gift for Valentines?

• Applications aside, there’s a lot of content posting and information being exchanged on social networking sites. Be it questions on LinkedIn, Videos on MySpace & FaceBook, news articles, or whatever, if you have something that people want to share, you can drum up a lot of branded response. Video is especially good for this and if it’s popular, people will push it within their own networks. Of course the trick is to extend engagement to having your video link into your own micro-community (preferably on a social site) can help keep the conversation going.

• Applications, video, it’s all good for sharing but doesn’t tend to sell the brand enough. To really get people engaged, build your own profile/ micro-community and use your other social and viral techniques to drive people to it. Whether its friends on MySpace or Fans on FaceBook, when people join up you gain access to talk to them through updates to your page and messaging. You can also build out lists of key influencers who are willing to promote your page and brand and often come in as early adopters. Your page doesn’t have to be sponsored or amazingly fancy, although that may help if you can add the right tools, but it does need to fit the nature of the community. Provide information and elements people like as well as a reason for them to come back. This means updating your page with new content, photos, videos and other items that make your site useful… just like a personal profile and people will be more likely to come back or even better, to link up.

Whatever you do bare in mind that on most social networks, the new news feeds reigns supreme and is somewhere you have to be to get noticed. The great thing about news feeds is that you get in front of a second level of users and not just those who participate in your applications or feeds. Often times we forget to include enough updates in the news feed when releasing tools… not that you want every event to trigger a posting as that will drive your users and their networks nuts… but it’s a good idea to have major events show up.

Finally keep in mind that a lot of social networks and users on them have a strong emphasis on being more cooperative and helpful. If your brand is going green, volunteering or doing anything else to help the world, be involved in political issues or the community you really want to share that on your social networking presence. This isn’t about exploiting your good actions but rather about sharing them so people understand your brand’s true identity and possibly dive in themselves. If you can tap in to the pay it forward mentality you and your good cause will benefit.

The Infamous Blogs: When blogs first hit the market and I’d refer to blog communities I got a lot of puzzled looks, now it makes more sense. Blogs are not only an amazing force to be respected but they’ve developed a very strong community of their own. Some of this community is tied to a specific site and some of it to the blogging world as a whole. The more webmaster focused blogs take this even further and really have evolved into a world where people know each other across blogs and into other online communities so while getting into a blog may seem like just getting onto another content site, there’s really a lot more two it.

• Much like a pr campaign, what you really want out of blogs is people talking about you (preferably in a positive way). This can mean talking about your new products, your special campaign or your corporation. You could be on blogs about your niche, about new products, about the stock market, or even about how you treat your customers and their experience (you could even be included here). All if these blog topics have different, although often overlapping, audiences and communities to reach into, it’s just a matter of finding as many relevant ones as possible and making sure that information on you. Much like with a classic press campaign, this can mean courting bloggers, sending out product samples or just giving people the heads up so they can do their own research. You can meet bloggers at shows, invite them to the office for a tour or just let them know how to reach you if they have questions. Often times the best and most visible posts will come from people you didn’t talk to and may never have followed, that’s just the nature of being in the public, but these posts aren’t something you can count on so keeping up a relationship is key to maintaining a stream of information. Just don’t push to be blogged about too often… the blog writer isn’t likely to be happy about being harassed and even if they don’t mention it, you don’t want a third party blog turning into your defacto media source.

• If you can’t get enough free postings about you, there’s always the option of paying people to post in cold hard cash. While there are a lot of commercial blogs, there’s also a big reaction to paid posts so don’t try and mask your efforts, that’s been done and blown up in the face of many companies. Instead if you want to pay people to blog about you, pay them to review your products, pay them for their honesty. Being paid makes it difficult to be truly honest but if you create a policy (and let it become public) that limits your editorial rights and influence, people tend to be much more apt to trust the postings.

• Running your own blog is a great way to get into other blogs as well. Why? Because much of blogging is about reading other sites and talking about them, sharing items from them, even linking to them if they make sense. Writing a corporate blog takes a couple of jumps through legal and you have to be willing to act quickly as you can’t spend weeks formulating every post but if you’re willing to get good information out there and talk about what’s going on, the new, the good, and sometimes the ugly, it has a great way of finding its way onto other sites, into blog comments and even picked up on by the media.

A lot more (a whole lot more) could be said about blogs but this post is already way too long so I’ll leave that for another day.

I opened with a rule so it’s fitting that I close with a rule as well. When you go viral you really need to think about how the internet world perceives your brand. I don’t know the exact details but I remember hearing about a Chevy or GM campaign (it may have been another American car company) that let people compile a video using clips from one of its commercials. The problem – the video was for a big truck and many of the users were, well, to put it in a “pc” way, environmentally friendly. This may seem like a no-brainer in 2008 with $4++++ gas prices but a few years ago trucks were still selling hard. The problem was they also had a strong resentment from a base that is very well connected online and found a great opportunity to voice it’s opinion… right on the car’s front page as I recall. The lesion here, know how people will respond before you let them go out and do as they please otherwise you may be really embarrassed.

As a final note I’m sure you noticed a few missing types of communities/ social sites but rest assured, I’ll address them soon enough.