If Communities are Just Marketing Pools
Jason Calacanis has me thinking about the online versions of communities we create, and about the role of community managers overall. It comes from a blog post pertaining to Facebook that Jason wrote recently. Here’s the spot that got me thinking:
Facebook is a multilevel marketing platform where you agree to pay attention to people’s gestures in the hopes that those people will pay-attention to your gestures in the future. It’s a gesture bank.
Marketplace
If we look at how most online communities are used, that’s what we do. We promote our thing that matters to us, and try to get you to do something related to that thing. Simpler words I can’t conjure. If I’m asking you to come to my conference, and telling you about it all the time, I’m compelled to listen to your pitches for your events or products, too.
So are we just marketing to each other?
If So, Is it Wrong?
I believe in the Trust Economy: that we are in a mode where we want to hear about things that matter to us from people we trust. Are all marketers trustworthy? Not a chance. Are all our friends remembering to disclose what they promote? Probably not. But don’t we determine this fairly quickly? If I’m writing about something that I have a relationship to, I will mention the relationship. But then again, I’m not a professional marketer. I’m not paid to hock products all day.
PR people, if you have built a community around yourself, are you using it as a channel to promote your clients? When I think of Doug Haslam, I don’t see him building platforms to flog his clients. He’s a participant. Sometimes, something is relevant to his client and he’ll Twitter as much, but he always discloses such.
Back to the question: if we ARE building groups and communications in this online world to convey the things we’re working on, is it bad/wrong?
Communities as Conversations
If The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted that advertising and marketing would shift into being conversations, perhaps this is simply what was meant. If we are rallying around the notion of getting to know the people behind the products and companies, perhaps these digital communities we’re building have something to do with this. I know Mario Sundar from LinkedIN, and Gina Bianchini from Ning, and Drew Olanoff from Pluggd. Does this mean I feel an affinity for these brand? Sure!
And all three of them approach community building a different way. Mario offers interesting think pieces about social media and marketing on his blog. Gina responds to emails I send before I hit “send.” Drew promotes what he’s using Pluggd for, and pointing out the good stuff. Value? Yes. All three methods have a value to me, and I don’t feel like I’m being advertised to from them.
Self Promotion
Blogs and Facebook and Twitter and all these platforms we’re building are, to an extent, extensions of our personal branding. They become a rich experience in explaining who we are to others, what we believe, and our positions. Mitch Joel of Twist Image famously announced last year on a New Comm Road that he doesn’t hire someone who doesn’t blog.
Depending on HOW someone promotes themselves, I see no harm in this as being part of what they’re doing. I’ve come to learn that the best promoters of self are the ones who rarely talk about themselves. Instead, they interact, they point your attention towards others, they show you something of value. Those are the people who gain long term respect from me. So, if your blog or Facebook does that well, then it’s not a bad thing, in my estimation.
But Is That It?
If you look at all the places you frequent online, and take a closer look, are we all in cyclical Tupperware Parties? Are we all rallying around a glowing screen instead of a campfire? Are the songs we’re singing all company songs? According to Jason Calacanis, it certainly feels that way.
I think it is and it isn’t. I think this falls into the category of “our new way of working and living,” where the clock doesn’t exactly stop, but instead it shifts. I’m writing a blog post at my kitchen table, and this post relates to my work, but my work is my passion for communities. So, am I working? Is this in and of itself a marketing piece for you to assess whether I’m an authority on community? Or am I at home blogging because I like blogging? Both, of course. I’m working and I’m blogging for the love of it.
What’s your thought in all this?
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Comments
Now you have to write a piece about communities as classrooms. That’s the primary focus for me. I have little to sell except my podcast, and the stuff I’m being sold, generally isn’t owned by the seller (twitter, pownce, jaiku, facebook, etc.). But I learn a lot, and I try to teach as best I can as well.
If we were all friends sitting around the living room and talking, we’d be talking about the same things. “So, what’s new with you?” “You know, last week I…” “Hey, did you see that…?” Wanna call that marketing? Fine. Its the stuff we do in real life anyway. Find people with similar interests and spend time with them because we like them and its fun.
There are marketers, but they tend to get shelved pretty quickly. Like your buddy who is always trying to sell you something. Nice guy, but I hate having him around. We’ve all met the type, and most of us don’t hang out with them because we get tired of telling them ‘no’.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
Pass me the iced tea, would ya?
Wow, great post, Chris– and not just because you said nice things about me (though that works).
You really nailed it in my opinion. One thing– you don’t necessarily have to think of it as marketing or selling, but that’s what you are doing, even if you are merely selling your own cleverness with a funny quip on Twitter. In other words, Chris Wilson’s comment is a valuable part of this post. Read the comments people!
As a PR person,. I cannot say enough about disclosure. there’s nothing wrong with disclosing that I am talking about a client– I will only tweet/blog/whatever when I think some of the readers will find it relevant, maybe even cool.
Thanks again Chris!
If marketing is a conversation, then yes, we’re all marketing to each other, because we’re having a conversation. As with all conversations, some people are better conversationalists than others.
I don’t think you said it exactly that way, Mitch. But you did say something like: “Don’t send me your resume. Show me your blog. Show me your podcast.”
[…] further illustrate the point that everything in life revolves around a persons perceptions Chris Brogan wrote a response to the same Calacanis post but instead of looking at the implications of a virtual social network […]
Chris B.
What exactly do you mean by the phrase “community”? You point out Mario, Gina, and Drew and imply they are part of your community. What exactly is that community.
I ask because I’ve been thinking about how we now use (or misuse) words such “friends” when it comes to connections on social networks.
I’m not saying that you’re misusing the word community here, but I think others have been, often unknowingly.
Jonathan - in this case, I’m using community to mean ’self-identifying,’ ’self-selecting’ communities of interest. I mean people who by saying they’re part of a community ARE part of a community.
Mario, Gina, etc, are all community developers for their products. Gina’s co-founder of Ning. Mario is an employee of LinkedIN. These are social network software sites.
In the case of this conversation overall, I mostly mean digital communities.
Hope that helps.
Ah. I see.
To me - and this is not a criticism of your usage - the term ‘community’ is being bantered around too much these days. Like the way ‘friend’ is being used on social networks.
Actually I’m starting to write a post about it on MarketingConversation.com. I’ll let you know when it’s up. But great post.
great post indeed and something I do A LOT of thinking about. One of the issues we are dealing with in this current moment in time is that we dont have the right words for “friends” & “community” in the online sense. Just as web pages were never pages. Friends online are different than 3D friends (not better or worse, deeper or more superficial) just different. Same holds rue for community. I get very tired with people constantly comparing the word community online and offline and arguing with people who say you cant possibly have XX [insert ridiculous high number here] friends online. I cant have 5K friends in the traditional sense of the word but I can have [insert ridiculous large number again] connections that may come to my aid, teach me, introduce me and who knows what else.
Perfect point, Jonathan. It’s not the same thing, and we need better words. I wrote about something similar a week or so ago, “Like words for snow.”
My thing is, if I’m talking about it, I like it. And I want my friends to trust me. Or professional contacts, or whatever you like to call them is fine by me.
Obviously I have worked for Pluggd and have been overly transparent about it.
I’ve also been plenty passionate about other services that I don’t work for. Pownce most recently. I think they nailed it.
Ya know, when you’re selling hammers every community looks like a nail. Remember when online (or any) communities were simply groups of people with common interests instead of markets or managed focus groups?
I’d reinforce Johnathan Trenn’s comment. Words and meanings matter here. Sometimes it seems like the topic is workforce creation more than building organic online communities. Minions over members. I thought Cluetrain was about breaking the illusion of the minion hordes? Hmmm…
I don’t ever look at myself as a salesperson. I look at myself as someone interested in helping other people, and if there’s something I can do to to throw a lifering to a friend, that’s what I’m going to do.
As someone organizing an unconference, I want to be successful, I am going to reach out to everyone I know and beyond, to essentially invite them to my party. Hopefully, it’s just like a dinner party at my house- some people can make it, some people can’t, and hopefully friends will want to come because it’s going to be a good time and they trust me to make it so. Or not, in the reverse.
At the heart of it, I think Kevin Carroll got it right in his book, The Red Rubber Ball, when he said we need to get to the point where”the source of your play become[s] your life’s work so much so that no one- not even you- will be able to tell the difference between to two”.
While it can be confusing when there’s no longer any boundary between work and play, you also don’t feel like an actor in your life anymore- there are no more costumes or game face- it’s all just you. And what’s left is not marketing hype, or trying to twist someone’s arm- just people with passions and opinions and interests that can open up so many new doors. You don’t have to try so hard, because it’s not about selling, it’s about exploring new things.
Jim - I’m not sure who’s building minions. But if you think for a moment that (some) people out in the social networking space aren’t seeking ways to capture and build business around it, that’s not accurate.
Are we all? My naval-gazing part of this post says that in a way I’m seeking to build a community of people who understand my perspective and share similar (but hopefully different enough to help me learn) points of view. Is that for business? No, I don’t make a dime off my website or anything related to this.
Will I? Maybe. Maybe I’ll show businesses how to properly navigate social media and social network waters and build better relationships. Some of those folks will seek to monetize (side note: proof of MY intentions is shown that it took me 4 tries to spell “monetize”) these relationships.
I don’t need minions. I have friends.
If we were being paid by a University, this would be called “research”. Since many of us aren’t academics, it may be called “exploring” or “testing the waters”. It also may be building an audience or interest or proof of concept- but in the end, isn’t all just about the interactivity? The sharing and the making the world a slightly better place than it was before?
Jim - thanks for reinforcing my point and here’s one reason why I made it.
Inadvertent usage of some words…”community” and “friends” can lead to unintentional hype that gets misused by others. Some intentionally, some unintentionally.
I know of a guy who’s gone out on a limb and made a series of videos on YouTube. Very insightful, very infomrative. I admire him for doing it. Yet he keeps on talking about how, in this case, politicians should be reaching out to the “YouTube” community. There is no YouTube community. There are millions of people who use/visit YouTube, but they do so for, well, millions of reasons, watching hundreds of thousands of videos. It is not as if all who visit YouTube coagulate around a few dozen videos and then we all share our ideas with one another and get to know one another. Sure, communites CAN form on YouTube, etc., but the entity itself is not a community.
When we inadvertantly refer to YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc. as communities (and I’m not suggesting that anyone on this thread has), we, as marketers, are hurting ourselves in the long run because we are, in part, creating the impression that there is this large viable “community” out there ready to hear our marketing messages.
I’d say the same can be said for demographic type categories. There are all too often too many individuals spread across to many sites, blogs, networking platforms, etc. to effectivel establish a cohesive across-the-board community.
This makes our job harder but hopefully more lucrative and fun.
Don’t mean to hijack this thread.
Jonathan- this thread’s here for you. : )
I think Facebook isn’t a community, but there are communities inside Facebook. There might be some in YouTube. I know some folks know other folks and communicate.
It’s another marketplace. There are places for coffee, and places for sales. Places to get a little done, and places that are just for meeting and talking.
Have we built digital malls?
We’re building digital malls where people can roam and enter different store and maybe turn those places into communities. Opened up too much they’re stores where people pass through. Closed off too much and they turn into silos. Done just right (which is hard as hell) they grow into viable communities. Sort of like the TV show “Cheers”…”Where everyone knows your name”
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