In only a few month’s time, Bryan has brought together some really great people into the group. We held the meeting at Oakley‘s official headquarters, thanks to Pat McIlvain, who is yet another of Bryan’s network members. (More on Oakley in a subsequent post.) Bryan will point out the other sponsors of the event, like Optimal Nutrition, who cooked a really awesome organic chili, and in all, it felt like everyone really came together, from a community perspective.

Pirate Move- Value the Network

Bryan’s a pirate. He believes in the value of his community, and knows that it has within it a strong core of great people looking to bring their marketing and other talents up to new levels. He facilitates this by organizing people together both on the main site, as we as through a LinkedIn group (which brings him new potential recruits all the time). Why Bryan’s a Pirate is that he’s maintaining a set of values that he hopes will protect the network, that will develop lots of valuable cross-company networking connections, and that will be mutually beneficial, while not plundering the group to his own devices.

Pirate Move – Build the Network

Bryan brought in several college students from nearby to get into the So Cal Action Sports Network. These students knew that they were valued, knew that Bryan cares about them, and knew that he’d brought them to a place where they might well be meeting their future employers many times over. He values their own knowledge, as we all know that college students know more about social networks in some regards than we all do (sometimes). And Bryan knew that the students would help his network grow, would challenge the assumptions of the core marketers, and that they would be giving back a little something for all his efforts. (Just in case it comes up, that woman isn’t a college student. She’s Tsin-Tsin Ong from Optimal Nutrition.)

Pirate Move – Share the Stage

Bryan spoke a little bit at the beginning of the event, but he made it about his community. He brought together a panel made of members of the network itself, which gave the audience a sense of who else was part of the community. He then gave the stage to me, with a great introduction and a lot of deference. He made me feel like a star from the moment my plane landed (strike that – from before my plane landed), and that feeling carried through with everything he did during the event. By sharing the stage in this way, Bryan showed a humble restraint that points to his belief in the future longevity of his network.

The Power Bryan Can Tap

Bryan has more c-level and senior level marketers in his group of a few thousand people than some folks have in groups 10 times his size. He has dozens of college students, who can react and explain and share the perspective of the youth market (which is obviously important to a bunch of action sports marketing types). He can pull favors from a few friends and stretch experiences out from being decent to being really great.

The previous was part of the Pirate Moves series. Here’s the first post.

Cautions for You, Should You Wish to Develop a Community

The best way anyone can keep a community thriving is to give it experiences that validate and affirm the members. The easiest way to break apart a community is to horde the praise and opportunities to yourself. The next best way is to start selling directly into that community that you’ve developed, either directly, or by putting your network directly into the hands of another organization who intends to sell to them with impunity.

Treat your community like it’s gold and it will return the favor. Bryan is, and I believe he’s someone to watch in coming months and over next year. In fact, I offered him some speaking time at the Inbound Marketing Summit, because we had so many great conversations over the last few months that signal to me that he gets it, and I want him to share his take on things with you.

What do you think? Do you belong to a community like this? Would you want to?

Let’s consider this to be the continuum: awareness, attention, engagement, execution, extension. I’ll explain all five, and thread into them how social tools can help.

Awareness

Before we can build genuine relationships between would be buyers (and let’s use the term “buyer” to mean the person you want to have take an action, be that a change of religious view, a supporter of public parks, a purchaser of tickets to your event, or whatever the person represents in your perspective) and your would be product (be that an opinion, a service, or what have you), one first must be made aware that there’s an offer of some sort out there. If you’re selling the coolest software in the world, but no one knows that, how are you going to sell it? What comes first is awareness.

Awareness is often purchased through marketing. Ads are bought. Events are planned. Something happens where people are made aware that there’s a new offering in the world. This is often the inorganic part of the process, meaning that an effort to capture awareness is launched through means like buying ads in magazines, or on websites, or against some other type of media.

Content marketing like setting up blogs or Internet videos are an inexpensive way to build out awareness, especially if your buyers are online more than not. What do you put in the videos or posts? You tell stories, genuine stories. You add to whatever the primary marketing message is about the product. Tell it as genuine as you can be.

It’s a way to build information and deliver value to your prospective buyer, and doesn’t cost nearly as much as traditional advertising efforts. Building out special websites or microsites or landing pages falls into the category of awareness as well.

What comes next, once someone is at least marginally aware of your offering, is attention.

Attention

Attention is a bit more than awareness. It means that people are giving you a little bit more of their time. They expect something back for this, be that entertainment, or a perception of value, or a sense of participation. Attention means that they know you’re there and that you’ve made it into their mind (if only a little bit).

Once you have attention, social software is a great way to keep people engaged. If it’s more 1:1 facing, a service like Twitter lets you as a marketer forge even more connections between your prospective buyer and your organization, through sharing and learning about each other. Attention might just mean comments on blog posts, showing that people are responding back and forth to your efforts. Remember to return the favor by commenting on their blogs, and participating in their media, as well.

Attention can also be maintained by continuing to produce interesting content. This might be blog posts or videos or audio podcasts or even the occasional free ebook. There are many ways to maintain and grow attention. It’s also during this phase that it might matter how you spread attention. For instance, if you’re promoting an event, have you created badges for speakers, exhibitors, attendees (or the like) to share? Have you given people a hash tag to use to reference your product or event?

During the attention phase, tools that allow others to share your media and content are very useful. Think about Digg and StumbleUpon and other means of spreading content digitally. Having that in place helps this move forward.

Engagement

Engagement in this case means the sustained interaction between you (or your product or brand or service) and your buyer. If I’ve started researching buying a new car, this might be where I’m not absorbing every little morsel of what you’re telling me about the model. Here’s a great place for social tools to kick in.

I don’t buy cars (for example) based on what celebrities say, but I do read reviews. If your offering had social tools to allow for comments, especially if the comments had some depth or sentiment to them (like Quick Comments, for instance), that would be something. If your site permitted passionate fans to upload their own videos or type in their own testimonials, this would feel engaging, too.

It’s during the engagement phase that you can use tools to maintain two-way interactions. Look for ways to engage in a participatory way. What if I could watch video clips of my specific car being built? What if I could say hi to some of the people on the assembly line making it?

Are there ways you can make your buyers participants? Are there tools that will encourage this two way interaction? That’s what you will want to think about with regards to your offering.

Execution

In this stage, we’re talking about the actual event, or the purchase, or the delivery of information. This is where it all goes down. Execution might be the conference you’ve been promoting. It might be the purchase of a hotel package. It might be the sale of a new car.

While thinking about execution, are there ways that social tools can smooth the process? If you are staying at a hotel, are there online concierge humans, like they have at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York? Can you make your event shine by broadcasting it live on Ustream.tv? Should there be a backchannel, or will Twitter suffice? How many ways can you share and improve that execution moment?

Extension

Finally, extension is a way of moving from what happened to what happens next. For instance, if you sell someone a beautiful new home, why not take a two minute video using a Flip camera and ask them about the process, including asking them for a testimonial? When the conference is over, post up your videos on YouTube (and other places) and your photos on Flickr. Share things where appropriate via the Creative Commons license. Make sure the experience doesn’t end with the execution.

Social software and media making technologies have really made this step easy. A few Flip cameras handed out at a company news event becomes even more footage to use for informational materials. Blogging and live-tweeting a product launch gives everyone a chance to participate, even if they can’t be there in person.

It all amounts to buzz and news that keeps people engaged after the cycle has past the purchasing phase. This translates into new awareness for others, plus a bit of social proof for you around the work you’ve done for someone. These extended actions complete the feeling that your buyer was part of something.

The “Hamburger Helper” of All Marketing

When social software and online marketing are used in the above fashion, they act like Hamburger Helper for your larger efforts. You understand: it’s less expensive and it stretches everything out more. Nothing listed above costs more than a single advertisement placed in a mainstream magazine or large market newspaper.

With that in mind, consider awareness, attention, engagement, execution, and extension as five trigger points where you can deploy social media as part of a larger unified strategy to help improve your marketing efforts.

I didn’t get into details, as this post was pretty long as-is. You’re welcome to add ideas to the post, and/or to ask my any questions. If you have an alternative viewpoint, feel free to blog it, and link back to this post, and we can talk back and forth about it.

What do you think? Did this make sense? Did it change your perspective? What do you think we should explain more? How else can I help?

Photo credit yodel anecdotal

The preceding is part of the Pirate Moves series. There will be five or six of these in the coming days.