Posts Tagged ‘social network’

What Do Your Potential Customers Really Want to Know

by admin on Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Let’s say you’ve just decided to launch the greatest ever social network or the coolest new Twitter app on the planet.

Great.

But, and it is a big but, you now need to educate your potential market - or potential investors - as to just what exactly your new product or service can do for them.

So how can you put across that information in the best possible way?

  1. Keep It Simple - Nobody is going to read pages of technical documentation, they want a simple answer to a simple question - what’ll do for me. Sure, you might want to have more detailed information available for those who do need to know more but for Joe Public the key is ’simple is better’.
  2. Keep It Personal / Focus on Benefits - People want to know what’s in it for them - not how technically advanced your product may be. Features are the things that describe your business, benefits are how those features affect the person who uses your service. Keep to the benefits in your marketing and information.
  3. Keep It Lingo Free - Unless your end-users are in ‘the trade’ then keep any jargon, acronyms or slang out of the information you provide. Simple information, delivered in plain-English.
  4. Include Your Personality - There’s no need to be overly dry or corporate in your approach - let some of your personality shine through.
  5. Focus - Your product or service may have a million cool features and benefits that you could talk about - don’t. Stick to one or two key ideas that makes what you have to offer different. One big idea is easier to spared than dozens of small ideas.

You may have noticed a common theme or two - less is more and focus on what your audience wants to know - not what you want to tell them. Keep those two ideas  in mind and you won’t go far wrong.

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Building a Brand Community

by admin on Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Entrepreneurs will frequently talk about building a community around their brands. In some cases - especially startups in the web 2.0 space - this is both literal and metaphorical.

The idea is simple enough, involving consumers with your brand – and with other customers like them – leads to all sorts of positive things.

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major website or brand without some kind of blog, forum, or social network designed to encourage ‘membership’ and participation in that brand’s community. Internet tools have helped customer communities to become more obvious, bigger, bolder and better than ever before.

For the most part, communities can’t be willed into being. You can however create a place that’s conducive to community and make it that much more likely by playing host.

Here are a few quick ideas to help create a community around your business, online or offline:

  1. If you haven’t started yet, see if there is an existing community you can serve or tap in to.
  2. Have a story. If people are going to talk about your brand it better be interesting.
  3. Encourage conversation. Give them a place to talk and the tools to do it.
  4. Play host. Make them comfortable and do some introductions to get the conversation started.
  5. Be supportive of your community but don’t try to run it. Facilitate.
  6. Treat them special. Not great grammar, but where’s the payoff, the reward, for being part of this community?

However you decide to market your business, building community aspects into the plan can pay huge dividends – just don’t expect to be the person in charge. You can’t force a community – but you can foster it.

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