Great article from Marshall K, with some really bizarre points made by some of the people he quoted. (Some great ones, too).
I really like how he structured the article (by laying out the opinions of others without too much editorial; the socratic method of journalism)
My point is:
Community management is really really important because the ROI is way higher than for PR or advertising.
Customer service is the new marketing.
Community management is scalable, high-touch, proactive customer service. If you have a good service, and people like it, the best thing you can do is make sure those people go up Kathy Sierra’s curve and become rockstar users. They need help in this, usually. And your company definitely needs someone listening and paying attention to them, all the time.
Online customer service (yes let’s just call it that) is the easiest and cheapest way to have a great relationship with your customers. You know, the people who pay you?
Now, if you’re in the business of selling ads, your customer is the advertiser, and you probably think of your users as “eyeballs” with demographic info attached. Best of luck to you, because you’re probably going to fail.
My suggestion is to instead make something useful that enables companies (or the individuals that work at companies…hi twitter.zappos.com) and individuals tocommunicate and create value WITH each other.
It’s actually really easy to do; it just requires not thinking about display ads as a revenue stream.
I mean seriously, if you have a group of people that find your service useful, they’ll want to share it with their friends, especially if they have a personal relationship with someone at your company. The conversion rate is going to be SO MUCH higher than you can buy w/ PR or advertising. That’s just a fact.
If you have a strong product, $50k+ for 12 months of community manager beats $50k of ad budget every time.
