Social Marketing 101: coffee shop community.
Social marketing.
Don’t forget that phrase. Social marketing is the new decision maker in town, and soon to become the single largest subdivision of the marketing industry.
So why haven’t you heard of it yet?
Simple: social marketing rests on a foundation of potential connectedness. This is the first time in history that EVERYONE in the world is potentially connected to everyone else. Before this, the old media (newspaper, radio, even TV) connected the few (the celebrities, journalists, and news anchors) with the rest of the world. They were the most important few in the world simply because of their potential to spread ideas. Now, however, the tides have turned. The power of connected technologies (computers, laptops, cellphones, etc) combined with internet media (email, blogs, online TV, podcasts, videocasts, etc) has made it so everyone is potentially connected. That means you’re living in the middle of a paradigm shift - until today, there was no reason for social marketing to be thrust so far into the spotlight. It was important and could be used effectively, but wasn’t the “be-all / end-all” that it is today.
In a phrase, social marketing is word-of-mouth. I wrote more on this back in the June 4th, 2008 post “The Primer.” In the end, the most basic key component you have to have to engage in social marketing is community. Word of mouth doesn’t travel without social connections.
Gary Vaynerchuk - one of my heroes in the realm of social marketing (and WINE!) - hit a home run today in a short, 2 minute video post, titled, “When do you know you have a community?”. Go watch it NOW, it’s only 2 minutes. The point is this, though: community is about communication - not about numbers.
It isn’t how many people you tell your ideas; it is HOW you tell your ideas to other people.
I love having a job that only requires my laptop and an internet connection. I do most of my work from coffee shops. This is intentional, and for a number of reasons. One is that I love coffee. The biggest, though, is because I love community. I’ll make a post some day about my theories behind the community creating power of the coffee shop context, but the basic fact is that if I’m at a coffee shop, I have a potential to interact with people. This is a potential that I don’t have sitting by myself at home.
Today a couple people recognized me from the newspaper article and asked for advice (which I gladly gave) on getting into web-design. I had several people congratulate me on setting up this website and tell me they were looking forward to catching some tips on it. I gave my business card out to 8 different people, only after they asked about my work in conversation. Maybe more importantly, I didn’t give my business card or talk about work to at least 20 other people in conversation. And, as I sit here in this coffee shop, the owners just left my table after sitting down to say “hi” and chat about the latest happenings. I also just realized that I know everyone who works here — even the two new girls (Cassie and Amy). Not only do I know them, but they all (even the owners) sit down to chat with me. It’s a wonderful feeling — that quality of community.
That is what community, especially in social marketing, is about : the quality of connection. HOW you talk and relate to someone, not how many you talk and relate to. You don’t get to that quality level by faking or simply advertising. You get there by being real and sincerely caring about the community around you.
So, now that you have Social Marketing 101 down, go out there and dig into that coffee shop community. Do whatever you can to sincerely care about and make everyone you relate to happy. THAT is how you really work word-of-mouth and social networking. But most importantly, that is how you really have community.
Keep on living the indie life —
-Alex
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Tags: coffee, marketing, social marketing
June 6th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Bro, this is sound advice and such a integral perspective. The quality of community is the matter. Without that, it just isn’t community. So my question, as a social networker and digital marketer is this: how do you assure your social networking is quality? I get a lot of empty relationships, for example, on Myspace and have almost given up on the social networking sites altogether! At this point, I’d prefer people come to me. That would be the first filter of “quality” in my cyber community. Keep writing your perspectives.
June 12th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Hmm…
Are you suggesting that the ubiquitous Internet is a/the ‘missing link’ in human social culture? It seems to me that what the digital revolution has done is to increase the viability of whimsical communication. Although there are certain benefits to this, I would argue that it makes long-term relational/intellectual commitments less plausible, thus (from my current perspective) actually proving a detriment to general social quality, and by extension, ’social marketing.’
Tonya’s comment about her Myspace friendships sort of backs this up, actually.
Yeah, I know it’s more complicated than that. Just trying to grow our community.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I sure am suggesting that! But not quite in that way.
It isn’t a “missing link” as much as a natural progression and a potential. The potential connectedness of everyone and every idea is a reality and an opportunity.
My post (as will be the continued focus of this site) wasn’t as much an argument for the qualitative socio-ontological ramifications of such a technologically enabled existential holism, as it was a statement that this is the world in which we live, and an exploration into leveraging. If you want to talk philosophy, I’d be glad, but this probably isn’t the forum. You, my bro, know that further abstracted philosophical considerations are close to heart. And I do fundamentally disagree — I couldn’t be happier than to live in THIS age of connectedness. The more experience, information, and community possible, the better (in my opinion). Humans are fundamentally social, existential, and ideological creatures — these are the things on which their very being depends. I’d be lying to myself if I tried to isolate myself from people, ideas, experience, or information. I’d be denying my own humanity. The whole anarcho-primitivist thing just doesn’t fly for me.
I didn’t respond to Tonya’s comment because we got into the subject over e-mail. BUT, I will respond to you in the same way I eventually responded to her:
Infrastructure, opportunity, and potential are what you make of them. If you choose to de-humanize the level of potential connectedness we have now, it can lead to hell. If you don’t care about your facebook or myspace friends and instead just shallowly use those as avenues to advertise yourself, you’ll get nothing but shallow community in response — just like the the geo-local physical world. IF I went around my college campus at lunch blabbing about how great I was, I doubt I’d have very many friends sitting with me over food, unless I had something they wanted. The use of selfish gain as a motivator can be a vicious circle.
BUT, if I choose to use those infrastructures in deep and profound ways (physical or cyber-space) then the passive power of social connectedness (that which social marketing is based on) will drive that care and depth of relationship outward and eventually back to me. You get what you put in, so to speak. Want commitment? Care? Put it in first. Before you point the finger at someone else (or call the medium/infrastructure inherently bad) examine yourself and how you’re using it.
Does our world of infinite potential connection have the potential for more severe negative relational impact? Sure — if used the wrong way. But it also has the potential for greater good, too.
That’s the main point of this post: ALWAYS put in your all; the best you can give. People will see.
-A
July 7th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I think it really comes down to your industry and the community you want to build. It’s fine for someone who offers retail goods/services to the public to build community in a coffee shop. However, someone who specialises in custom made titanium heart valves isn’t necessarily going to find the people they need to network with in a random social setting.
For these people, the only way to find groups of people in your target market is the old method of going to events, or building online networks and exposure.
I believe the art of face-to-face sales is fading with commercial services, so being a vibrant and attractive (not necessarily looks) person in a public setting will inevitably build your personal community - wherever you are, and whatever you do.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:57 am
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