Engaging with your Community For Dummies = Show your company culture and mindset (7/10)

As part of a community you’re supposed to explain what you’re here for and what’s the purpose of your activity. If you’re questioning about the fact I’m telling “you’re joining a community” instead of “you’re creating a community”, the reason is simple: communities exist by themselves and don’t need you to create, but you need them to notice you, and the best way to do so is to lead and provide it with interesting content. Being aware of that state, a brand has options they have to select: acting not noticing your consumer pool and waiting for them to get your product if noticeable or sticking with that consumer pool and tune your business to echo the needs you hear and listen to. And all of that is based on your ability to show your culture and mindset to your consumer community and make them stick to you.

Culture and mindset aren’t things you can claim. They’re things you suggest to your customers in every day relationships, which they can then claim to have with you. Showing your company culture and mindset is about creating “insider” content and highlighting people from your company so that they do be part of. Instead of a brand that isn’t remind people of anything (unless you’re Nike or any other big companies that have millions to spend in branding), show at least the faces of people who make your company and products/ services better every day. Push your people to become part of the communication, empower them providing them with opportunities to speak with the community using the website to explain their job and how users and customers can better interact with them.

That’s only one way to show your company culture and mindset, you do have many other ways (I would take again one example from Seesmic with their “Video du Jour” where you can see far more than a video but a way people share moments with each others) to show you’re having great time working for your customers, inviting people to connect with the real people behind the brand. And companies where it’s fun and cool to work has always generated stickiness and interest, as well as completing the user experience cycle (what’s the company about, what’s the product, how to I fully enjoy it, who are those guys behind the brand). Which is part of the reason you’re engaging with your community.

If you’re not as easy with showing what’s inside your brand (aka people) as Zappos is doing with its customers community, you can at least do what Twitter does showing the face of its people. But whatever you do, think that’s part of your communication and an effort to leverage your community to generate loyalty. Next part would be the follow-up of this rule: rule #8: keep your “insider” style, where we’d be discussing how to develop and keep afloat a highly dynamic content to make your customers and prospects stay by your side and spread the word using Microsoft as the example.

Photo Credit: Atlantys

To read more on that topic:

• Engage with Your Community For Dummies = Connect your efforts with your business (10/10)
• Engage with your Community For Dummies = Be consistent and Engage (9/10)
• Engage with your Community for Dummies = Bring the Insider Style (8/10)
• Engaging with your community For Dummies = Be Trustful (6/10)
• Engaging with your Community for Dummies = Highlight your best community members (5/10)