Many people have bought into the idea that social networking is only for connecting with people you know. Only a few brands have begun working with sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to create profiles that can be added as friends - a great way to actually engage potential customers.

I have noticed that the ‘brand profile as friend’ has been successful but I think that more could be done to identify brand evangelists - that small percentage who LOVE your brand and will gladly tell their friends about new products.

When you do a search on Facebook for ‘Nike’, you find a number of groups built around affinity for the brand, but I have yet to see an ‘official’ group run by Nike. Such a group could be a great resource: Asking questions about the brand and various products, including future products, offering downloads like profile pictures and other marketing material. Official groups may not be the best, but we won’t know until we try it.

The other option would be to support fledgling ‘customer-created groups’ (CCGs). These CCGs can be supported with the following:

• product release news
• photos
• video
• internal contests

More brands need to be experimenting with engagement and providing brand evangelists with the tools they need to be a street marketing team. The music industry has long known the power of street teams and co-opting fans to become marketers, it’s about time other industries roll it out as well.

Filed under: Miscellaneous