During a meeting to discuss a variety of new media marketing efforts, a remarkably frank software executive asked an interesting question that took me by surprise. He asked aloud, “We are a software company. Why is adding community elements to our website important? How does this translate to sales?” It’s a surprising question for a number of reasons.

1. He said it out loud in front of colleagues. So many executives are remiss to ask seemingly obvious questions about topics like this because of the “buzzword” factor. They don’t want to look like the lame executive who doesn’t know what’s going on. I think more people would like to ask this question.

2. It cuts to the basics, and I haven’t heard anyone ask a question like this in a long time. As marketers we’ve become comfortable with the idea of using online tools to build networks and communities with customers, whether it’s user contributed content or user feedback, or word of mouth marketing through new media promotions. Enough research has been done to prove that web consumers are empowered and are more comfortable with brands that allow them to contribute to the brand experience. It’s also a question that should be asked more frequently.

3. New media still hasn’t yet penetrated all levels of the business community. Information that we as marketers are taking for granted these days is still new to people outside our “bubble.” The concepts may be widely known, but the benefits aren’t clear to everyone (yet.)

Luckily there was plenty of research in the room to help him understand how people expect to be engaged in a web 2.0 world. These are just a few of the reasons I was surprised by his question, but if you read this blog regularly you will find plenty of information to answer this question. Read the following links from some previous posts that provide some answers to this question:

Poking the bear. Tips on blog marketing.

What Zappos and Barack Obama have in common.

Tags: Blog Marketing, Blog Promotion, business-blogging, business_community

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.