Posted on Gleanster Insights Blog - Fresh Perspectives. Better Decisions.
The following words are essential for effective community marketing engagement. The words are: relationships, support, encouragement, education, collaboration, commitment to the whole.
So how do these words and the actions that support them come to life in an online community? Let’s start from a different angle.
I heard an interesting TedTalk on NPR yesterday – it had to do with the concept of truthfulness, and which medium of communication encouraged the most truthfulness AND the most believability – in person, on the phone or email. Interestingly, the highest rank was given to emails! More than in person, and far more than on the phone. The person who developed the study is named Jeff Hancock.
Jeff analyzed the degree of lying on the phone, in person and on email (basically online, using your name and connecting to people who know you) and, “the finding that we get that surprises people the most is that email is the most honest of those three media”. Basically because there is a record, people will be more honest in writing. Hence technology can make for more honest contacts. Email is the most trustworthy. Truthful because it’s one to one and both parties know each other (probably) and can retain the written communication as a reference point (very likely).
So if online interactions are generally the most truthful, can we also extrapolate that they are the most sincere? If that is the case, there should be real opportunity for effective online communities to rank highly on our essential words above. For example, let’s take the word “encouragement”. It’s a great way to support others and their ideas and work, and doing it online has a larger impact because it reaches the people in the community who matter and therefore provides a stronger impact on the person the encouragement is directed to.
If you tell a young person who just rehearsed for months for a dance performance, like the beautiful dancers at the Indian Community event highlighted in Episode 1, that their performance was outstanding, it will make them happy for a moment in person, but it will persist and have a larger impact if it’s in writing, accompanied with a photo or video, and shared with a community of people who know the dancers.
If this concept holds, then enhancing an effective community with an online environment where they feel safe and comfortable providing encouragement should lead to ever greater engagement. So, in that context, community-centered platforms that one gets invited into are more trustworthy. By their nature – it is more like an email and one to one communications than social media – current legacy systems like Facebook and the like are ME CENTERED and broadcast driven to a large and mostly unknown multitude….therefore not engendering trust or honesty.
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