Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business

Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business

by Larry Weber
Released March 2009
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9780470410974

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Book description

An updated and expanded Second Edition of the popular guide to social media for the business community

Marketers must look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them. From Facebook and YouTube to blogs and Twitter-ing, social media on the Internet is the most promising new way to reach customers. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition helps marketers and their companies understand how to engage customers, build customer communities, and maximize profits in a time of marketing confusion. Author and social media guru Larry Weber describes newly available tools and platforms, and shows you how to apply them to see immediate results and growth.

Rather than broadcast messages to audiences, savvy marketers should encourage participation in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers, and between customers, can flourish. in Networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even Flickr are the perfect forums for this dialog; this book shows you how to tap into this new media.

In addition to the tools and tactics that made Marketing to the Social Web a critical hit among marketers, this second edition includes three entirely new chapters that cover recent changes in the field. These new chapters describe how Facebook will monetize its business and one day surpass Google; how companies can measure the influence and effectiveness of their social media campaigns; and how marketing to mobile social media will grow into an effective practice in the near future.

Marketing must reach out into new forms, media, and models. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition presents an exceptional opportunity to use these new tools and models to reach new markets, even in today's fragmented media environment.

Larry Weber has spent the last three decades building global communications companies, including Weber Shandwick Worldwide and the W2 Group. He is also the founder and Chairman of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange, the nation’s largest interactive advocate association.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Foreword
  3. PREFACE
  4. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. I. Pandemonium: The Landscape of the Social Web
    1. 1. The Web Is Not a Channel (And You're an Aggregator, not a Broadcaster)
      1. 1.1. Pandemonium in Media and Markets
      2. 1.2. From Broadcasters to Aggregators
      3. 1.3. The Web Is Not a Channel
      4. 1.4. Four Generations of the Web
    2. 2. Community and Content: The Marketer's New Job (Or How to Cut Your Marketing Budget and Reach More People)
      1. 2.1. Who's Really in Control Here?
      2. 2.2. Marketing's Role Has Changed
      3. 2.3. Opportunities to Achieve Community
      4. 2.4. New Rules of Engagement
    3. 3. Making the Transition to the Social Web (First Change Your Marketing Mindset)
      1. 3.1. The New Marketing Mindset
      2. 3.2. Segment by What People Do, Feel, Think
      3. 3.3. Communicate Interactively
      4. 3.4. Content Created by Customers
      5. 3.5. Viva Virality
      6. 3.6. Five Stars for Reviews
      7. 3.7. Advertiser and Publisher Roles: No Paper Needed
      8. 3.8. Strategy from the Bottom Up
      9. 3.9. Hierarchy: Let Users Decide
      10. 3.10. Test Driving the Social Web
      11. 3.11. Beyond Bold Moves for Ford
    4. 4. How to Let Customers Say What they Really Think (And Keep Your Job)
      1. 4.1. Learning to Let Go
      2. 4.2. Learning to Listen
      3. 4.3. Comments as Early Warning Signs
      4. 4.4. Complaints, Complaints
      5. 4.5. What about Legal Issues?
  7. II. Seven Steps to Build Your Own Customer Community
    1. 5. Step One: Observe and Create a Customer Map (Otherwise, You Can't Get There from Here)
      1. 5.1. Steps to Marketing on the Social Web
      2. 5.2. Look Who's Talking
      3. 5.3. You Need a Business Goal
      4. 5.4. Define the Target Audience and Speak Their Language
      5. 5.5. Look for Best Practice Examples
      6. 5.6. Select Key Words and Begin to Search
      7. 5.7. Create a Customer Map
    2. 6. Step Two: Recruit Community Members (With a New Toolbox and Your Own Marketing Skills)
      1. 6.1. Recruit as if Your Business Depends on It
      2. 6.2. Bring a New Toolkit to the Job
      3. 6.3. Send Out Your Invitations
      4. 6.4. Create that Community Feeling
      5. 6.5. Build on Existing Sites and Communities
      6. 6.6. Feel the Momentum
    3. 7. Step Three: Evaluate Online Conduit Strategies (And Don't Forget Search)
      1. 7.1. This Way to the Conduit
      2. 7.2. Searching, Searching
      3. 7.3. More about Blogs
      4. 7.4. Welcome to the E-Community
      5. 7.5. Tap into Social Networks
    4. 8. Step Four: Engage Communities in Conversation (To Generate Word of Mouse)
      1. 8.1. Bubbly Conversation
      2. 8.2. A Brand is a Dialogue
      3. 8.3. Making Customers Part of the Brand
      4. 8.4. Too Much of a Good Thing
      5. 8.5. Ten Rules for Private Communities
      6. 8.6. How do You Pay for it All?
    5. 9. Step Five: Measure Involvement with New Tools, Techniques (To Keep the Cutting Edge Sharp)
      1. 9.1. On the Path to Payoff
      2. 9.2. The One-Two Punch
      3. 9.3. It's All about the Data
      4. 9.4. Listen, Engage, Measure
      5. 9.5. Evidence of and Quality of Community
      6. 9.6. It's Not All Milk and Cookies
    6. 10. Step Six: Promote Your Community to the World (Get 'Em Talking and Clicking)
      1. 10.1. What If: Aéropostale
      2. 10.2. Now for a Real Example
      3. 10.3. The Little Web Site and How It Grew
      4. 10.4. One Size Doesn't Fit All
      5. 10.5. Outside Expertise
      6. 10.6. Multimedia Outreach
    7. 11. Step Seven: Improve the Community's Benefits (Don't Just Set it and Forget it)
      1. 11.1. What about Friendster?
      2. 11.2. Job One: Quality
      3. 11.3. A Case in Point
      4. 11.4. Gather Ideas
      5. 11.5. The Improvement Imperative
      6. 11.6. Reality Check
  8. III. Making Use of the Four Online Conduit Strategies
    1. 12. The Reputation Aggregator Strategy (We're Number One!)
      1. 12.1. Everybody Loves Search
      2. 12.2. What am I Bid for "Laptop"?
      3. 12.3. Ready for Landing
      4. 12.4. Don't Ask Jeeves, Just Ask
      5. 12.5. Beyond Plain Vanilla Search
      6. 12.6. More Flavors of Search
    2. 13. The Blog Strategy (Everybody's Talking at Me)
      1. 13.1. Blogs Go Big-Time
      2. 13.2. So Why Get Blogging?
      3. 13.3. Get Your People Blogging
      4. 13.4. You Do Want to Hear the Bad News
      5. 13.5. Rules for Employees Who Blog
      6. 13.6. Blog or Tweet?
      7. 13.7. Now Listen up! Podcasting Is Here (Vodcasting Too)
    3. 14. The E-Community Strategy (Go to Their Party or Throw Your Own)
      1. 14.1. Inside the Parenting E-Communities
      2. 14.2. Electrons Beat Paper and Ink
      3. 14.3. What's in It for You?
      4. 14.4. Throw Your Own Party
      5. 14.5. E-Communities Expand the World
      6. 14.6. Add Your Voice
    4. 15. The Social Networks Strategy (Connecting with a Click)
      1. 15.1. Everything Old is New Again
      2. 15.2. Click and Connect
      3. 15.3. Think Interests, Not Just Demographics
      4. 15.4. Focus on Focused Social Networks
      5. 15.5. A Slow Build, Not a Quick Transaction
      6. 15.6. Organizing for the Social Web
    5. 16. Does Facebook Matter? (To Marketers?)
      1. 16.1. Getting Started on Facebook
      2. 16.2. On Facebook: Victoria's Secret and the New York Times
      3. 16.3. Let's Talk Turkey and Tea
      4. 16.4. Doing Business on Facebook
      5. 16.5. Don't Stifle the Dialogue
    6. 17. Living and Working in Web 4.0 (It's Right Around the Corner)
      1. 17.1. Welcome to the Emotive Web
      2. 17.2. Where is Television Going?
      3. 17.3. In-Home Goes Out-of-Home
      4. 17.4. Where Are Newspapers Going?
      5. 17.5. Where is the Social Web Going?
      6. 17.6. This is Only the Beginning
  9. NOTES

Product information

  • Title: Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business
  • Author(s): Larry Weber
  • Release date: March 2009
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470410974