$

COMMUNITY AS A RESOURCE

how to captureand harness the energyand Influence of your constituents tooutmarket, outpace, and outperform your competition

ByJohn

Schroeter

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tABLe of contentS

table of contents

Introduction • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •3

1 • exposing the Disconnect BetweenSales and your Social Strategy • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •5

2 • Is your company’s Websiteon Life Support? • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •9

3 • the evolution of Pr intoAdvocate Marketing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •13

4 • community as a resource • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •18

5 • It’s the Data, Stupid • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •22

6 • content Marketing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •25

7 • conclusion • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •30

About the Author • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •32

Copyright © 2012 by Conenza, Inc. All rights reserved. Conenza and Communityas a Resource are trademarks or registered trademarks of Conenza, Inc.

Introductionthis eBook provides a roadmap to cultivating an engaged con-

stituency around your brand so that you can grow your business.

In exposing the weaknesses of conventional marketing approaches, aswell as the many fundamentally flawed practices in navigating a socially-connected digital age, we’ll bring to light the enormous opportunityyou have right now to build brand loyalty, reinforce your competi-tive position, and dramatically increase yourbottom line.

The oldmodels—traditional methods of lead

generation and websites dependent on fragmented socialmedia being foremost among them—are simply not working

anymore. And yet the solution is hiding in plain sight. Ironically, theanswer is found not so much in technology—although technology is cer-tainly a vital component. Rather, it’s a matter of getting back to basics.By basics, I mean the human touch—observing and respecting the simplefact that business is driven by people who build relationships throughearned trust—the sorts of values every company tries to instill in itsbrands, but now increasingly struggles to realize in a world whose bound-aries and channels have been shattered by virtual social connectedness.

When a company gets back to basics, it can build, or rebuild, its con-stituency—a company’s ultimate and enduring, sustainable businessvalue. And when done well, that constituency is “sticky”; it remains evenwhen the technology changes. And the technology will most certainlychange.

As you work your way through this short volume, you might gain thesense of urgency that accompanies rare opportunities for a significantcompetitive leg up. Such windows don’t stay open for long—especially

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IntroDuctIon

when the stakes are nothing short of a company’s market position in aworld of total connectedness. And the spoils of first-mover advantageare the attention of your market—the resource most increasingly in shortsupply. As you know, nothing happens until you first have someone’sattention. And because developing the sustained levels of attention yourbusiness will require in order to prosper will also require planning, time,and a bit of your own attention, starting sooner is vastly and strategicallypreferable to starting later.

There is certainly plenty to gain here. But what will it cost in terms ofchange? Surprisingly, not much! Because the approach described heredoes not upend your enterprise operations, it won’t, from a technologyintegration standpoint, involve much more than tweaking your existingcompany website and social media operations. It won’t even require anew budget item—you’ll simply reallocate your existing spend, shiftingthe current marketing activities yielding diminishing returns to thosethat will reverse those trends. Interestingly, the more significant changeswill involve the way you look at, and respond to, the rapidly evolving land-scape of your market. And in this sense, change you must. To quote a for-mer Army Chief of Staff, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to likeirrelevance even less.” That’s really what this is all about—the fight forrelevance and attention in an increasingly noisy, fragmented, and dis-tracted business world. This little book will show you how. But first, weneed to understand what’s not working.

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IntroDuctIon

When a company gets back to basics, it can build,

or rebuild, its constituency—a company’s ultimate

and enduring, sustainable business value.

“”

1 •exposing the DisconnectBetween Sales andyour Social Strategythere is no shortage of business challenges that pre-

clude or otherwise interfere with your efforts to win.

Many such factors, though, are actually within your control (weakpositioning in a crowded market, difficulty in converting leads, wan-

ing customer loyalty), while others you can only hope to navigate bet-ter than the next guy (the economy, regulatory policies, the weather). Inboth cases the lists are long, with recurrent concerns including:

• Erosion of trust• Building awareness• Loss of brand control• Increased competition• Difficulty of differentiation• Poverty of time and resources• Standing out in a crowded market• Resistance to traditional marketing• Finding and qualifying new business• Identifying and reaching decision makers • Recruiting, motivating, and retaining top talent• Difficulty in assessing ROI of marketing initiatives

And so on.Nothing new here—it’s all business as usual. In fact, with nearly all

businesses facing the same set of challenges it’s practically a level play-ing field—that is, if it weren’t a mountain! But let’s focus instead on oneconspicuously absent challenge, the mastering of which could actuallyreverse the downward course of all the others. It’s this: discovering how

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best to capture and engage the time and attention of your market. Gethold of this and the conventional mountain of concerns and challengeswill gradually disappear in your rearview mirror.

If you’re guessing this idea has something to do with “social,” you’reright. And if you also believe you already have a robust social businesspractice under way, you might be surprised to learn how much of theenergy of your conventional social initiatives—even those adhering toso-called best practices—is actually lost in heat versus producing real,meaningful, and profitable work. Let me explain.

In a recent report on social media marketing, there are some trulyastounding—and surprisingly typical—findings that reveal just howupside-down the prevailing “best practices” are. Let’s take a look at oneparticularly pithy excerpt on the measure of ROI from the annual surveypublished by Awareness:

In 2011, the primary measure [of social media ROI] was reach: 76% of respon-

dents used the number of new fans and followers as a proxy for progress. For

two-thirds, the desired outcome was to drive traffic to owned media: 67%

measured traffic from social channels to Web properties as an indication of

success. Engagement came in third: 53% reported using social mentions of

their brand across platforms, and 40% measured share of social conversa-

tions. A little over one third made further links to ROI: 38% of marketers

monitored and reported on lead generation activities.

Let’s put this data into a graph—you don’t want to miss the gravity ofthese results, nor the opportunity they represent for your business:

Primary Measures of Social Media roINumber of fans and followers 76%Traffic driven to the company website 67%Engagement with constituents 53%Share of social conversations 40%Lead generation 38%Sales 26%

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Now, I’ll venture that there are three possible responses to these findings: ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––1•Alarm - If your priorities are aligned with this mix, then you’ve eithergot the greatest, easiest product in the world to sell (in which case, weshould all be reading your eBook) or you’ve just realized that your marketingpractice is completely on its head. There is no middle ground here. Thenumber of respondents who put lead generation at the top of their list isexactly half that of those who most value fans and followers. Sales finishesdead last. And people complain about ROI? Can you say, “You’re fired!”?––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––2•Elation - The second possible response is one of pure delight at theopportunity you have to make a major play in your market. I don’t know aboutyou, but I’ll take leads and sales to fans and followers any day of the week.Just think of it—the majority of your competitors are asleep at the wheel! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––3•Meh - If these findings evoke neither panic nor joy, then you’re simplynot paying attention. Prepare to be displaced by your newly awakenedand/or elated competitors. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Call this Audit Point No. 1, because, as social media guru Peter Shankmanpoints out, “…if you’re using [social media] for your business, and not using itto generate revenue, either by creating additional users/buyers/customers, orsolving problems with it before it costs you revenue, then you’re doing it wrong.”

There is other information in these findings that is perhaps even moreintriguing. It’s the significant emphasis on winning fans and followers

on social properties that a company does not own or control—withthe expressed objective of driving site traffic—over those that itdoes own or control, e.g., the company’s own website. In otherwords, the ends and the means are absolutely inverted! And rightin the middle of all this, between the fans and the sales, the objec-tive of engagement as a priority is essentially lost. And this bearsout in the well-documented ever-declining levels of engagementhappening on the company pages of the open social networks.Worse, this approach to social business engagement severely com-

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Marketing expert Jeffrey

hazylett , speaking on

social media adoption, breaks

it down like this: “A third of

the businesses get it right

away; a third eventually get it;

and a third will never get it.”

promises the role, relevance, and effectiveness of the asset—the one keyplayer—that should be at the center of your social strategy: your website.

Now take a look at the top areas of corporate social marketing invest-ment noted in the same study:

Increased presence across social media platforms 70%Increased frequency of content publishing 59%More robust social marketing management 50%More robust social media monitoring 45%

Again, this is astounding. All that social media spend and you stilldon’t host your own constituency. Nor do you have the on-demand meansto harvest all the data that goes with it. You still haven’t provided a venuefor engaging directly with your greatest social asset—if not your greatestcompany asset—your advocates. And people are still ignoring your web-site. In fact, while Facebook has gained a $100B valuation through thetraffic and data you’ve help generate for them, your website’s value toyour business has been reduced to a very expensive rounding error.

Whether attributable to complacency or capitulation, the companywebsite is in trouble. In fact, it’s broken. Now, it turns out that there aremyriad reasons for this state of affairs—none of which are good—but allof which are reversible.

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“The number of

respondents who

put lead generation

at the top of their

list is exactly half

that of those who

most value fans

and followers. Sales

finishes dead last.

And people complain

about ROI?

”—• The most profitable social media strategy is one that enables a company to discover how

best to capture and engage the time and attention of its market.

—• Social media should be used to generate revenue or solve problems that might otherwiseresult in lost opportunities.

—• Businesses place disproportionate emphasis on winning fans and followers on socialproperties they don’t own or control, e.g., facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter—and do so atthe expense of the company website and the surrendering of valuable data.

—• Many “best practices” in social marketing are upside down. A chasm exists betweencurrent social media marketing strategies and revenue results, with corporate socialmarketers looking too frequently at the wrong metrics.

—• A company’s website should be the kingpin in social business strategy, instead of beingresigned to shunting prized brand advocates away to other social media sites.

key tAkeAWAyS

2 • Is your company’sWebsite on Life Support?

remember yogi Berra’s observation, “nobody goes there any-

more—it’s too crowded”? Well, with the company website, it’s

exactly like that, minus the part about being too crowded.

Nobody goes there anymore because most company websites are nothingmore than outlets for hyped-up, one-way brochureware—anathema tovisitors who are seeking meaningful engagement with trusted sources.What’s more, it’s likely that your social media policy is actually workingto reinforce your website’s irrelevance. How so? It happens every timeyou send visitors away via those “follow/friend/like us” buttons that litter

your home page. In effect, what you’re doing is sayingto your visitors, “Don’t expect to engage with us

here, on our turf. Go away, out to Facebook orTwitter instead.”

Now, how much time, effort, and expensedid you go through to attract that visitor,only to immediately suggest they leave? Do

you see something wrong with this picture?We’ll talk about ROI a little later, but here’s

where any discussion of return on the marketingand media spend begins to appear duplicitous, if not

hypocritical. How much are you spending right now on managing a web-site that is not only becoming increasingly irrelevant, but has also per-fected the art of driving traffic away? I can tell you.

According to a recent MarketingSherpa report, B2B marketing budgetallocations averaged across the 1,700-plus companies surveyed put thecompany website right behind the trade show spend—the top budgetitem. But when you combine the website budget with the allocations forpaid search and SEO, it’s actually the number one marketing spend. And

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that website sends people away. Not only does the typicalcompany website not offer visitors compelling reasons tocome, stay, and engage, it actually and overtly sends themaway. This makes no sense. In fact, it’s nuts.

In the event you’re still not convinced, the Marketing-Sherpa research also found that B2B website effectiveness(measured by quantity and quality of leads generated)showed a dramatic, nearly 20% decline from 2010 to 2011.This should come as no surprise, as the increasinglysophisticated B2B buyer—Customer 2.0—researches pur-chasing decisions online and engages with key influencersalong the way long before he engages with your salesorganization, let alone visits your website. In other words,unless you’re engaging directly with those key influencers—and their extended networks—in a sustained and mean-ingful way, you may never know that the many missedbusiness opportunities even existed! The fact that yourwebsite is out of the loop certainly doesn’t help. The oppor-tunity cost alone might easily swamp what you’re alreadypaying to maintain your conventional site.

So where do we go from here? Well, if the grand prize inyour space is the largest collection of anonymous andephemeral fans and followers in what is essentially a noisy,leaky rented hall (aka Facebook), then you’ve got a well-

greased path—and plenty of industry encouragement behind you. Juststay put. Keep doing what you’re doing. Continue to send your visitorsthere and let the Facebooks and LinkedIns of the world own all the dataand sell your traffic to your competitors. But if the prize is building aloyal and engaged constituency around your brand to yield real businessintelligence, an army of engaged brand champions, competitive advan-tage, more quality leads, steadily growing sales—and ultimately the dom-ination of your vertical—then you’ll need to follow a different pathaltogether. And that’s where we’re headed.

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Additional resources:

your Website,

obsolete and out

of the Loop

7 reasons for

rethinking your

facebook Strategy

The Secret Weapon You Already HaveI’m reminded of an old single-frame comic that depicted a medieval sol-dier engaged in fierce battle using a catapult and other archaic weapons.When an arms dealer laden with advanced semiautomatic weapons tapshim on the shoulder, he’s brushed off. “Don’t bother me now,” says the sol-dier. “Can’t you see I’ve got a war on my hands?”

Okay, we’ve all been there. So what’s the new secret weapon in the the-ater of marketing warfare? A Google+ page? Marketing automation soft-ware? Maybe sentiment measurement tools? If you’ve sought the HolyGrail in any of the myriad marketing and social media conferences andtradeshows, then you’re well acquainted with being inundated with hun-dreds of budget-busting versions of every permutation of the latest andtrendiest marketingware.

And what about the new crop of CRM tools? Will they solve yourbiggest marketing challenges? Perhaps you can relate to this trend: haveyou noticed the steady creeping of what’s traditionally been a primarysales function into the marketing domain? I’m talking about lead con-version, which, in many companies, has, in terms of priority, usurped theole “Four Ps.” This is due, in part, to the painfully waning effectivenessof conventional Web and email marketing tactics (prospects have nowpushed engagement with sales to the end of the buying process), whichin turn has opened the floodgates of new CRM and marketing automa-tion vendors seeking to take up the slack. There is no question that mar-keting automation tools bring much-welcomed rigor and measurableresults to the lead management, scoring, and nurturing processes. Butfar too many companies end up simply automating a fundamentally bro-ken process: customers, prospects, and suspects still remain isolatedand insulated from one another within the heavily compartmentalizedrooms of CRM databases. If one such captured prospect knew a fellowseeker occupied the next room, she might even try tapping and scratch-ing out messages to him through the cold, stony walls.

What’s most illuminating here is an understanding of the massive gapthat’s been exposed between social media on one end of the spectrum

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“And because vocal

brand owners are

inherently more

trustworthy, their

opinions carry

considerable weight.

What’s more, they

don’t wait to be asked.

”

and sales on the other. Remember the disparity we highlighted in themeasurement of social media ROI? Closing this gap ought to be 2012’stop priority, and one shared by marketing, sales, and business develop-ment organizations—three organizations where increasing levels of col-laboration and common points of view are absolutely essential. Desirableas automation solutions clearly are, they alone won’t get you there. Clos-ing the gap requires a more powerful force multiplier than any conven-tional CRM or automation solution can deliver. And it’s standing on thesidelines. It’s the brand advocate.

According to research published in the Harvard Business Journal, aninvestment in cultivating this strategic resource will yield a return in therange of 12X—well above and beyond paid search and other marketinginitiatives on which you’re likely spending far more.

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Not only does the typical company website not offer visitors

compelling reasons to come, stay, and engage, it actually and

overtly sends them away. This makes no sense. In fact, it’s nuts.

“”

—• By sending website visitors away to facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter, many companies’social media policies are actually working to reinforce their sites’ growing irrelevance.

—• Ironically, corporate websites are still the number one marketing spend, even whilemany companies’ social media strategies sabotage them.

—• It’s time to rethink the website’s role in leveraging brand advocates to close the gapbetween social media strategy and revenue. capturing, cultivating, and properlychanneling this essential resource will yield a substantial return.

key tAkeAWAyS

3 • the evolution of Printo Advocate Marketing

In just the way that marketing communications organizations

are shifting their focus from traditional Pr channels to influencer

outreach, organizations would do well to continue the momen-

tum of that shift to their brand advocates.

Just as journalists look to your customers tovet and add credibility to your story, you, too,should be looking to your most passionateconstituents to shape and amplify your mes-sage. Once again, numbers help put this ingreater perspective.

As pointed out by Christopher Frank and PaulMagnone in their book, Drinking from the FireHose, “According to most industry sources, the shareof very satisfied customers ranges from 15 to 35 percent ofthe market. Dissatisfied customers, on the other hand, average only 10percent. Undecided (true neutral) customers, therefore, account for 55to 75 percent of all customers.” These are your “swing voters,” and theymake up the majority of your market, and therefore, your opportunity.They’re also the very people on whom you want to turn loose your advo-cates. But just who are these people, your brand advocates?

Inside the Mind of a Brand AdvocateIf you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell, start with his groundbreaking 2000title, The Tipping Point. In it, he notes that ideas, products, messages,and behaviors spread in much the same manner as viruses. He then goeson to profile the three personas generally behind all that viral activity:connectors, mavens, and salesmen—any of which can, if aligned with your

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brand and properly managed, prove vital to your success.Briefly, connectors are people with large social networks and a knack for

bringing people together. “Their ability to span many different worlds is afunction of something intrinsic to their personality,” Gladwell writes, “somecombination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy.” Mavens,on the other hand, are the information brokers, constantly connecting peo-ple with new and interesting information. And more often than not, theyuse and share that information to help solve other people’s problems.These are the people who start “word-of-mouth epidemics” fueled by theirknowledge, social, and communication skills. Finally, salesmen are thecharismatic persuaders equipped with great negotiation skills.

Have you identified yourself in this mix? What about your team mem-bers? And more important, what about yourcustomers? Can you identify the connectors,mavens, and salesmen among them? Whenyou do, you’ll start to connect the dots on howthings really work in the socialsphere. More-over, you’ll learn who’s driving the action, andhow you can harness their energy to buildyour brand and grow your business. It shouldbe intuitively obvious that these personascan help make things happen for you in nosmall way, and any survey of research by thelikes of Deloitte, BzzAgent, Microsoft, For-rester, and others will make this even moreabundantly clear.

A review of the attributes of brand advo-cates will complete the picture on how they,versus your average customer, can be the dif-ference makers for your business. But first,why do they do it? Why do certain peopleattach their personal brands to yours? For agreat many reasons, as it turns out. For

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Why your constituents Will Join your community

have you spoken with your advocates? Do you

know specifically why they champion your brand?

figure this out, and give them more of whatever that

quality is. And keep giving it to them. When you do,

your community will grow. And then others will follow

and join your community when they learn that they

can tap the expertise of their fellow members. And

these fellow members, their peers, will provide a

tremendous resource—especially as they segment and

organize themselves in ever-increasing levels

of specialization in groups and forums within your

community. As a source for reliable information, tech-

nical support, problem solving, and expert advice such

communities are unparalleled. that your constituents

can also connect with one another, building their

respective networks, makes membership in such a

community all the more compelling.

starters, they simply believe in your product.Its benefits resonate with them in apparentlypowerful ways that are in turn amplified by theattributes of their personas as connectors,mavens, and salesmen. When that resonanceis coupled to their networks, they become amost convincing, trusted, and powerful chan-nel. And they enjoy that status. Advocates aregenuinely helpful by nature—they simply wantto share the benefits they’ve derived from theirassociation with your brand, whatever thatmight be. Moreover, they value the esteem oftheir peers; they enjoy being thought of asthought leaders, subject matter experts, andreliable sources of information about yourbrand. But let’s dig a little deeper:

Brand Advocates Wield Considerable Influence on Purchase DecisionsIs this really anything new? Long before Packard’s Alvan Macauley coinedthe iconic slogan, “Ask the man who owns one,” companies have readilydelegated brand ambassadorship to customers and others outside theircorporate walls. The difference now, of course, is the unparalleled socialreach of the man who owns one. And because vocal brand owners areinherently more trustworthy, their opinions carry considerable weight.What’s more, they don’t wait to be asked.

Brand advocates are the ones who, on their own initiative, producemassive volumes of content about your brand. Whether it’s a review onYelp, a Facebook update, a helpful forum post, a tweet, blog, case study,article, or book, advocates are as prolific as they are passionate. And theyhave audiences. Some of them big. Now imagine those audiences in theaggregate across all your brand advocates. And all along the way, theyare actively guiding their respective constituencies right down ever-col-lapsing sales funnels.

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Does the notion of giving up control of your brand

inspire fits of anxiety? I won’t recount the

clichéd reasons why you never had control of your

brand in the first place, except to say that there is a

certain Zen-like paradox in letting go in order to

achieve what you most desire. the fact is, to truly

capture your constituents, you’ve got to set them

free. nichole kelly, in her excellent Social Media

examiner post, summed this up nicely when she

wrote, “As the social media world evolves, our cus-

tomers will have a voice, whether we empower them

or not. the question is, are you willing to provide the

platform to magnify your customers’ reach or are you

going to wait for your competition to do it first?”

What’s in it for the brand advocate?Aside from enjoying the opportunities to exercise their altruistic tenden-cies, advocates are rewarded in many other ways, not the least of whichinclude ego boosts and the privilege of exclusive benefits. Simply put,your advocates want you to love them back. They want to be recognizedby the brand they love for the value they contribute to that brand. Andthe company smart enough to recognize this fundamental need indeedrewards them by bringing them into their circle, listening carefully totheir ideas about how the brand can improve its value and relevance,providing them with inside information, extending exclusive offers, ele-vating their visibility within the community, and more. When you evan-gelize, engage, recognize, reward, and empower this special group, theresult is an army of loyal and vocal champions who will do more to growyour brand than any advertising agency or marketing campaign can everhope to do.

Advocates have big expectations of the brand, tooWe again find ourselves back to basics. What is a brand if not a promisedelivered? And brother, you’d better deliver for your advocates. They’veinvested a lot of themselves, including their reputations—their socialcapital—in your brand. Consequently, it should come as no surprise thatin addition to high product expectations, they’ll also demand from youauthenticity, honesty, and transparency—the very attributes that pervadevirtually all expectations in the socialsphere.

Finding your brand advocatesSo where are these people? The obvious places to start are your customerdatabase and newsletter subscribers. And if yours is a major brand, itmay well be that your advocates have already organized themselves.You’ll find them in LinkedIn groups, various forums, and possibly evenclubs. They’re the people who are out there talking about your brand everyday. You can discover them via Google alerts, RSS feeds, real-time Twitterconversations, Technorati, SocialMention, and the many powerful social

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monitoring tools. And don’t overlook your own employees, alumni, con-tractors, consultants, and partners—and their extended networks. Thejournalists, bloggers, and analysts who track and write about your indus-try can also be champions for your brand, as might be the prospectsyou’ve captured in your CRM system. The question now is, what will youdo with them now that you’ve found them?

Here’s a hint: How about inviting them into your world for an experi-ence with your brand that will be truly engaging, relevant, and rewardingfor them—and ultimately more profitable for you? For that, of course, you’llneed a venue—a place for this special community to come together.

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The social ROI is realized only when you build a community

of believers—your brand advocates who will evangelize,

influence, and make believers of ever-larger numbers

of people who will subscribe to your brand, generate

a constituency, and grow your business.

“

”

—• The strategic resource to catalyze social media is the engaged follower, or brandadvocate. Identifying and fully engaging brand advocates are keys to growing anenthusiastic constituency and ultimately, your business. Such an engagementinitiative should be a primary focus of the marketing spend.

—• Properly engaged, your brand advocates will bring positive influence to bear on the“undecided”—the 55 to 75 percent of all your potential customers.

—• When you evangelize, engage, recognize, reward, and empower your advocates, youwill do more to grow your brand than any advertising agency or marketing campaigncould ever hope to do.

key tAkeAWAyS

4 • community as a resource the social paradigm provides an incredible opportunity to culti-

vate an engaged community around your brand and

grow your business.

Engagement is ultimately what “social” is sup-posed to bring about: engagement with the brand,engagement with each other, engagement withcontent, accessing the knowledge and expertise of

fellow community members, sharing things of inter-est. All the things people like to do in the real world—

coming together through a shared attraction, interest,value, worldview, or passion—the meeting of like-minds partici-

pating in a free exchange of information and ideas and insight and dis-covery. To the extent your brand can be the catalyst for this kind ofengagement—a single, trusted, relevant, and valuable rallying point—you’re going to build a constituency. As the leader of this constituency,you’ll have the opportunity to deepen the common ground—the sharedidea—by feeding it, involving it, inspiring it, encouraging it—all withinthe context of your brand. And that’s when you can begin to truly under-stand your customers, to listen to them in new ways, to segment themfor targeted, relevant messages, and, in the end, build a growing, loyalbase.

Your brand advocates are the catalyst for this community—the pas-sionate group of connectors, mavens, and salesmen who will be your forcemultipliers. And the people they invite to join them in the party aroundyour brand will come—and stay. This is a simple fact of the new referraleconomy: it’s all about who shares the link, the person making the con-nection, the trusted endorsement. Numerous studies have shown thatthe recipients of these links will be drawn to your turf, stay longer, andreturn more often. When this happens, passive members of an otherwise

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$

vague, fragmented, disconnected audience aretransformed into active champions who will growyour community. As the network effect of connec-tions and shared knowledge enriches it, the com-munity begins to create its own value, and yourbusiness profits—but only if you provide a trueengagement venue.

Building engagementWhat’s the arena for all this engagement? That’sa great question, considering how fragmentedand distributed the potential online touch pointsare. In finding an answer, let’s begin with somerecent research by Forrester that exposed someremarkable perceptions by marketing executives.The survey revealed that the majority—nearly2/3—of interactive marketers viewed their pri-mary website as the best option for engagement.This compares to low single digits for Facebookand Twitter, which is not surprising, as neitherplatform provides the means for meaningfulbrand engagement—that’s not what they’re for.What is surprising is that the majority of com-

pany websites are not geared for engagement, either. Aside from thefact that company websites are viewed as one of the least crediblesources of information, these same sites provide scant opportunity forengagement outside filling out a “Contact Us” form to be answered bya lead qualifier or appointment setter. Where, on these sites, do youfind robust and active forums, groups, profiles, directories, connections,conversations, events, or unique, relevant, and timely content? Youknow, the basic mechanics and elements of engagement? Perception,meet reality. Marketing myopia, it turns out, is alive and well.

No, the typical company website is not a constituent engagement plat-

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4 • coMMunIty AS A reSource

fruits of community as a resource

• growing awareness and demand

• greater customer lifetime value

• reduced customer churn and deflection

• Dramatically improved conversion rates

• Increased word of mouth—or word of mouse,

as the case may be

• unlimited source of ideas and feedback for

innovation and product improvement

• your competitors pushed down in search

rankings

• negative reviews drowned out

• news of special offers shared

• Increased return visitors

• Questions answered and problems solved

for prospects and fellow users alike

And you’ll enable them to do all this inside

and outside your community at a fraction

of the cost of traditional marketing.

form by any stretch. Just like Facebook and Twitter, that’snot what it was designed for—and certainly not what it’sbecome. As Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang pointedout in a watershed post, “The corporate website is anunbelievable collection of hyperbole, artificial branding,and pro-corporate content. As a result, trusted decisionsare being made on other locations on the internet.” Per-haps an overhaul is overdue.

“But what,” you might ask, “of the traditional Web met-rics that show my numbers going up? Don’t my improv-ing numbers disprove your claim of irrelevance?” Theanswer depends on what you consider important. Astudy by Forrester argues, “Marketing complexity meansthat traditional metrics fail to capture the whole story.Online metrics like unique visitors to a website, numberof pages viewed, and time spent per page mimic offlinemedia metrics of reach and frequency. But these meas-urements don’t indicate the engagement of an individ-ual; they fail to capture the sentiment, opinion, andaffinity a person has toward a brand as manifested inratings, reviews, comments in blogs or discussionforums, or likelihood to recommend to a friend.” In other

words, if page views, like Facebook fans, are your measure of success,then you’re still stuck back at square one—that no-man’s chasm thatlies between your social media strategy and your sales objectives, thatbig disconnect that is returning all the wrong signals about ROI. Thesocial ROI is realized only when you build a community of believers—your brand advocates who will evangelize, influence, and make believersof ever-larger numbers of people who will subscribe to your brand, gen-erate a constituency, and grow your business. This is what you want tocapture and measure. How many new brand champions did you convertthis week? What was your CPAA—the cost per acquired advocate? Whowere your referral superstars? And how are you doing relative to your

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4 • coMMunIty AS A reSource

Size Matters

community size, while important to

marketers, ranks in importance for

the member in the single digits. What

your constituents want is quality over

quantity, more signal, less noise. So

when companies ring the bells over

their increasing number of facebook

fans, your customers, frankly, couldn’t

care less. So if it’s not meaningful to

them, then why in the world is this

metric the number one reason compa-

nies use social media—especially when

engagement in the generic open social

networks is in free fall and brands fail

to derive value from those so-called

relationships anyway? Isn’t it time you

did much better for your constituents—

and your business?

competitors—that sleeping majority that still thinks the number ofFacebook fans and page views are the key performance indicators?

When you learn and track the metrics that actually matter to your busi-ness, you’ll immediately shift more of your marketing spend to theengagement initiative, because when you do, as a report by McKinseyshows, your revenues will increase as much as 20%. You can do that whenyou 1) increase the traffic to your site; 2) allow those visitors to engagewith your advocates who reside there; and 3) realize the conversion per-formance that will far outstrip the conventional lead generation tacticsyou’re likely employing now. And not only will you do it all with lessbudget, you’ll also gain a treasure trove of data you can use in ways thatwill really light up your operations—you know, all that data you’ve beenfreely generating for the likes of Facebook to help them build a companywith a market cap of $100B (There should be no doubt, by now, that com-munity is the new currency.)

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4 • coMMunIty AS A reSource

—• The current social milieu provides a remarkable opportunity to cultivate an engagedcommunity around your brand, neutralizing many marketing challenges and growingyour business.

—• recent forrester research revealed that 2/3 of the interactive marketers surveyed viewtheir primary website as the best option for engagement with constituents; however,the majority of company websites aren’t geared for engagement.

—• Social roI is only realized when you build a community of believers and capture theinvaluable data associated with it.

key tAkeAWAyS

The ROI is realized time and time again when you are able to

make strategic sense of all that data, cast it in the context of

your ongoing business pursuits, and profitably exploit it.

“”

5 • It’s the Data, Stupid We’ve spent an awful lot of time talking about advocates,

engagement, creating a constituency—in other words, the “rela-

tionship thing.” Some executives might think of relationships as

soft, when what’s really needed to drive business is hard data.

One blogger wrote, “I always laugh when people say that social network-ing is about relationships. Maybe it was about relationships way back

when but now relationships are just a happy by-product. Social net-working is about data. The data a company gleans from your con-

versations, your stated interests, the content you writeabout. And because everyone is focused on relationships—forfun or profit—many [people] miss out on the data that canhelp them make deals.”

Well, okay. But what we’re talking about here is data aboutthe relationships among the people who will ultimately drive

your business. The data that will unleash actionable wisdom fromyour company’s constituents. Data about the relationship between

your brand and your market, relationships among your channel partners,the relationships among and between your employees, alumni, contrac-tors, and other stakeholders and your company. Relationships that, whenproperly connected, lead to new business, a great new hire, the technol-ogy partner that will complete your solution, the product insight thatwill provide that critical point of differentiation.

When you build an engaged community around your brand, the richstorehouse of data that results will allow you to mine, discover, and pres-ent the remarkable insights it contains—on demand. The ROI is realizedtime and time again when you are able to make strategic sense of allthat data, cast it in the context of your ongoing business pursuits, andprofitably exploit it. In other words, unlock, visualize, and amplify theoperational wisdom your community can bring to your marketing, talent

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5 • It’S the DAtA

acquisition, and business development efforts. Thereare answers in the data—particularly when the data isrelated to your company’s network of constituents andother stakeholders across industries, companies, andgeographies who can bring their collective influence tobear in helping you meet your goals.

This is why it is imperative to leverage an approachto social business that lets you captivate your most passionate con-stituents—and at the same time, give you a foot in the door where youwant to do business. When your contacts and constituents come togetherinside your own community, you cultivate profound and trustworthy rela-tionships that help you recruit talent, uncover exciting new businessopportunities, and amplify your message. Uncovering the hidden connec-tions between and among them—that’s the key. Moreover, your ability toknow what that data is saying about all those connections will distinguishyou from your competitors who are just starting to realize its value. Whenyou own the community, you’ll be able to analyze profile data, segmentyour community to target specific audiences for the specific insights youseek, incorporate the “voice of the customer” via your own, captive, on-demand focus group, leverage your community’s social media channels toextend market reach, and integrate community-based social feedback intothe data stream.

So while you’re out there winning fans and followers, what kind of dataare you leaving on the table or in the hands of companies like Facebookor LinkedIn? What rich data are you simply not harvesting to propel yourbusiness far ahead of your competitors?

No question, market research can be expensive. The cost of not conduct-ing research can be even greater. But another expense associated withmarket research surveys goes completely unnoticed. It’s the cost of missingthe true voice of the customer. Many who perform research are really onlyseeking validation of their own ideas or biases—which, of course, skews thequestions asked, or worse, distorts what the data is really saying. InGroundswell, an essential resource for understanding social technologies,

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5 • It’S the DAtA

Because marketing communications is

now a two-way street, it has also

become a new fountainhead for business

intelligence, product insights, talent

acquisition, prospect nurturing, and more.

authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff explain, “Designed carefully enough,these surveys will answer any question you can think up. But they can’t tellyou what you never thought to ask. And what you never thought to askmight be the most important question for your business.”

Research in the social milieu requires a much more interactive andpersonal way of listening and engaging. Because it’s derived from a socialsource doesn’t mean the data are all qualitative, either. Through suchmethodologies as Quality Function Deployment (QFD), qualitative datacan be transmuted into some of the most potent quantitative data youcan hope to produce. And the results go much further than conventionalresearch methodologies when that data is applied in a rigorous approachto innovation. You can learn more about this methodology here, but thepoint to be made, to pick up our Groundswell thread, is that “a privatecommunity is like a continuously running, huge, engaged focus group—anatural interaction in a setting where you can listen in.”

Why rent a focus group when you can have your own for a fraction ofthe cost—and derive vastly more value in the bargain, and do so ondemand? Actionable data is one of the most valuable outputs of “com-munity as a resource,” and it will yield insights your competitors can onlyimagine. What’s more, it will also provide a groundswell of opportunityfor telling your company’s story in unique, convincing, and compellingways by seeding and sourcing the content your communications organi-zation will exploit to great effect.

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5 • It’S the DAtA

—• The proper application of social networking yields data. When you build an engagedcommunity around your brand, the rich storehouse of data that results will allow youto mine, discover, and exploit the remarkable insights it contains—on-demand.

—• Actionable data is one of the most valuable outputs of “community as a resource”and it will produce insights your competitors can only hope to realize.

key tAkeAWAyS

“It’s marketing

by attraction.

And attraction

leads to attention;

attention gives

way to engagement;

engagement fosters

advocacy; advocacy

yields content;

and so the cycle

goes, the ultimate

outcome of which is

highly-converting

sales leads.

”

6 • content Marketing–a vitalkey to Attracting andengaging your Market

Brian halligan, in his book Inbound Marketing, observed, “the

people who win really big on the Web are the media/content

companies…” Well, there’s your first clue: start thinking like

a publishing company!

But guess what? Every company is now already a mediacompany. If you’re in business and you’re not publishing,then you’re not winning advocates or building a con-stituency. To really drive the point, as Halligan goes onto say, “You might consider making your next full-timemarketing hire be a writer/journalist, rather than a careermarketer.” What?! No one told you in business school thatto be a successful marketer you were also going to have tobecome a publisher?

Why all this emphasis on content? Well, in addition to the invitationsby your advocates, content will be the primary attractant of people toyour community. And when great, relevant, informative, and useful con-tent is what attracts them, they’ll stay longer than if they’ve come simplyfor discounts. As a result, you’ll have more opportunities for engagement,to gain insight, promote your thought leadership, and cultivate newadvocates.

Of course, we don’t want to lose sight of our primary directive: tyingall social activity directly to sales and revenue objectives. To this end,consider the heavy lifting that content marketing can do in making yoursales process more efficient and effective. As prospects consume yourcompany’s content, they advance themselves through the sales funnel.By the time they do contact your sales organization, they are already

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6 • content MArketIng

quite qualified—and educated.Beyond this, content marketing works to position

your company in the mind of prospects, repositionsyour competitors, and brings focus to attributes ofyour company and your products you want most tocommunicate. Consequently, content marketing isone of the leading trends in marketing practice, tak-ing its cue from the role content plays in driving theWeb generally. But what, exactly, is it?

A concise definition, courtesy of the Content Mar-keting Institute, will help: “Content marketing is amarketing technique of creating and distributingrelevant and valuable content to attract, acquire,and engage a clearly defined and understood targetaudience—with the objective of driving profitablecustomer action.”

I’ve italicized the last part of this definition toonce again emphasize the whole point of the socialbusiness initiative. Everything you do in the socialspace must be specifically, consciously, and delib-erately oriented to drive sales. To this end, contentplays a vital role as a mechanism for attracting and

engaging prospects, advocates, and other stakeholders.Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb provides an additional perspective on

the definition: “Content marketing is any marketing message for whichthere is no media buy.” I like this one, too. Marketers have always workedwith three types of media—paid, earned, and owned—and the rise of thelatter, via content marketing, is redefining that traditional mix, amplify-ing the paid and enabling the earned.

However you define it, the content you create, commission, and/orcurate for your engagement venue must foster the objective of audienceinvolvement, or to put it more broadly, the “user experience.” To thisend, and putting content in an even larger and more insightful context,

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6 • content MArketIng

valuable content Marketing resources

BookS:

• content Marketing,

by rebecca Lieb

• Managing content

Marketing, by Joe

Pulizzi and robert rose

Internet:

• your kick-Start guide to engaging content

• 7 Ways to Bring your community into the

content creation Process

Bob Knorpp, writing in AdAge, delivers one of the fewtruly cogent and holistic views of the whole affair—the social Web, engagement, and the content thathelps drive it all—and with a much-needed remedialtwist. “We create endless blog posts and tweets andvideos,” he says, “to fulfill our perceived need for con-tent and call it our social-media strategy. Trouble isit’s not really a social strategy, as much as a search-engine-optimization strategy. We aren’t necessarilyengaging an audience with this ‘content.’ All we aredoing is enticing them to watch and maybe share alink. So in the end the value of most ‘content strate-gies’ is to create inbound link traffic, which is reallySEO. But delving deeper, creating content oftenmeans negating the one thing that the Web isuniquely qualified to deliver, which is a connected andengaging user experience.”

That’s a big difference. So big, in fact, that Knorppsuggests we start looking at the Web in an entirelynew way. And I agree. Content marketing is not apush strategy. It’s about people “tuning in” and par-ticipating within a meaningful context, as opposedto being simply interrupted. It’s marketing by attrac-

tion. And attraction leads to attention; attention gives way to engage-ment; engagement fosters advocacy; advocacy yields content; and sothe cycle goes, the ultimate outcome of which is highly-convertingsales leads.

Now, while Knorpp makes the distinction between the objectives ofcontent that enhances a user experience and content that drives linktraffic, it is certainly worth noting that SEO does benefit tremendouslyfrom content programs, and that such programs will, in fact, producesignificant results for that essential part of the equation. And SEOmatters not only because placement in the organic results are free,

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6 • content MArketIng

What a content MarketingStrategy Will Do for your Business

• Put control of the message

in your hands

• Allow you to address your

market directly

• yield a significant increase in

response to paid media when the

call-to-action is owned media

• Drive brand awareness

• generate leads

• nurture those leads

• Provide ongoing value to your

prospects

• Build traffic

• Promote your thought leadership

• foster brand loyalty

• equip your advocates with useful

material they can—and will—share

but according to MarketingSherpa, searchers click on organic resultswith much greater frequency than they do the paid results (75% to25%).

Even so, it’s time to start thinking about SEO in a completely differ-ent way. For example, when someone performs an online search, it’slikely that they’re seeking an answer to a question. Think “digital Q&A.”Now here’s a question for you: Can you anticipate a prospect’s ques-tions? If so, you’ve got a powerful tool that will not only contribute toyour content stream, but also help drive your company to the top ofthe search results.

When your content is of intrinsic value to your market, is instructional,answers a question, helps produce a desired business outcome, or is oth-erwise actionable, you improve your rank-worthiness—and social rele-vance—in no small way.

Content CurationAnother important content resource is content curation. Curata founderPawan Deshpande describes it this way:

“The definition that I like the best is the following one by Rohit Bhargava

of Ogilvy: ‘A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups,

organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific

issue online.’”

As it turns out, content curation is inspired by real-world curationperformed by museum curators. Deshpande continues, “A museum cura-tor finds masterpieces from around the world relevant to a theme ofinterest. Then the curator organizes the artwork into different exhibits,decides in what order and how to juxtapose those pieces of artwork,annotates the paintings with descriptions, and lastly shares them to abroader audience. Your role as a content curator is similar. By selec-tively finding, creating, organizing, and sharing content online on aspecific topic, you are creating a resource that is greater than the sumof its parts.”

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6 • content MArketIng

Marketers benefit from content curation by being able to provide asteady, reliable, and continuous stream of content without necessarilycreating all of it themselves (the Curata platform automates much of theprocess). “On the flipside,” Deshpande explains, “information consumersgreatly appreciate this as well. Rather than wading through the flood ofcontent online, they can get the most relevant content in one spot. More-over, content curation is a proven strategy in the publishing world—justlook at the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report. With marketers takingon the role of publishers, they are also increasingly becoming curatorsas well.”

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6 • content MArketIng

—• If you’re in business and not publishing content, then you’re not winning advocates

or building a constituency.

—• content advances your prospects through the sales funnel.

—• relevant, informative, and useful content will be the primary attractant of people to

your community—particularly when it fosters audience involvement or enhances the

user experience.

—• content marketing leads to engagement, which in turn promotes advocacy.

—• everything you do in the social space must be specifically, consciously, and deliberately

oriented to drive sales.

key tAkeAWAyS

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6 • content MArketIng

While a comprehensive how-to on content marketing is beyond our scope,

a few useful guidelines here will help prime your content production pump.

In any event, do not oversell your product—trust your prospects to connect the

dots. Instead, put yourself in the shoes of your prospects. think about the kinds of

content that will provide practical value as they navigate the myriad details of a

purchase decision. Be the go-to source in your space with content through which

you might:

• Provide an independent analysis of a published research report

• Deliver a new insight on a regulatory issue affecting your industry

• Author a guide on the best practices in your space

• Offer a unique observation about your market dynamics

• Identify a significant problem in your industry and offer a solution

• Pose a round table question to spark a discussion

• Curate a collection of blog comments to expose a fallacy or support a point of view

• Write a book review, identifying a few key points with which you agree or disagree

• Interview the thought leaders in your space

• Surprise with results of research or polls that might provide counterintuitive

perspectives

• Involve your customers to describe new, interesting, or even wacky applications

of your product

• Establish a blog—and promote your thought leadership

And by all means, don’t be shy about expressing a point of view—it’s what will differ-

entiate your voice and inspire, if not provoke, valuable, engaging discussion. In

terms of templates, think “numbered lists”—these practically write themselves. And

remember, interesting case studies, white papers, and reports are always in

demand. Podcasts, Webinars, and videos count as content, too. And because volume

also matters, discover, encourage, and reward the writers within your own walls.

then promote all that content via the many syndication channels, rSS feeds, email,

social media, and other outlets. And if your content is newsworthy, issue a press

release! In the process, you’ll create unique opportunities for substantive engage-

ment, as well as harvest a wealth of inbound links that will drive not only your rank-

ing, but your credibility, too.

7 • conclusion“Business as usual” has clearly entered a new era. In this era,

there are new rules and there are old rules with new twists.

Ultimately, however, all the rules boil down to basic human dynamics—experiences inseparable from emotions and ideas, aspirations andendeavors, intentions and ambitions, longings and dreams. And whenthese dynamics are comprehended in the experience of your brand, thecorresponding resonance gets amplified across the connected networks.Communities form organically when people who hold certain values, pas-sions, and world views come together to share their particular enthusi-asms. From Harley Davidson to Apple to Martin Guitars, many brands areunique in the ways they symbolize and, in fact, embody those passions—and consequently, exude irresistible attraction.

Your success in the new era will be determined in no small way byyour strategic understanding of these dynamics. And when you drawpeople into the community of your brand, you’ll not only catch light-ning in a bottle, but also gain a decisive competitive advantage.

But first, you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that the old mod-els don’t play in the new era. Attention and advocacy, affinity and

engagement, a community of connected constituents—these are the newforms of currency that will transform a blip on the attention dashboards ofyour market into a steady signal, growing in amplitude. Your current con-ventional website won’t do this for you. The open social networks won’t dothis for you. Email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM systemswon’t do this for you. These are all the things your competitors are doing,and their returns are steadily diminishing. Will you continue to do the same?

Brian Solis, in his book, The End of Business as Usual, concludes withthis advice: “Benchmark not just against the competition, but againstthe opportunity, as it is unique to you and your business.” That’s leader-ship. Not only in your company, but in your market.

In this book, I’ve mapped out the path to advancing your business inthe new social era. Following that path needn’t be difficult or expensive.

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7 • concLuSIon

In fact, the approach described here will lower your overall mar-keting spend while simultaneously increasing its return. The bot-tom line is this: when people are at the heart of all you do, theobjectives and strategies will follow. The application of technol-ogy—the last thing to consider in this mix—while it will certainlyhelp you realize your goals, can succeed only when your businessis completely oriented to, and aligned with, people priorities. Thecompanies that do this will win big. It’s only natural.

So start with addressing what’s broken. Look to your con-stituents to guide your plans. Equip your advocates to championyour brand in powerful ways. And most importantly, provide thecentral online venue where all this magic can happen—for yourconstituents and your business—and discover the power of “com-munity as a resource” in the process.

The transformative effect of this approach is brought home byMarketing Interactions CEO Ardath Albee as she writes, “…thebiggest game changer of all may be the ability for a company tocreate, own, or sponsor online communities and websites that

facilitate the publishing of thought leadership content to help their tar-get audiences deal with business priorities…”

It’s time, indeed, to change the game.

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7 • concLuSIon

Are you measuring your

LoI – Losses on Inaction?

According to recent

research by MarketingSh-

erpa, even the most effective

B2B marketing tactics, such as

website design, Seo, and email

marketing saw up to a 50%

decline in overall effective-

ness from the previous year.

Winning new prospects

requires new approaches to

marketing that turn what have

become barriers into bridges.

Did you find this eBook to be helpful? If so, I encourage you to share it with yourcolleagues inside and outside your organization. In any event, I’d love to hear your thoughts—pleaseleave a comment, tweet a message, post a link. If you’d like to discuss these ideas personally, I wel-come your contact: john@conenza.com

—• your success in the new social era will be determined in no small way by your strategicunderstanding of basic human dynamics.

—• Attraction and advocacy, affinity and engagement, a community of connectedconstituents—these are the new forms of currency.

—• collapsing and converging the disjointed means and ends of your website and socialmedia strategies into a coherent “community as a resource” initiative will changethe game in your market.

key tAkeAWAyS

About the AuthorJohn Schroeter is Director of Marketing at conenza, where his

singular mission is to inspire organizations of all kinds to envi-

sion and embrace a new set of best practices in social media mar-

keting that will actually help them achieve their objectives.

His twenty-five years in technology, marketing, and publishing spans semi-conductor and RFID communications to consumer magazines andadvanced automotive technologies. He has held senior marketing man-agement posts at Impinj (RFID), UTMC (Military & Aerospace), SeattleSilicon (custom chip design), and Fairchild Semiconductor. Highlightsinclude:

• The seminal book, Surviving the ASIC Experience [Prentice Hall], whichput technology companies on the fast-track to designing new productsin revolutionary ways with application-specific integrated circuits(ASICs).

• His patents-pending work in defining RFID-based solutions for thepharmaceutical industry was recognized with a Frost & Sullivan “Inno-vation of the Year” award.

• In the early '90s, Schroeter launched, managed,and sold a successful new category in con-sumer periodicals when he was among thefirst to package an audio CD with a news-stand magazine.

• Widely published in many spaces, he alsoauthored the popular book, Between theStrings—the Secret Lives of Guitars,with introduction by BB King.

You can contact him at:john@conenza.com

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ShAre thIS eBook

ABout the Author

What’s the next indispensable social network for your business?

Make it your company website.Your online presence is vital to the way your business engages

its market and enables its constituents to interact.

Isn’t it time you took control of it?

The enterprise-proven Conenza platform

is the key to engaging, retaining, and inspiring your

constituents in meaningful and profitable ways. Our social

business solutions for Marketing Communications, Business Development,

and Talent Acquisition will help you gain control of your social traffic so that you

can achieve your objectives, and in the bargain, restore your website’s market relevance.

Contact Conenza for a FREE ASSESSMENT of the opportunities you’ve got right now to

leverage "community as a resource" and magnify both your brand and your bottom line.

conenza, Inc. • 810 Third Ave., Suite 220, Seattle, WA 98104 • 206.792.4247 • info@conenza.com

www.conenza.com