Posted in Internet Marketing Strategy	April 17, 2007

Making a meaningful connection with your audience.

It's day two of the Web 2.0 Expo, and I thought I'd share a session I attended called "Community Evangelism: Tools and Techniques" with Anil Dash and Deborah Schultz from SixApart. I learned about the importance of having an official evangelist for your company, most importantly, instilling the Web 2.0 networking effect of community evangelism.

You can assign bar charts to it all you want, but being an evangelist is really about relationships—building your presence on the Web, interacting with the online community, and social networking. It's about being the face of your company or product and communicating with your users and potential users, because they're already talking about you.

Your Biggest Critic and Your Biggest Fan

The evangelist role means being a foil for the company, after all, who wants someone who can't see where improvement is needed? The evangelist should also be:

• Your customers' biggest advocate - knowing what your customers want and wanting to get it for them.
• A listener and an educator - interacting with them in their natural habitats (blogs, forums, etc.) and becoming a native to their world.
• Cross-functional - as a juggler of sorts, the evangelist has to feel confident and empowered across your company. They should be familiar with all aspects of what makes your company tick: customer service, products, development, etc.
• A partial geek - being a total geek may cause problems, but they should know how to use the tools, translate between human and machine, and as a partial geek, will tread lightly, not forcibly.
• A catalyst - wanting to connect and forge relationships.
• Approachable - no egos allowed! They should be able to detach themselves from their role in the business and be able to connect to customers as peers, not as experts or marketers.
• Intuitive - they need to have a genuine interest in your business development and should be inline with the company's bigger goals.

The Keys to Being an Evangelist

• Be aware - see what people are talking about and know what's going on in the world.
• Don't be thoughtless - nobody needs more email. Don't send thoughtless and inappropriate emails just because the tool is encouraging.
• Think about yourself - you are a human who understands how people react. Before sending an email or responding to a customer service call (even if unpleasant), think about what would impress you.
• Make it meaningful - you may not be able to invoke nostalgia like a song from someone's childhood or the smell of someone's perfume, but you should aspire to do it anyhow. Make people remember you, your website, and the good experience they have interacting with both.
• Become invested - if you get a bad article written about you, or you get an unpleasant comment on your blog, don't ignore it. Respond. Let your customers know you value their feedback and ask them about suggestions they have. Invite them to take part in improving their experience. A little recognition goes a long way.

Do's and Dont's of the Game

Pick and choose pieces that work for you. Starting a myspace profile may not make a difference to your audience if your audience is 40-65 year old CEOs, but it may be very beneficial if you publish a magazine for teens, or technology.

• Do choose a platform that is beneficial to your users.
• Don't choose one just because you can.
• Do go out into the blogosphere, leave comments and make people remember your name.
• Don't try to sell your product, bloggers can see right through it.
• Do try to join as many communities, forums, etc. as you can.
• Don't join ones that aren't appropriate, if you aren't doing something honest for that group of users, don't do it.

Check out the Evangelist Toolbox I've made for you to get you started.

That’s it for day two of the Web 2.0 Expo, but I still have two days left, so please leave me with any comments or questions you have about Web 2.0 and I’ll do my best to find out for you.

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