“We” – the new “me”? OR, Virtual Communities – The new Social Paradigm
Having always looked at Social media as an aid to research rather than a medium I personally participated in, to a certain extent there was always a distance in my viewing of it.
This changed when I finally persuaded myself to enroll in facebook (ofcourse this move got partially foiled since my 70 year old mom very soon followed me, and now keeps commenting on all my “beer loving” status updates with things like – yes, it makes u fat! Yes, it increases your cholesterol!) From being only a sporadic participant in the beginning, I have now morphed to it now becoming almost an all consuming passion – and the big reason is this virtual community of lovers of a certain period and genre of music. This group is a) ever increasing, b) highly interactive and c) very demanding (they play many games and have quizzes, and now, having established expertise of sorts, if I cannot participate in one of them, due to, say, a meeting, I get messages/ pokes and all other demands for participation!) What was even more interesting to me was an actual meet and greet the group conducted in my city last weekend which was attended by almost a 1000 people!!!
Interestingly, this ties in with a lot of work EmPower Research is doing on virtual communities/ advocacy and influence identification in social media. One of the interesting trends as an example is this thing called “Mass Mingling” which is precisely what I am experiencing – an online community propagating physical socialization (marriages as an outcome of online dating is a good example here). This is also interesting and kind of counter intuitive, because the need for self expression as an individual is what gave rise to the facebook phenomenon (after all who otherwise was interested in inane “status” messages?) Also facebook itself started with, and succeeded at being a medium for connecting with people you knew/ know. But, interestingly enough, it has now brought together hitherto strangers that are bound by mutual interests.
This is what is fuelling companies’ interest in what they call community marketing – allied to the digital revolution forcing them to “go where the audience is” not “bring the audience to where I am”. Community marketing is still in the nascent stage for brands – in most cases communities, fuelled by the topic/ subject area/ interest are more a sharing/ entertainment option rather than a brand endorsement/ negation one. Having said that, for mass brands, the opinions and behaviors of participants in communities is hugely insightful in crafting newer media plans. EmPower Research has specialized in tracking communities of interest for an identified target segment, and advising organizations on outreach plans basis analysis of opinions seen in those communities.
This tactic is of interest to many domains – one can see it applied to the pharma world as an example (for rare diseases, it is probably the biggest source of patient insights for pharma companies since patient identification is so challenging), to the CPG world interested as an example in moms of various kinds (see also EmPowerResearch’s mom index), to the tech world (monitoring buzz from user groups, community forums and discussion boards has proved really helpful for many EmPower research clients – and can be used to clarify doubts of users/ generate prospect leads/ outreach to amplifiers/ even poach from dissatisfied competitor clients), the services world (a financial services client of EmPower has used communities to “ignite word of mouth” for themselves)…you name it, we can use it!…
Back to me and my facebook group – I just received a request from 2 of them to become my “friends” – so my social circle is truly diversifying in a manner totally contrary to my personality – and, willy nilly, I am being forced out of my researcher/ analysis mode, to an active participant/ “consumer” mode! This does lead me to believe, that, privacy concerns/ individualism/ personalization/ customization/ nuclear families/ “me time” and other associated concepts aside, what Darwin and his breed taught us is forever true – Man is a Social Animal indeed!
- By Sangita Joshi
