Brand Community, Communities, and Social Network Analysis

Posted by John Schneider...

Considering that the next Aims meeting is going to be on Communities. I thought that this information from Gerry Mcgovern might be of interest to many.

His company developed a ten stage process for developing and building a brand community. Here are the ten steps:
1. Content Building
2. Informing
3. Interaction
4. Profiling and traffic analysis
5. Generating advertising
6. Centralization and loacalization
7. Transactions ( non secure payment)
8. Ecommerce and fulfillment
9. Online dynamic trafficking and customization
10 Online brand community

I am not in total agreement with this ten stage process but it is good starting point for discussion. Part of the Informing stage should be to do a good job at Brand seeding. More about Brand seeding here.

FOR those of you interested in exploring the concept of Brand community there is a good Wiki on this topic as well.

Mind you if you want to learn more about Brand community it might help as well to read Don Tapscotts new book Wikinomics.

I read the book and was quite impressed. I was a little disappointed that he didn'€™t discuss more about Network Theory.

Then there is Social network analysis which views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. This definition from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

So if you are going to learn about communities then you should learn about complex networks and Social network analysis in your attempt to unearth the nature of the community or network that you are dealing with. Hope this helps those of you who are new to the topic of Communities and  Brand Communities.

Comments

[Stephen Bush]

John, I read your recent post and clicked through to the links you provided. I agree with your assessment of Jerry McGovern's Ten Steps and a lot of them seem to be useful. I was curious about your comment on Don Tapscott's "Wikinomics" and Network Theory. To me, when I clicked the link it appeared to be very mathematical. I am in the process of reading the Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg's "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?" and find it quite good. Once I've finished this is there a less theoretical Networking book you would suggest as a follow up or should I try Wikinomics?