Page 78 - Social Media Marketing

chapter 3: BUILD A SOCIAL BUSINESS ■
56 traveler’s community can be built.
In Search of a Higher Calling
stakeholder base and as well within the firm or organization itself. After all, if nar-
rowly defined business interests take center stage, if the social interaction is built purely
around business objectives, then what will the customers of that business find useful?
What’s in it for them?
Further, how will the employees of that business rally around the needs of your
customers? At Southwest Airlines, employees are bound together in service of the cus-
tomer, through a passionate belief for the freedom to fly being a reality for anyone.
So much so that when times are tough or situations demand it, the employees don the
personas of “Freedom Fighters” and literally go to work on behalf of preserving the
“right to fly” for their customers. As Freedom Fighters, they keep the characteristic
Southwest energy up: This translates directly into the positive conversations about this
aspect of Southwest Airlines found on the Social Web. Being a Freedom Fighter is the
kind of powerful ideal that unites businesses and customers and the kind of passion—
for travel, exploration, or the ability to go out and conquer new markets as a business
executive—that powers Southwest. It’s the kind of passion around which a business
Build a Purpose-Driven Business
If you’re interested in how Southwest Airlines built its legendary service teams, you’ll find the
complete story in “It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For,” by GSD&M’s Roy Spence and
Haley Rushing. If a business fails to connect to its customers through their passions and points of
interest, it cannot hope to engage them in ways that lead to collaboration.
While the preceding section used community formation as an example, the
social business summary point is this: By understanding the passions, lifestyles, and
causes that are relevant to your customers, you can identify the best social pathways
through which to build connections to your product, brand, or service. This is where
a number of otherwise well-intentioned efforts go wrong: Attempting to build a com-
munity around a brand or product will often fail as participation is driven primarily by
advertising expenditure and (costly) promotions rather than by organic interest gener-
ated by and between the participants themselves.
The surest way to avoid this trap is to appeal to passion, lifestyle, or cause—in other
words, to anchor your initiatives in something larger than your brand, product, or
service: Appeal to a “higher calling,” in a manner of speaking, one that is carefully
selected to both attract the people you want to associate with and to provide a natural
home or connection to your brand, product, or service.