Recently I became fascinated by Arnold Albert Gore’s life. Remember Albert Gore? He is popularly known as Al Gore and he was two- term vice President of the powerful nation on the earth-United States of America. I was thrilled to see a brand that knew fame, honour, power, popularity but which disallowed temporary setback to signal the death/destroy his brand. In 2000, Al Gore lost the Presidential election everyone thought he would win to G.W Bush.

Everyone thought the power of incumbency would work to his advantage but at last the election went the other way. But for Al Gore, a temporary setback could not be allowed to stop a great brand that dumped temporary failure to pursue a bigger vision he found in global warming.

Al Gore repositioned as a leading voice in this regard. He used all his contacts, tools, friends, influence as well as online communication tools to start a crusade which he took to TED conference, used perfectly all his offline relationships to help project a voice(about global warming) in both secular and religious circles. Through his multi various activities, Al Gore pumped his energy into creating awareness and became a leading energy that sparks the light about the influence of global warming on human existence. The submit of Al Gore’ efforts was his ability to organize Live Earth, a seven-continent twenty four hour concert which eventually got him global recognition as Nobel prize winner.

Al Gore’s brand taught us a great lesson in persistence, repositioning, vibrancy and a great come back. Al Gore was a known brand back then in 2000 and many would have thought that was enough. But Al Gore demonstrated a strong lesson for those of us who are not global brands yet but are grappling with seemingly insignificant failure which is now allowed to deter us from moving ahead to achieve better deal.

 Al Gore’s brand taught us to be resilience, focused as well as sociable. He could not achieve that all alone without the support of others. He blended well with both Republicans and Democrats. If Al Gore’s brand had burnt bridges because he felt Americans did not vote him into office as their number one citizen in 2000(by allowing root of bitterness to spring up in him), he would have become a total failure with no great history we are reading today.

If Dan Schawbels of this world allowed seventy rejections to dump the vision of passionately pursing a publishing cause that made the book one of the bestselling books in Amazon today, can we have anything to refer to today? My appeal, let your brand rise from ashes of failure, insignificance to stardom and prominence by giving it all it takes. There are no guarantees that the road will easy but there is an assured hope that your brand has greater chances of success if you will gather the ruminants. Let me hear from you.

 Promo

For those who live in Nigeria, we are organizing a day networking and knowledge sharing session on August 10, 2010 with the theme: Corporate Branding 2.0. Because internet has reshaped how branding is done and the level at which rumour, myths travel online, brands need to engage Branding 2.0 now. It will be great if you can attend. For participation details, please send mail to info@michaelsageng.com or call 07029778785

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As tight as my schedules are, I have learnt to create time for them, took them one- on -one session and load them with enough materials they will need to stand alone. Sometimes that appears a mere waste of time but recently I was doing a study on social and cultural capital and this gave me a new perspective. While trying to help, I discovered my brand is becoming visible to future managers who will hold position of authority in the industry. As we know visibility and reputation affect the decision making process and at the end of the day they influence behaviours.

It is a privilege to have knowledge to share. I read recently also that ‘When an individual has a lot of people in his/her life who are willing to support him and his ideas, people who want to hear what he has to say and who are interested in talking to him and talking about him, such  an individual has an incredible gift that is called social capital’

Social capital also refers to both network of relationships, you have and have access to. French sociologist Pieitrre Bourdieu also defined social capital as ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognitions’. Funding this account so that you can draw on it later means that you are making connection, building bridges, reaching out to people with aim of giving, staying in touch always with either your strong or weak ties.

Weak ties are those you meet in occasions, online but there is no such bond but you are willing to stretch yourself to those that matter. Technology, social software and networking sites can help us to do this well. You do not need to visit or having to call them every day. But we may need to acknowledge that it is not how many we have that count but how you make use of them.

As good as social capital is, it has limitations. So what takes your brand from here is cultural capital. Cultural capital rests on depth of influence. A great connection or network without strong influence will not help much. Cultural capital encompasses person’s knowledge, experience, connection to the extent, amount of influence a brand has in a society or tribe.

What this meant is that with all the social connection, if the brand has no expertise, experience, knowledge among other great features, it may not wield influence that will guarantee enough capital that it will need to exchange for other tangible or intangible values. The import of the above is while trying to build connection, network among other ingredients that will help build brand’s social capital, the depth of the value of such capital can be affected when the brand lacks expertise, experience and knowledge that will add up to brand’s depth of influence on the social network that produces the cultural capital.

In closing, every brand needs to start from somewhere. Start building your social capital while you are still building your cultural capital. If you have to wait until all the features of Cultural capital are in place before building social capital it may be late. Research has shown that Social capital plus Cultural capital will always guarantee heavy financial capital. Someone actually concluded that Social capital and Cultural capital are greater than financial capital. Whether that is true I cannot draw conclusion here. But what do you think?

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1. Brands: how to differentiate your social media efforts
2. Brands:How to/profiting from an engaged community
3. Social media and Nigeria’s market/brands

Many-brand owners as well as community leaders, wonder why their online communities do not enjoy active participation. Online community like brands needs a lot of emotional interactions to promote active members’ involvement.

Online community aim must rest on a regular provision, satisfaction of building common interest that endears community member to each other. Not that alone, it must promote community interaction, relationship building. Online community that will thrive must share generously information and experiences that strengthens individual and group cohesiveness. Online community that do something unique will always build a loyal community that help spread word of mouth and encourages strong ties.. Interestingly another writer has said that in today internet savvy world, word of mouth is now world of mouth. Another thought that still appeals to me here is that of chad Levit when he says ‘What is clear is that those who do something different and create compelling content that is easy to distribute, find opportunities where others find closed doors’.

In my understanding and experience, building a strong community takes time, dedication, commitment. When it is a corporate community building one is trying to build, there are features that need to be on the corporate website that can enhance active participation. These features include blogs, chat room, discussion groups etc. For personal website, which is often refers to as blog, there should be plethora engagement tools like comment sections, sharing tools like Digg, del.icio.us, RSS among others. These engagement tools promote contribution, interaction among community members.

The followings are some of the major factors that will promote active participation, contribution as well as connection among brand’s community members.

1. Reliability, Truthfulness: This is also known as dependability and trust of the information n the community. More importantly, this will encourage community to openly share and connect.

2. Dedication: The dedication of the community owner, builder will have to be tested. People do not care how much you know but how much you care still holds water. Sharing and posting once in three month content will not help active participation. Most highly populated, active communities have something everyday or at most thrice a week

3. Value/benefits: What is the value of the community? Does the community promote global interaction? Will it cause a positive change of perspective that can bring personal or communal empowerment? Is the content highly applicable or self serving, ego-promoting?

4. Community Design/Aesthetic:  One other factor that draws people to a community aside from content is the brand community aesthetic, design. Many will revisit the community and comment just because the brand community design appeal to them. This may serve as a mean of emotional connection for some. Though the number may seem insignificant but it holds a possibility.

5. Setting right rules: Most active online communities have rules. They do not promote abusive words, exchange of hot words, and hatred among community members.

Related posts:

1. How to promote contribution, connection in brand’s online community Part 2
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We can look at a community in different ways. But here we see a community as a group of people, who believe in an idea, choose to live together through common systems and who believe in the healthy propagation of community values, ideas. With strong community, brands have realized over the years the need to help transform corporate services, values and they have become agile through adequate networking, building conversation. Great brands have put greater value on people as the centre of their achievement. The community has been used to solicit useful and fundamental techniques to get it right. Any brand that shy away from building virile community today will have to do with spending huge capital on marketing research, advertising, and Public relations among others. Most of the challenges today can not only be solved by hiring external consultants, even though that is good, but through strong community, brands can generate untold information that if applied can safe them cost.

A successful community, particularly the online one can help put the brand on international radar. Though level of members’ engagement count. Brand’s online community can be created through several platforms and it all depends on the goal of the brand. The paybacks of great online community for brands-Personal, corporate- usually are many. The kind of features on the platform and the requirements will go a long way to help the community. Demanding that community members fill in a lot data that are not necessary to participate in the community may chase many away. Make the platform as friendly and considerate as possible. Never ask the community to submit highly sensitive information about them as that can chase many away. In fact such is not necessary

Having said this, let us examine advantages in a strong brand community.

1. Word of mouth: This has become a very good instrument to reduce cost of operations. More importantly, what a third party says about your brand is much appreciated than what the brand says about itself.

2. Brand awareness: Brand community spread your brand faster than any methods available. Brand community online helps you to gain strong brand awareness because of the excitement to show off. Ask great brands if in doubt. People always want to be associated with success. In our country here there is typical example of many football fans to talk about foreign brands instead of the local league.

3. Idea Generation: Strong community supplies vital feedbacks, ideas that would have require big buck in research among others.

4. Consumer loyalty: brand community also builds loyalty to the brand.

5. Bonding: Most brand community who are excited about the brand are often engaged as well as bond with one another through means of identification with brand’s souvenirs, logo.

6. It guarantees referrals: Strong brand community also guarantees untold referrals for the brand.

Realize that community creates dialogue. Community pulls together millions of eyeballs and human brain in unified connection. What is good about this is that two good heads are better than one. Your brand community can help a lot if you know how to tap into their resources.

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The much awaited PERSONAL BRANDING AND CORPORATE SUCCESS SEMINAR HOLDS THIS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, APRIL 17-18, 2009. This seminar can help your brand among other things to initiate the process of building a strong community through the use of internal brands. For participation please call: 07029778785

Related posts:

1. How to promote contribution, connection in online community
2. Brands:How to/profiting from an engaged community
3. Community engagement:a must for successful brand/tribe