There is no need repeating the obvious. Humans thrive when there is interaction, bonding and not when in isolation. Humans are not wired to live in isolation. To be successful human/brand needs solid relationships, engagement with others. since the world has become a global village, building engagement withy locals only deprive brands the benefits that are available to all.

 As many professionals know, productive, profitable engagement in the midst of noise level today is not a child’s play. It is real work. What I have noticed is that many give up so soon when their efforts are not yielding immediate result. The pressure from management that has invested much in online branding is not helping matter. Community manager must educate the management on the time lag it will take to make meaningful impact. There is no overnight success.

Whether there is instant success or not, we must be able to see clearly like DNA13 suggests ‘joining conversation and shaping public opinion holds promise of reducing cost of communication’. Strong community engagement thrives where there is strong collaboration among the major actors which includes the community manager, the community members and other stakeholders. Conscious effort must also be made to recognize, value active promoters of community well being. The community leader, manager must be a bundle of inspiration. He/she must not be lazy or tired of maintaining the conversation so well with relevant content. The community leader must also learn to build quality relationship with the community stakeholder and be willing promptly attend to community concerns.

Any brand that wants to maintain solo, one man squad approach to managing, promoting, positioning itself will end with lots of regret.

In today’s world, campaign seems to be loosing the grip it used to have. Campaign used to be the magic wand that sold the idea to people. It used to be the last card when a brand, idea, product or service is not doing well and brand owners need to reinvent or rejuvenate the brand. Campaign is also used to launch a new product to the market. While campaign is still very relevant, its effectiveness seems to be fading. Some other vital instruments are coming up fast and catching up with campaigns relevance. What then seems to be wrong with campaign? I think it is important to start with what campaign is. An online resources states ‘Campaigns are the advertisements created by the Advertiser. A Campaign contains one or more Advertisements.

Campaigns include setting up limit costs, delivery flight dates, targeting, among other issues. Campaigns can only be created and owned by an Advertiser”. Campaign is associated with the war tactic and vocabulary. It is driven by target, launch and domination. Campaign most times is not supposed to create emotionally attachment but to ensure a selfish connection to buy support for a advertiser’s brand or idea. Campaigns are used to achieve a temporary gain. Traditional campaign aims at selling, convincing, interrupting, and urgency. There is no long-term value to this activity. So the moment campaign achieves its aim, it is often discontinued. In other words the moment a brand owner, advertiser gets return on investment in the campaign, it is often automatically stopped. Examples are there to see from major campaigns that had been on.

Because most campaigns have short term goals that do not require a life long commitment, most advertisers normally use the traditional media that have short term appeal which are expected to catch attention for the specific period it will runs. Campaigns are self created with intention of fanning a selfish goal. It is basically focused on an advertiser talking about him/herself and when properly diagnosed campaigns are meant to create awareness. Having said that, times are changing, efforts must change direction.

What works yesterday may not be that effective again. Brand’s tribe engagement through conversation and relationship building is gradually getting right result as well as  exposing the weakness in campaigns. The reason is not far fetched; this method seems to be getting more results than campaign nowadays. One of the reasons for that is that brand’s tribe engagement tools are directly opposite of campaigns tools and the motive is more of win-win than a ‘one sided gain’ approach tactic of campaigns. Brand’s tribe engagement is more credible because it goes on while the communal spirit is still intact. Brand’s tribe engagement can happen at both platform, offline and online. Internet has become more accessible and possibly one of the biggest, most valuable resources that help to reach the tribe’s member. It reaches people of all ages, cultures and regions and you have a lot of freedom to be creative with your ideas.

In any given situation, circumstance or community there are noted influencers who can either spell the doom or make the community grows. Interestingly many brands today do not know how to manage their major influencers if they have properly identified them at all. For personal brands that are married, spouses and children can be a major influencers in the brand’s overall success. For instance, many personal brands do not realize the impacts of a nagging or abusive spouse can have in overall brand’ performance. If in doubt, ask a victim next door.

For a corporate brand, there are several are shareholders, union leaders, community leader, government agency and of recent bloggers that can destroy every effort put in place to build brand equity. There is therefore a need for brand drivers to identify the leading brand influencers as well as those who wield major influence in their niche, manage the relationship well so much that brand can be successful. To identify major brand’s influencers, brands must observe the followings.

1. Depth of knowledge: an individual can not be an influencer except he knows the terrain so much and people can respect his level of knowledge and commitment to the common stake.

2. Depth of authority: find out the depth of authority of the individual as well. How much does he shapes the expectations of the followers around him/her?

3. Depth of influencer’s acceptance: Do carry out a due diligence research on the influencer and be sure you are dealing with the right person. Never make an assumption about the kind of the influence the individual has just by the words of mouths that are not backed with proven results.

4. Depth of links, comments, and associations: For online industry influencers like blogger, brand must identify this set of people by the numbers of links to their websites, traffics, feedbacks, comments and association they have with other online users.

5. Depth of influencers’ action and impacts: find out what kind of impacts can your niche suffer if the action of the influencers are allowed to run unchecked. There are some whose influence can be damaged without much ado.