These stories make your business interesting and compelling to consumers, employees, and investors. Each of your employees belongs to many networks - friends, families, business associates and so on. If you let people bring their humanity to your brand, they’ll also bring your brand into their networks. That’s a form of reach money can’t buy. Try crowdsourcing.
Because brand communication is not a one-way channel, these communities are critical to brand survival. Apple is a great example here. Go hang out at your local Apple store next weekend - it will be filled with people drawn in by the power of that brand, which is all about building technology to serve people.
People join communities because they have a purpose, an intent, and communities let them act on their intent. They are looking for a place to be (Facebook), a place to learn (Google +, Pinterest), a place to interact (Twitter). Communities are critical to crowdsourcing excitement about brand, which translates to brand value. Apple rises to the top here.
Trust creates value; it’s why people become attracted to your brand. Social communities must trust your brand; if they don’t, they can easily destroy it. In order to humanize a brand, you must first assess your ‘trust quotient’ before turning to social communities to promote or socialize your brand. Look into Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s work on Trust Economies for more. Trust is everything in Brand Humanization, and it comes before interaction with communities of employees and consumers.
It informs brand involvement, it is the front-end of buying decisions, and it lets people tell authentic, engaging stories about your brand. Get this right, or the stories won’t be engaging and you’ll be forced into damage control mode. Be careful, though, not to think presence on Twitter or Facebook is the equivalent of social interaction. Many brands assume they’re in two-way conversations on these channels, but when you take the time to dig into traffic, very few real bi-directional discussions are taking place. This goes back to trust - only when you’ve humanized your brand enough to gain the trust of your communities will you see two-way communication on most social channels. It’s like SETI - you have to keep the channel open in the hopes of hearing back.
