Here's my latest article for Imediaconnection on "Connecting the connected agency in China."

How agencies can connect with consumer communities

In my previous article, I discussed Forrester's "connected agency" which is defined as an agency with "a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights." In the article, I also laid out the unique elements of the Chinese internet community landscape that should be at the foundation for such a "connected agency".

In this article, I will take it one step further and explore meaningful ways to actually connect with communities.

Community audit: Where is the talk and what are they talking about?

The first step in building connections is to perform a "community audit", which if you must put it in traditional agency terms, is akin to a media audit. This is a systematic mapping out of the key blogs, BBS forums, QQ groups and other community channels for the brand and its industry. For some industries, this is no small task. For example, for the notebook industry, we have mapped out more than 200 notebook related forums/ sub-forums which generate 500,000 messages a month from 50,000 unique user names. In knowing the communities, you will also come to know the culture and overall nature of the communities: What kind of topics does each talk about? Which topics are the most sticky? Which ones create the most buzz? Even if the communities talk about the same topic, this does not mean they talk about it in the same way. For example, in one computer hardware community, we found that 24 percent of the hottest topics discussed were newbie or very basic enquiries, while in another community, 44 percent involve more advanced netizens showing off their cool hardware with videos and pictures.

Based on such careful content analysis, connecting with different communities calls for a nuanced strategy.

Community support: contributing value

In understanding the culture of different communities, you can begin to offer support in ways that actually bring value to the communities. For some financially-strapped communities, you can simply pay for hosting, as some of our clients have done for fledgling fan communities.

Supporting communities can also include providing products for sampling or providing privileged access to events for forum members, as is often done in the cosmetics industry. Healthy communities often have "fubai" or offline meet-ups, which can be sponsored. We recently blogged about a successful example where Crocs and other brands sponsored a fubai of the Shanghainese community KDS. Of course, explicit advertising or sponsorship is an option for some communities as well, especially for commercially driven communities on portals or industry verticals. Advertising on commercially driven communities can bring the added benefit of getting easier access to the forum administrators from the site's marketing department, which can be helpful.

"Efluencer" relations: connecting with the connectors

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, "efluencer" or influencer relations are one of the most well-known and, at the same time, most misunderstood approaches to community marketing. All readers have probably seen case studies in which influential bloggers or forum administrators were spammed by a brand with a press release. The misguided assumption in such approaches is that these efluencers are the gatekeepers of the buzz -- if you pass them your information, then these super nodes will spread the buzz to those within their influence network. The problem we find in this approach is that information such as notification of yet another campaign, asking consumers to upload their pictures, is usually of interest to the brand much more than the efluencer.

In the end, the core of an efluencer campaign is to make a movement, not just a one-off campaign. Such a movement, or platform, recognises that efluencers are a great proxy for understanding the underlying needs and concerns of overall consumers. Such learning comes not from a one-way conversation or push of an agenda, but from an actual give and take relationship.

Finding your voice: talking the talk

According to our Q3 2007 white paper on Chinese notebook Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM), there are 411,445 BBS messages from leading notebook forums which mention a notebook brand or product name. With literally hundreds of thousands of mentions related to notebooks, including praises, complaints and other customer service queries every month, the challenge for brands like Dell and Lenovo is to find an authentic voice to talk back and participate in the conversation.

We are already seeing this happen with brands like Dell. Dell has various blogs, including the original Direct2Dell blog in Chinese and a copy on the uber popular Sina blog platform. In times of crisis, Dell blogger Jacqui Zhou will use the blog to speak about the situation. Dell also has microblogging accounts on Twitter and the Chinese Fanfou.

Other examples of finding a voice include auto brands offering customer service advice on a special PCauto service centre: KFC talking about nutrition on Baidu, and Lancôme encouraging talks about cosmetics on its Rose Beauty forum. With such a voice, brands can not only react to conversations, they look to contribute to the conversation and ultimately be a part of the community.

Parting words: It's the connections, not the content

The name "connected agency" emphasises connecting or understanding. The latter also means forming relationships with communities. The name also poses a nice contrast to traditional agencies, or content agencies, which are more likely to view communities as new media, where they can place their content and messaging. A community is a media, but it is also a source of consumer insight, and it is an opportunity to connect. Most importantly, communities are not necessarily interested in what a brand's "messaging" is. They want to know what they want to know, not necessarily what the brand wants to tell them. Knowing which communities are relevant, what these communities are interested in, supporting the communities and connecting with the leaders, and finally, finding the voice that both resonates with these communities and reflects the brand is ultimately what conversational marketing, as opposed to broadcast marketing, is all about.