Do it like Zappos – Do it like Dell
Posted on 22. Aug, 2009 by Nikos in Apple, Blogs, Business, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter
According to many ‘Social Media Gurus’ (if this term exists) you have to build your community in order to be successful! This is not new. The community building happens since the creation of the world. People used to build communities in order to be more powerful and more protected. Some years ago, companies used to build communities through events, exhibitions, sponsorships and many more. Nowadays, the trend is called Social Media. Why? It is easy, inexpensive and with better results. How? It is very easy! You just communicate with your audience and you add value on this communication. Be real and show that you care about them. Make them to trust you! And if you have great products and services, you are a winner! The drawback of this is that many companies (your competitors too) try to do the same and you have to be creative, unique and fast! There are several examples of winners and losers on the game of community building!
Zappos is a clear winner! It is the company that uses Social Media better than everybody else. The culture of Zappos is ‘communicate with the customer and do it well’! Zappos encourages its employees to create Twitter account and tweet! Until now 438 employees use Twitter. There is the ‘What employees are doing right now’ page that shows all the tweets of employees. There is a ‘start’ page that the CEO of Zappos explains to his employees what is Twitter about and how you create an account. Is this amazing? YES! Twitter is a great way to communicate with people and Zappos knows this. For Zappos is not only Twitter. They have 13 blogs, Facebook accounts, YouTube channel and many more. You cannot do anything more than ‘Love Zappos!‘
Dell is another winner. They try to segment the market and create multiple accounts for Twitter and Facebook. Dell has a very organized Community page. They try to communicate with people in as many places as they can. (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn etc.) Strong brands need strong communities and Dell knows that very well.
Let’s find a loser. Sony can be one of them. Do you see Sony around? No. Sony made many mistakes and some of them are about communications. Sony has a community page but they are not successful because as I mentioned before they were not creative, fast (just started – beta version) and unique. Sony has few Twitter followers, few Facebook fans and unfortunately this is SONY! I am most of my everyday life online and I rarely hear something about Sony. It is their mistake and they have to fix it. (Along with all the other mistakes)
This picture doesn’t mean a lot (Twitter is not the only measurement). I just want to compare the accounts.
What about Apple? Apple is a unique company. It is the company that uses NO Social Media and has one of the strongest and fanatic communities. How? Through their fans. Apple doesn’t have to do anything for this. Apple fans create the Social Media buzz and this is phenomenon. No Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and Videos are owned by Apple.. It is crazy that everybody talks about them without doing anything. Of course Apple has its own way to build its community but this way is unique.
Successful brands build strong communities, offer great products and services and they win!
2 Comments
Jonathan L
27. Aug, 2009
Hi there! Cool article. I just wanted to clarify. Zappos doesn’t actually FORCE us employees to use Twitter.
It’s just kindly encouraged. On a somewhat related note, the first time I had even heard of Twitter was from CEO, Tony Hsieh AKA @zappos .
And you’re totally right about how Apple already has a huge community. I once tweeted about a problem I was having with my iPhone. Some (presumably fan-made) Apple twitbot picked it up and RTed my issue. Neat.
Nikos
27. Aug, 2009
Hi Jonathan.. Thank for the clarification. I changed that part.. This is how Robert Scoble stated this fact.
You do a great job there!
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