Geeks and community marketing

Posted March 16th, 2010 by Kris Borgraeve

How can you have a community surrounding your brand and still be in control ? Try hiring a geek who's monitoring your online dialogues almost 24hrs a day. We've been talking to Nick Hodge in Perth. Find out how he by himself does something a complete callcenter could never achieve. Manage the online chatter about Microsoft.

The new callcenter is a professional geek Twittering, connecting and posting.

As a business, your marketing needs to be in tune with your customer service. Unhappy customers make noise, and they could ruin your expensive campaign in no time. Microsoft Australia has Nick Hodge to be in a continuous dialogue with the Microsoft Open Source community. He was happy to explain us where the magic happens.

What a professional geek can do for your company

1. Be online a lot more than normal people
Nick spends most of his awake time online. Your geek needs to be addicted to his social media accounts. As a company it's a guarantee you will be the first to know when there's unexpected noise on your brand.
2. Provide a friendly face to talk to
Although he's Microsoft, Nick's profiles make him accessible, human and very much like his audience. He's one of them.
3. Bring enthusiasm and energy to the community
Whenever you find video or other content on our model geek, he's enthusiastic about the brand and the products. Evangelizing content is king for your social media marketing.
4. Represent your brand at meetings
When Nick turns up at meetings, his image and messages are consistent with his online profile. This makes him even more accessible for live audiences.
5. Inspire the research department
Hiring a professional geek can bring totally new ideas and feedback to your product development team.
It's probably not for tomorrow... A geek on every Perth company's payroll. But the whole concept will definitely help us to monitor the online chatter inside our marketing teams.

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