Branding through Conversations

Kevin Gamble via friendfeed pointed me to David Cushman's paper titled Communities of Purpose are the Business Units of the Future. It was an interesting paper, but I was more interested in a referenced post by David, The Value of a Brand is in its Conversations.

I'm very interested in this topic as we consider the future of our own institutional web site, its role in strategic marketing and how we can better engage our clientele.

In addition to the physical attributes, a brand can represent the values and personality of a company or service. The key objective is to create a relationship of trust (Wikipedia).

In his post, David describes the Zappo's CEO's use of twitter.

Tony doesn't just tweet about zappo promotions, he reveals his life and his personality to you in every tweet. He presents a very human face of a company - and he does it in a way that is open to real live human conversation.

If we really want to make an impact online, reach new audiences, and enhance our brand, then we need to participate in these online communities and conversations.