Washing Your Assets In Public

"The strategy of moving the same old stuff into a community is a failing strategy. Have you ever been to a community filled with documentation and marketing materials and loved it? No. We can get that same stuff in a million other places, we don’t need another one.  Companies need to spend a lot more time thinking through why they’re doing the community to begin with. The problem is, it’s much easier to justify hanging your laundry out for other people to clean than it is to get people to think differently."  From the splendid Go Big Always.

Comments

[Rory MacDonald]

I agree with the sentiment, but I do think you can build a community which includes documentation and marketing materials. If companies cannot build communities for marketing, why else would they build them? You just have to rethink what marketing is. The materials and the message have to be radically altered to suit a more intelligent audience and you _have_ to embrace honesty rather than the typical push marketing spin.

"You don't want to push death sticks"
"You want to go home and rethink your life"

(To quote a Jedi mind trick).

To me this isn't even about asymmetric push marketing, moving to a symmetric dialogue with the customer. Most of the dialogue is P2P and the only way the company will be involved is in facilitating, listening and responding through actions. There is plenty of room in here for marketing, it just needs to have more substance.

[James Cherkoff]

Hi Rory, agreed. In fact, I don't think it's even necessary to rethink marketing - just remember. Marketing is about operating effectively in markets. That's it. And if a big chunk of your market is P2P then that's what's required!