Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

3. Educate Through Experience

It’s not your job to tell your customers what the company values are. It’s your job to let them experience those values by bringing them into the fold of your brand’s community. That requires a system for archiving, organizing, and sharing conversations, the rallying point for your community of customers. Of course, you still need to produce and share content. It’s not time to ditch the company blog or stopping sending original tweets. It is time to recognize that the conversations within your community actually turn into knowledge. Ultimately, your community is a living FAQ.

4. Keep the Momentum Going

Once you’ve earned your customer’s trust, they’re likely to be even more engaged with your brand and product. That’s a good thing, but it means you’ll need to go above and beyond to continue building that relationship. To do that, you have to get to the point where the trust goes both ways and you trust the customer.
Take Tyrel Hartman, who wanted to use the social discovery app StumbleUpon to propose to his girlfriend. Both were active Stumblers and often enjoyed exploring the site together, so Hartman contacted the company and requested that they rig his girlfriend’s account so that she’d stumble on a wedding proposal disguised as a blog post.

StumbleUpon’s team could have easily said no to Hartman, but instead, they were inspired by Hartman’s enthusiasm and explored a new use for their product. It required cross-departmental collaboration and an investment of resources, but it was also a priceless marketing opportunity that earned the company ample news coverage across the web.