If you want to make friends, you have to be social. The same theory applies if you want to court customers, says Valerie Fox, vice president of social networking site Gather.com.
At the New England Direct Marketing Association's recent annual conference, Fox advised direct marketers that want to get active in social media to sign up for things like Google Alerts and Technorati, to find out what people are saying about their brand online.
“You can stand back [from the Web fray],” she says, “but it's much more productive to get involved.”
Gather.com caters to an adult audience and has 325,000 regular members as well as thousands of daily visitors, she told NEDMA attendees. The space is primarily a blogging site built around shared interests, a concept that several marketers are using to build relationships with consumers.
Borders, for example, uses Boston-based Gather to connect with its 17 million rewards-program members. A weekly e-mail to members provides links to content at borders.gather.com. One recent promotion, to drive Mother's Day sales for Mitch Albom's latest book “For One More Day,” asked members to submit a story about a time their mother stood up for them. The forum was seeded with book excerpts and stories from Albom, which helped get people to Borders and buy the book. The winning storyteller was flown to New York to appear on the CBS Early Show with the author.
