So, this makes it very clear that online brand engagement leads to positive business results: increased purchase intent, positive word of mouth & brand affinity. However, if not approached from the appropriate angle, things can turn very sour, as bad news travels faster than ever because of social platforms. More importantly, if a brand is not being honest & genuine in its actions, consumers will discover its falsities just as fast.

So, when a brand engages with its customers, it must do so genuinely and with purpose.

The other day, one of my colleagues mentioned that his dentist sent him a Happy Birthday email. He explained how out of place it felt, as it was a generic, insert-name-here kind of email, plus he doesn’t have that kind of relationship with his dentist – a person he sees once, maybe twice, a year. Now, if he sent a Happy Anniversary: Thank you for being a valued patient for ‘X’ number of years, that would have made more sense, because it would have been in context with his brand relationship.

This got me thinking: if engaging with customers can lead to such fantastic results, yet becoming too buddy-buddy can sour that relationship, where is the line for appropriate brand engagement? Because, really, there is a fine line between treating customers like revenue generating units and going too far in trying to “friend” customers.

So, I began looking into how customers want to engage with brands online. What I found was 4 key things customers want from an online brand relationship – they want to:

1. Ask questions / make suggestions and be answered / heard
2. Be “in the know” with exclusive content about new products, features, services, etc.
3. Be rewarded for showing their support with exclusive offers & promotions
4. Be introduced to others who are associated with the brand as well

In essence, customers don’t want to become friends with their favorite brands; rather, they want to form a utilitarian relationship with brands. This helps them get the most out of their brand experience, whether it be insider tips & tricks, deals on the next hot thing, recognition for being a valued customer, etc.

So, in the end, social media should be leveraged to enable brands to reach the middle ground, between treating customers like numbers and close friends, and, instead, treating them like people, who want to get the most out of their brand experience, beyond the product and/or service.

Nicole is an associate planner from our Calgary office.

Yesterday was a interesting day in Chicago. In the afternoon, there was the Blogwell conference which featured real life case studies from large organizations executing initiatives in the social media space. Companies like:

• The Home Depot
• Mayo Clinic
• H&R Block
• Sharpie
• US Coast Guard
• Allstate
• Walmart
• Procter & Gamble

And later that evening, I gave a talk at the Social Media Club in Chicago (above). In both talks I noticed a reoccurring theme. When companies engage a social manner, even the big ones—their initiatives are often powered by individuals. People with real names. faces, families and lives. In fact, most of the more successful examples included people who worked for brands who were beginning to become known on a fist name basis. The Home Depot for example has Sarah, who handles their Twitter initiative. This poses a question for all organizations. What happens if the Sarah’s of the world leave your company? Isn’t it better for a brand to just be a brand?

Enter the “brandividual“, a term I blurted out in my talk about personal branding later that evening. The phrase was born of a series of questions from the audience which all focused around the same topic. Where is the hard line between my employer’s brand and my own? The answer is not a simple one—but I believe that trends are pointing us to a blurring of that line whether we like it or not. “Brandividuals—people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.

Take this list for example—40 of the best Twitter brands and the people behind them. The title of the list is enough to make you think. For each brand on Twitter, there’s an individual (or individuals) behind that effort. It’s both business and personal. The two have become one. The tactic comes from a fundamental truth when it comes to the social spaces on the Web. People want to talk to other people. They want transparency. They want to know who they are talking to.

Who’s behind that masked brand?

And as the people—the “brandividuals” begin to reveal themselves, it wil create new scenerios where we’ll all have to think about the relationships between the brands we work for and the personal ones we build and maintain and how the two relate and mutually benefit from each other. As the dawning of the age of the brandividual comes upon us, we’ll all have to re-think the boundries between us as individuals, brands, and the brands who employ us.

Written by David Armano