[MUSIC] The Social IMC strategy is the third social marketing strategy and the most powerful one we will study. Social IMC is one of the two emBRACE Social strategies. Unlike nurture marketing which is used to develop a sales and marketing relationship with a specific target market, Social IMC does not limit its engagement to observable changes in website interaction or interaction with your sales team. Social IMC is designed to embrace a high value market you want to develop and take them to a private virtual community you develop specifically for them. Done correctly, Social IMC allows you to build a 1-to-1 long-term relationship with high value community members to position you as an expert and the place to go when they are ready to buy. It is our most potent social marketing strategy. To be successful, a social IMC strategy must achieve two objectives. First, it must attract your high value market to the private virtual community. It must be something so great, so unique that it makes them want to come to your site. Register for it and then tell others just like them to join. We call this the Empowering Concept. The second objective is that the Social IMC private community must have content so fantastic, it keeps the target audience coming back. This will be your integration of gamification and great support elements into the site. Having both gives you a private, virtual community which immediately engages your target market, moves them to the private virtual community that you control, and entices members to continue to return to build a long-term, one-to-one relationship. The empowering concept can be executed in a number of ways, a tool, webinar series, mobile app or other device which significantly helps the community members to achieve their mission. We just want to help the community move towards their goals. To develop the empowering concept, you need to do three things. First, you need to identify the mission of the community. This is done by using you social monitoring tools to analyze community conversation and the sites they are using in the social pyramid. It can also be aided by interviewing key members of the market that you want to develop. The objective, in your analyses, is to deeply understand what is your target market and what are they trying to achieve, the challenges they are confronting and the tools that they use today. Once you understand their mission, the next step is to develop the empowering concept. This is a tool event app or other device which helps the community reach its goals. Generally, you will develop a number of possible empowering concepts. How do you determine the one most attractive to your target community members? One effective way is to show them to the influencers in the community. Contact two or three influential individuals and tell them if they help you evaluate your empowering concept and assist you in selecting the best one, you will give them an exclusive community offering before you announce it to the world. Give them respect by showing you understand their importance in the community and often they will tell you which of your empowering concepts would be of greatest utility to the community members. Finally, you want to identify additional services that will keep the members coming back. In two videos in this move in this MOOC, we will discuss the importance and power of gamification. If you've never looked into it, it is not what you think. Gamification is a great way to keep the community active and engaged. In creating the additional services, you'll want to add videos, articles, forums, and other appropriate services to make it a more complete community site. As we look at the number of case examples. You'll see the way they use additional services to make the site a destination for community members. So, how does a Social IMC strategy work? We use social monitoring to determine the mission of the community and create a site built around an empowering concept. Something that will significantly assist community members to reach their goal. When we tell community members about our empowering concept, they will go to a registration page. On this page, they will give us their email and password to get into the private community and some information to tell us and other community members about who they are. This information is housed in our community data warehouse. And matched to our sales and marketing system, to determine if the community member is a prospect or a customer. Because community members must use the login. To get to the private virtual community, we will be able to track them each time they come to the site. Like Facebook and other social networks, our ability to track each individual will allow us to analyze community behaviors, to maximize side effectiveness, manage the site to remove competitors or problem individuals, and to understand how members view us and the competition. While we won't directly market to members, we can use the same tracking capabilities as the nurture strategy had to monitor individuals and engage with them directly. If they indicate they want to discuss products and services, you are ready, but let them take the first step. You are there to support the community first and then sell only when they are ready. Often, when managers hear about the Social IMC strategy and the discussion of not selling, they wonder what role their products could play in the private virtual community. There are three you can consider. First, your product could be an enabler for the community members. In one of our case examples, you need to drink a beer to get the code that lets you into the community. Because the empowering concept was so powerful, hundreds of thousands did it, to register and join the community. A second role for products is to be an enhancer. In another of our case studies, the more community members used the product, the more they were able to help achieve the goal central to the community. The product enhanced their ability to attain their desired goal within it. Finally your product can be an extra. In another case example, the companies private virtual community was dedicated to allowing the community members to talk about challenges they faced in their profession. Because the community knew the products and services of the company, when they needed a product, they just clicked to the company site, purchased the product that they needed, and it charged it to their company or personal accounts. One-click shopping, but only when they were ready. Before we start looking at the case examples, here are four success tips you need to consider. First, remember that unlike other strategies, social IMC allows you to vet your incoming members. Some of my clients spend days or weeks insuring that each member requesting admission is a member they want to allow in. You can use the power of vetting to eliminate competitors. And ensure the community is one you want to support. Second, private virtual communities can be created by acquisition or by invitation. You can use social marketing to attract a market to your registration site and then vet them for entry or you can invite them to your private community. For example, if you are a health organization and want doctors as community members, invite them directly and don't advertise your site. You can make it as exclusive as you want to be. Third, it doesn't have to be holistic. You don't need to be the only site the community visits. Just the one who has an empowering concept which really helps them move forward. Sometimes more focused is the best approach, particularly if the community has other sites for other functions. Finally, don't attempt to sell. If you do, the community will leave. Now, let's take a look at a number of examples of Social IMC at work. [MUSIC]
