brand republic: will we ever have chief community officers?
Great article from Brand Republic about the new need for Chief Community Officers alongside the more traditional Chief Marketing Officer.
“Just for fun, try doing what your customers do some evening: get online and see what people are saying about the products and services they use.
Search for a product by name and see how people rate it. Put in the name of a service provider and see what people are saying on discussion boards and comments about it. You might even try entering the name of a company with the word “sucks” after it and see what comes up in your search engine.
Then go visit some of the sites devoted to discussing consumer problems, like Consumerist.com or product discussion forums. Often you will see gruesome tales of poor service, indifferent employees or bad products. More important, you will often see posted comments on how the rest of the swarm feels about these brands.
Now, try something else: see how companies respond to these comments. Once in a while, some of them will actually post a reply explaining their side of the story or apologising and making things right. More often than not, you will see no response at all. In my view, a chief community officer should be aware of what the swarm is saying and then engage it appropriately.”
