What is SoDA-Pi?

Social Media Community: Building Brand Relationships

Outsource the Brand

By Robert Davis and Inna Piven (SoDA-Pi)

“To the community.”  “Some businesses are not sure what to discuss on their social networking pages. They just bombard us with specials and try to sell their products and services. To me social media is not about selling. It’s about the link. Building and engaging likeminded people with the brand.”

This book has been written because of three key streams of knowledge and activity.

The first relates to previous work on branding online. These papers were some of the first to be published about online branding from a product and service perspective. They have been published in Marketing Science and the Journal of Service Research. It is great now to work with my colleague,

Inna Piven, to contribute an extension of that work: building the concept of the brand in social media. Focusing on the 5 important sources of value for consumers. In essence it signals the day where the brand is no longer owned by the marketer or company. Rather, it is outsourced to the consumer and other stakeholders in social media community. Secondly, Inna Piven. My esteemed co-author. Inna has spent a lot of time doing the background research on the book. Her expertise, practical orientation and insight have been invaluable. Importantly, like me, she is tired of reading the work of others based upon opinion. It is like hollow log; without substance. This is book is based on what the social media community wants. What they told us; without bias, prejudice or agenda. It is their call for ownership of the brand.

Together with this journey and current work on the brand in social media we want to contribute to thinking and practice. A lot of companies are using social media. Many fail to build relationships and position their brands as community assets. We hope that you enjoy this book.

We hope that it contribute value to your brand and community relationships both on and offline.

Finally, in our preface we would like to talk about how this book is structured and how this could help in getting real value from this book to use this book.

The book begins with a discussion of the importance of social media brand relationships. In these chapters we gain an understanding of existing knowledge and practice. This helps us to explore what are social media brand relationships and how we might define them.

The book then progresses to further define and explore social media brand relationships from the perspective of the community and consumers. Here we uncover 5 core sources of value. This approach places emphasis on the community as owner of the brand.

The book concludes with further practical insights on the five sources of the social media brand and their implementation. Implementation also covers important further topics such as brand integration across social media channels. Thought needs to be give about media channel integration and what we call the LOOP model. Integration also covers the collection and community brand integration and the CiM (collective interactivity model).

One of the key strengths of the book is that it is based on existing knowledge. So, we have not removed our references. This gives the reader the assurance of validity but will also help in further investigation.

To aid the implementation of the 5 sources of social media brand value we have included a short presentation that you can use in your organization or with your customers. It helps to start a conversation about how the brand can be controlled by the community. Two case studies have also been provided to help build that conversation and understanding.

Enjoy! Inna and Robert