Julianna
My colleague Lindsay has referenced Tara Hunt’s great blog HorsePigCow on Webnames Blog before. We like the way she thinks about things like customers, marketing and the Web. Tara specializes in ‘community marketing’ which she describes as not “community building, but rather, delighting and enchanting those people already part of your community – through product, communication and experience.” If you are wondering what this means in application, Tara helps her clients better understand and work more effectively with the communities they serve. Her non-traditional marketing approach eschews PR and brand positioning to concentrate on what connects people. As she explains, “People don’t buy brands, they buy hope, stories, memories, necessities, etc.”
This approach resonates with us – while most of our customers just need a domain, others are taking steps towards building their first business and are looking for advice on choosing the right name or online solution to represent them … matters of personal consequence that can cause anxiety or stress. Customers of this type need us to understand where they are coming from and what they are trying to achieve – they require willingness to fulfill a problem and sustained communication.
Tara Hunt and her partner in Citizen Agency Chris Messina are going to be in Vancouver at the end of the month to deliver a workshop at Web Directions North. The two-day conference takes place January 28 – February 2 and focuses on “practical and inspiring concepts, technologies and techniques” for people who do Web-things – build websites, create applications and provide online services. While much of the conference is geared towards folks who make websites, design interfaces and play in CSS, Javascript or Ajax, it also features workshops on social media, web tools and community building. Hunt and Messina’s workshop is aimed helping enterprises and government organizations connect with their customers and citizens using Web 2.0 tools correctly. If you are interested in learning more check out Web Directions North’s executive summary; if this sounds right up your alley, skip the research and register already.
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Find some of HorsePigCow’s most popular articles and posts here, including our recent favourite “A Company is the Sum of its People”