Is Community the Future of Brands? - Teacher: Mark W. Schaefer

ften we feel when we put content on social media it's like throwing a bottle into the ocean. We don't know if people are going to see it or not. But at its best, we can create reach through social media that will bring people to our content and hopefully they'll subscribe to it. That's a higher emotional connection because now people in a virtual way have raised their hand and said, I love what you're doing. I want to hear more.  This is Mark Schaefer, a globally recognized author, keynote speaker, futurist, and business consultant who authors one of the top five marketing blogs in the world. Mark has written 10 bestselling books, has served global clients including Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the U. S. Air Force, and has become one of the global authorities on all things marketing. And on this episode of Useful Content, Mark and I are going to talk about brand building and community and his latest book, Belonging to the Brand. Why community is the last great marketing strategy. We talk about how building a brand can draw community towards you.  Oreo is the most popular cookie in the world, but it's a copycat. There was an original brand a hundred years ago called Hydrox It's still kind of around. Oreo literally copied it! But nobody's heard of Hydrox because Oreo has built a brand.  Three ways in which building a community can benefit your company brand. When people become friends in a community, that emotion and goodwill transfers to the brand. It's the highest emotional connection possible. And yet most companies aren't really exploring that.  And we get a unique insight into how Mark successfully runs his own online community.  the goal of my leadership in my community is there's really three things. Number one,  Let's make useful content.  Hello and welcome to useful content. And today we have a community building teacher, in our useful content classroom. Mark Schaefer, welcome, Mark, I am delighted to be with you. You and I have sort of circled each other on social media for a long time, so I'm glad that we're meeting face to face here today. Mark, you have been quite influential in my developmental process. I've read or listened to, cause I do audio books a lot of times, at least three of your books, and I'm kind of in the middle of getting through belonging to the brand, which we are talking about today. But before we dive into that, could you share with the people a little bit about who you are and how you help your community and your clients make useful content? Sure. Well, uh, I spent most of my career in in the corporate world and really was a bit of a digital pioneer in the early days of of the Internet. And, uh, about 15 or 16 years ago, I started my own company. and started to blog and the blog sort of got some attention and that led to me writing books. I've now written 10 books and uh, the success of the books led to speaking. That's where I make most of my money today and I've also done consulting, continue to do consulting and I teach at Rutgers University. In terms of My contribution to helping people create content, you know, I think hopefully I set a good example where I think I'm, I'm, I'm bold. My definition of bold is, um, is that I'm honest. Uh, and, and courageous because it takes some courage to be honest. I don't really have a specific agenda. I'm not trying to, like, sell people on on anything. So, um, yeah, I try to set a good example through my content. I try to teach through my content and literally I do teach content marketing as a strategy at the university. I think the way in which you approach how you interact with people is also very encouraging because a lot of times you would find that,...