Tag Archives: system

How to build a DCS profile

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A DCS Profile

In my last post I discussed the concept of a Dynamic Conversation System. I covered why it was important to have one and why it is better to have a DCS than a themed content plan. In this post we’ll look at how to build one.

There are a few things we need to sort out first. In order to build your brands personality, you’ll need to know who is going to be speaking to your brand. This is a great starting point, simply because “birds of a feather flock together”. Your community will only follow you if you’re the same as they are. You need to talk about the things they want to hear, like the things that they like and most importantly, listen to the things that they have to say. However, your community also needs you to be a leader. You need to be able to facilitate the community, help the ambassadors shine, help the voiceless speak and generally be a mentor. Your community needs to see you as a pillar. You’re not there to sell them products, you’re there to make their lives better. Sound like too much effort and responsibility? Then maybe your brand shouldn’t be on social media. Remember : If you can get these people to love your brand, they’ll show their love by becoming an unpaid sales force. Therein lies the power.

So how do we determine who our community is? There are a host of tools available for this and I’ll cover some of these in a later post. For now you can check out my personal favourite, Node XL.

Once you’ve understood who the community is, it’s time to build your first DCS.

Remember, you are creating a personality here. It’s a template for a human being, a human being that represents the brand. You may think that some of these questions are unnecessary and far too detailed, but bear with me. Each one will give you a far deeper understanding of how your brand will react and communicate with the community.

Segment 1 – Background :
- Where is your personality from?
- What kind of upbringing did he/she have?
- What is his/her level of education?
- What was his/her qualifications

Segment 2 – Interests :
- What is your brand doing on a daily basis? (Career-wise)
- What is your brands passions? (Are they technology advocates? Are they into fashion?)
- Who does your brand follow? What communities does your brand participate in? (I’ll discuss the concept of ‘community cross-pollination’ in another post)
- What sites is your brand subscribed to?

Segment 3 – Personality :
- Is your brand extroverted or introverted?
- Is he/she passionate or calm and collected?
- Is he/she the life of the party or a bit of a wall flower?
- What does he/she like and dislike?
- What fears does he/she have?
- What are his/her dreams or aspirations?
- What makes him/her excited?
- What makes him/her angry?
- Is he/she very knowledgeable and willing to share it. or does he/she prefer to let others do the talking?

Segment 4 – Writing style :
- Does your brand use a lot of adjectives?
- Are his/her posts short and sweet or wordy and laden with information?
- How often would he/she post links?
- Is he/she formal or laid back?

There are two things I want to say about the questions above :

1. You’ll notice that in the questions above I’ve used he/she a lot. It is very important to determine whether your brand is male or female.
2. These questions are guides. You don’t have to answer all of them and you may want to add additional information.

So, grab yourself a piece of paper, divide it into four segments and get busy creating your first DCS profile! We’ll discuss how to implement this DCS profile very soon.

Happy profiling!

 

Dynamic Conversation System

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A 3D community model

The first post about what I’m actually interested in. So here we go :

Brands see you as a number.

They count how many times you visit a web site, they count how many times you’ve clicked ‘Like’ on their Facebook page. At the end of the day, you’re just a number. When a brand seems to be reaching out to you to help you with your query or to tell you how to do something, they don’t actually care about you. They’re just bolstering another number, a number they call ‘engagement’. So it’s all just a numbers game. In the grand scheme of the universe, who cares?

Except you should care. You invested your money into that brand. You’re supporting them and you clicked on the ‘Like’ button. They should give a damn about you because at the end of the day, you’re paying the bills for that fancy new building downtown. So why don’t brands see you for what you are? Why are you just a number and not a human being?

It’s something I like to call the growth dilution. When a company is small, it sees its customers as very important. It will put in a lot of effort to maintain good relationships with it’s clients because it is looking to grow. However, the downside of this growth is that customers that used to enjoy a lot of attention will find that the attention is being spread to other customers. Eventually systems will be put in place to manage expectations and client conversations. That, ladies and gentlemen, is where the proverbial shit hits the fan. Systems are amazing in that they cater for a general populations needs, but a system will never cater for an individuals personal needs. And so, the little company-that-could becomes the soulless corporate.

Along comes social media. Social media allows brands to begin having those conversations with clients again. To allow the customer to experience the ‘personal touch’. But there are three huge problems :

1. Most brands don’t understand social media, mistaking it for just another channel to push product.
2. Most brands are so bogged down in process and bean-counting that their customers are not seen as human beings.
3. Most brands are unwilling or unable to understand the basic principles of human relationships.

Brands believe they are experiencing great results in social media because ‘the numbers are up’, but very often this is the result of poorly targeted media which has driven people to ‘like’ a page based on false pretenses. Other brands believe they are doing well because ‘engagement’ is through the roof, but once again, engagement is a poor measure of how effective a social media community is.

So what are we supposed to measure?
We’re supposed to measure the contextual quality of the people we are bringing to our pages. We need to answer the question : Do I have the right fans?

I’ll go into detail on how to measure the right fans some other time, but for today I want to talk to you about DCS (Dynamic Conversation System). Most brands will ask a social media consultant for a ‘conversation plan’ or a ‘theme plan’. This is basically a list of themes that will be explored for a certain time period. This is a rather rigid approach to generating conversation and ‘engagement’ so it is probably best to avoid doing this.

The alternative approach is creating a DCS. A DCS is not a list of rigid themes. Instead it is a fully fledged brand personality chart.

What is a personality chart?
Every novel writer knows what a character sheet is. When writing a book, a good place to start is with a character sheet. The character sheet details a characters history, personality traits, interests, quirks and emotional states. Once the novelist has created character sheets for all the principle characters, the novelist can then think up situations to put his characters in. Using character sheets he/she can guess what the characters reactions will be and how they will adapt to their new situations.

That is exactly how a DCS works. A brands personality is mapped out and once that is done, it is no longer necessary to come up with themed conversations. The brand can react to its community in an organic fashion. It can react to news and ideas in an organic fashion. Conversations are no longer contrived. Best of all, the brands persona remains absolutely spot on character no matter what is happening in the community or the outside world. A DCS means better conversations with the community, better documentation for the community manager and a stronger brand identity.

So how do we build a DCS? What information do we need to do this? Keep your eyes here.