The cost of producing and distributing media has become much cheaper in the digital world. It is no longer assumed that media cannot be produced or distributed without advertisers footing the bill. The decoupling of media from advertising has opened up the door for all sorts of creativity (and arguably a lot of garbage, too). Public, educational, and governmental media have been producing and distributing content free from advertising for years.

On the flip side, it is no longer assumed that marketers need to spend a lot of money on advertising to get their messages in front of eyeballs (or ears or whatever). If you have a good message then people can hear that message without the need for paid media gatekeepers. Word-of-mouth has long been an effective marketing technique which requires no media buys. With the Internet, Web 2.0, social media, or whatever you want to call it today word-of-mouth marketing takes on a whole new dimension.

Sure, if you have a product or message that does not resonate with people then you may still need old media and advertising to get your product and message in front of them. Of course, once people try your product and are disappointed with it they will share their thoughts about your product with other people. I hope that 2010 is the year that old media and advertising wanes and that good old word-of-mouth has a resurgence in influence. This is the kind of marketing we focus on at Found Line: marketing as a form of communication and education. As the Forrester Research post concluded, “Marketing is dead. Long live marketing!”

With around 500 submissions and 15,000 ratings this “share your peak experience” aspect of their website allowed Peak Organic to learn about the people who drank their beer. Even better, it allowed their customers to learn a little bit about each other. It also gave people an opportunity to contribute, quite literally, to the Peak Organic brand with the chance of having their photographs and experiences incorporated into the product’s packaging and displayed on store shelves throughout the country. I liked to call this “user-generated brand,” a form of user-generated content. All brands are influenced by their users but this was user-driven brand evolution made tangible. This content was also a factor in helping them reach the number one position on Google for the search term “organic beer” — sorry Vermont’s own Wolaver’s!

In addition to Peak Organic’s website, we also created their brand identity, developed materials for their event marketing, designed their packaging, made point of sale materials, and created sell sheets. We worked with Peak Organic for several years but we no longer work with them today. I’d like to explore some things we’d do differently today knowing what we know now four years later and with the tools available today. I wouldn’t suggest anyone simply try the same things we did with Peak Organic. This worked because it fit in with their brand. However, there are some things you may be able to learn from our experience (no pun intended).

First, I would “unlock” the user generated content from the website. This could be done simply through a feed of recent “peak experiences” with links back to individual experiences. This would allow people to easily access this content from outside the website. If they’re engaging with the brand, why does it matter if it they’re on the brand’s website or not?

An alternative approach would be to have users submit their “peak experiences” to Flickr and aggregate these photographs with a tag and possibly a group (Flickr was still in beta when we first launched the Peak Organic website). The website would then consume these aggregated photos like anyone else would and could even add a metadata layer on top for implementing the rating system. This would potentially give the community more control of this content and give Peak Organic the possibility of tapping into existing communities on Flickr.

When we first launched the Peak Organic website online photo sharing was still relatively new. Since then sites like Flickr have grown exponentially and many people are at least familiar with sites like Flickr, if not sharing photos online themselves. Today, microblogging (e.g. Twitter) is relatively new but growing very quickly. This leads to the second thing I’d do differently today — experiment with tagging beyond Flickr. I’d try tweeting from various events using an event hashtag and/or a brand-specific hashtag. Relatively speaking, not many people are on Twitter yet. However, the momentum is there and mixed in with the all those tweets must be a few “peak experiences” ready to be shared. Coincidentally, the maximum length for a “peak experience” description was 150 characters, 10 more than Twitter’s 140 character limit.

It’s not about you. It’s about your users/ customers/ readers/ viewers. What are you providing that’s valuable? Where is the overlap between your users’ needs and wants and what you have to say?

You are not the center of your network. You are just part of a larger network. Be a good citizen. Provide something of value. Connect with other networks; grow your network.

Whatever you do, do not try to control how or what is communicated. For employees, set clear boundaries as to what is OK to publish and what isn’t and don’t punish employees if they say something you don’t like within those boundaries. Encourage everyone (inside and out) to speak their minds. If they have something bad to say, it’s an opportunity to improve your product/service. If they have something good to say then great!

Social media is not one-way. It is a conversation, not a broadcast. Don’t start a conversation if you’re not willing to listen. No one will listen to you if you don’t listen to them.

For some interesting reading on how companies are using social media, see The New Robert Scobles: Seven Leading Corporate Social Media Evangelists Today and Zappos Shows How Social Media Is Done.