The Evangelist and Social Media

Before the proliferation of social media, the role of a product evangelist was limited to the amount of traditional media exposure you could get for a product, either in the press or at industry conferences. With social media, evangelists have the opportunity to take their message directly to end users, but how do they do it?

A lot of attention is being paid to the idea of a personal brand, but for the evangelist, the goal is the product brand awareness, and a blending of awareness of the person and awareness of the brand. There have been scads of articles written about Gary Vaynerchuk and the work he has done building the brand for Wine Library with his WLTV show. And you can't spend any time on Twitter without spotting the Zappos crew. But what are they doing that's so successful?

For starters, both Gary and the Zappos bunch are genuine in their interactions online. Their presence is much more than just promoting product, but about engaging the community and being true to themselves. It's obviously a requirement of an evangelist to have an engaging personality, and we know a lot about the people as well as their products just from their interactions. Gary V. loves the Jets. And one of the Zappos team recently lost his wedding ring in the sand (his wife wasn't too upset). By building that personal connection, they are able to leverage more brand awareness. I often can't remember the Zappos CEO's last name (It's Tony Hsieh for those like me), but I remember the brand and also that his cat Tweets as well.

Above all, however, the evangelism that succeeds stays positive. Most evangelists have alerts set for their main competitors, as we saw in the Twitgotiation between Nicholas Tolson and the Techrigy folks. During the conversation, competitors were mentioned, but always in a positive light. Aaron Newman gave credit to Techrigy's competitors, demonstrating that he was familiar with them, and was fine with the competition, going on to point out where he thought Techrigy might be better.

The most important thing is that I've never seen any of them make a disparaging remark about a competitor. Gary Vaynerchuk may not like a wine, but I've never heard him make a single remark about any of Wine Library's competitors. Tony Hsieh, even when hit with a lawsuit through the press, never make a single nasty remark, only expressed confusion and dismay. That takes a lot of work, and I know that I'm still nowhere near that level of self-control.

Unfortunately, the flip side is also true, and I've seen many a company pounce on a Tweet or a blog post trying to shill their product at the expense of others. For a lot of people, competition means that one product has to put another out of business. Many can't see the value in coexisting with competitors, and don't seem to realize that the negative evangelism isn't evangelism at all.

In the current social media climate, there is a great deal of community spirit. It's the reason why my laptop sports a CenterNetworks sticker; I respect what Allen Stern does there, and while Profy and CenterNetworks might be deemed competitors, there is room for more than one tech blog, and we don't cover the same stories or topics very often. It's disappointing when companies still subscribe to the old cut-throat mentality in the social media space, since the two just don't seem to mesh well.