Most companies nowadays use social media like they used tradional marketing channel. One way message are constantly pushed onto web users.
They don’t understand brands are now only one voice out of many and that conversation about the brands are occuring constantly everywhere else. Better in some case users are so passionate that they create their own discussion places about the brand where they can support each other or even create more value around the brand products.
This case study looks at BricksBuilder, a community of Lego passionate and how they interact and create value.
Summary
Online communities are becoming “places” of belonging, information, and emotional support that people cannot do without. These social groups have a real existence for their participants, and thus have consequential effects on many aspects of behaviour. This article examines collective value creation and empowerment in an online brand community. It presents the main features of an online brand community, the process of value co-creation, and motivators for participating in online brand communities. These key factors jointly characterize collective value creation and empowerment. This netnographic study focuses on an online brand community called BrickBuilders, which is a meeting place for LEGO builders in Finland. BrickBuilders’ members feel a sense of belonging, they share similar motivations, and they create value together.
On the same topic I highly recommend Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott who described how prosumers in our connected world are changing the way company can innovate, build products or support customers by working in an open ecosystem-like network.
A must read.