I have professed my affection for Hood River, OR based Full Sail Brewing repeatedly on this blog.  I love the area and having great beer and a great view while there makes it all the better.

In recent months, my 'friends' on Facebook have grown significantly as has the frequency of my visits (part of a broader trend?)  While tinkering with the Groups capability I decided to search on my favorite brewski and lo and behold there were similar fans that had already set up a group.  That group grew to over 100 people from all over but, curiously, no one from the company.   

Just today, I got a message from this group sent by a Full Sail employee.  He found the group and wanted to know if we wanted to hear from him/them about what is going on.  The response back (apparently) was overwhelming.  His approach was real and authentic.

So, why am I sharing this?

This group of fans/loyal customers grew organically meaning we all found each other having one thing in common – a love of their beer.  We had no incentive to join and really expected nothing in return.

This is how you can use Facebook as part of a marketing plan.  The difficult thing to get your head around is that it can't be done artifically or with one-way marketing techniques.  The forum is dynamic and collaborative and if it loses its authenticity either from the participants or the company, people will bristle and it will stagnate quickly. 

Folks are already weighing in on the nature and frequency of the messages being sent.  They are actually telling the company how to market to them.  Very cool.

I was told there would be no math. 

Contrary to the title of this post, this is not about math per se.  It is about a way to think about how a product is consumed and advocated by your customers.  For the math on this, check out this post from Robert Zubek.

Essentially this is a measure of how "viral" your product is by measuring how many additional users you acquire from each subsequent user.  You have done very little to acquire these customers other than create a great experience for the initial user and have a great product.  Get it?

On-demand/SaaS delivery models allow people to access products and information about those products and the problems they solve at will with a browser and internet connection. 

You can build product functionality to facilitate this with "share this" or "refer a friend" capabilities and, of course, ask your customers to bring you new customers as 'word of mouth' is the holy grail in a modern marketing plan.  It is hard to create this artificially but is amazing to watch when it happens organically.  One of the companies I am working with is seeing this happen and it is really fascinating to watch.

I also like this post by Josh Kopelman on what to do "After the TechCrunch Bump."  The herd that follows posts on sites like this are not target users finding value in your product that they want to share with others.  They are more akin to wildebeests following the lead animal across the plains of the Serengeti making a huge amount of noise, gone before they got there, and leaving behind a great deal of destruction and waste.

Looking to learn how to incorporate blogs into a communications plan?  Want to understand a best practice approach to responding to blog postings and comments both good and bad?  Seeking ways to feel good about your tax dollars spent on defense?  Look no further than this really nicely done graphic brought to you by the US Air Force (via Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research).