Welcome Enterprise Marketing Folk. Seriously.

[This is the 4th in my series about online communities. Each has been tagged Community Conversations if you wish to join in or see the rest.]

A couple years ago, Robert Scoble and I co-authored a book that began with the words, "We live in a time when most people don't trust big companies." A great deal has happened since then and as words like "Enron," started fading from the rear view mirror of the road behind, there is some lessening of the public anger and suspicion toward the global enterprise.

I would argue that social media and communities has something to do with that lessening.  Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, two of the earliest and bloggingest of global companies are both viewed more warmly than they were then. Yes, there were other factors, but social media seems to have helped customers see that their were real humans doing real jobs and caring about customers in both places.

In most of the world's corporations marketing and branding executives have turned a watchful and hopeful eye toward online communities and social media. They did not come quickly or easily to their current position. First they disdained, then they got pissed, but as they did, they kept stumbling over the corpses of traditional techniques. A day came when they realized most people were not warmed to receive unsolicited marketing messages in their email bixs; that very few people would tell them they enjoy their TV ads, believed their media campaigns, loved the sound of whoosh and pop on web sites.

In fact, the overwhelming number of of enterprise marketing people have arrived on the ungated doorstep of communities because what they have always done has started to fail steadily and often abysmally. People, as we wrote, "just don't like being marketed to. They prefer having conversations."

The mainstream element remains, it seems to me, unclear on the concept of conversations. They think it is just rhetoric to say generosity is the key to influencing a community. They don't understand yet that community generosity is a free reward in exchange for your email address, or that the community wisdom that says members trust members rather than ads, is not about a tell-a-friend.  They don't understand that going viral usually means you need to see a doctor.

A good number of people in large organization, do understand however. These people are found in conversations on blogs and microblogs, at face-to-face events, in video and on podcasts.  They have taken the time and made the effort and now are included in avery inclusive and burgeoning community.

But they are not mainstream marketing people, who still want to do what they have always done and they want to treat communities, not as a place where people of similar interests can share that which is valuable or interesting. Instead they want to treat it as a channel where they can stuff messages.

I can only tell you about the future after I'm looking back at it, but I am pretty certain they will fail in these efforts. And I am hopeful that this is the case. I have often said that these are transformational times.  That means large and powerful entities will be disrupted by smaller entities, often because the small ones figure out how to get closer with customers. Some companies will survive, but now the incumbent members of the marketing and branding teams. I predict that those who can't lend a hand will be made to step aside as the time keep changing.

Marketing must understand the incredible, business model advantages to communities. They allow the direct interaction with customers, competitors, investors and employees.  The create the type of simple market that lasted for a few thousand years until broadcast media temporarily disrupted it.

This direct interaction makes traditional marketing approaches extremely ineffivient, inefficient enough to screw the bottom line; inefficient enough to give a smaller competitor lots of window that can be slammed shut on your fingers.

To me, it doesn't really matter whether or not you build or join a community. Personally, that seems to me to be the wrong question.  The real question, and the one that will make a difference to your company is what you actually do in the community once it is there. Will you earn the trust of its members? Will you give them information that is value because it is objective?  Will you concede when your competitor beats you in a single area and ask community members to advise you on how to overtake them?

These are real questions. If you are a marketing executive, I really don't care what choices you make.  The tipping point was a long time ago. There is now a flood of change. You are no longer in control. In fact, your really never were, but now the community residents understand the dynamics and will sometimes quietly, but often passionately, will influence what other community members will buy, watch, listen to and a great deal more.

Next: I'll look at a few examples of how companies can join and build communities that flouris, thus causing fundamental-or incremental-benefits to the companies.