Clever presentation title
How building a community is like
dating a pretty girl
Saul Colt – Head of Magic
April 1st/09 – Wired Wednesday Toronto

My name is…..

…and I am the…
Head of Magic at

A little about me

[Might as well start off
with an apology]

[Should probably add
another apology here
as well]

So why am I here today?

To explain how building a
community is like dating a pretty
girl!

The Dictionary says….
Community is a social group of
any size whose members share a
common characteristic or interest and are
perceived as distinct in some respect from
the larger society

So why are
Communities important?
• Can provide you with input
• Make brands human
• Cheerlead for brands
• You have one already if you know it or not,
so why not join the fun!

So how do you build a
community?

In the 50’s people knew
their customers!

4 E’s
•Execute
•Extraordinary
•Experiences
•Everyday

“To really know what is going on
within your community you have
to read the entire Internet every
single day!”
-Saul Colt, April 1st, 2009

Web 2.0 lets you go back to
that!

So how is this like dating?
For the rest of this day think of your
product or service as ……

So how is this like dating?
… and think of your community
as……

Life Cycle of Dating
• Introduction
• Attraction
• Courting
• Dating
• Love

Introduction
Introductions can come from anywhere
• Friends/referrals
• Advertising
• WOM
• Etc
• Etc
• etc

Attraction
No one really knows how attraction works
and why some people like one think over
the other..kinda like how there are….
…but few people like them both!

Courting/Dating
Or doing nice things!

Courting/Dating
Or doing nice things!

Love
The goal is to get here…

Why?
• Love spreads fast
• People love to be in Love and
Love to see people in Love
• Love is infectious
• People talk about love
• People Tweet about love and
start conversations

Speaking of
Twitter
Warning – something shameless coming in the next slide

Audience Participation!
1. Log onto Twitter on your phone or laptop.
2. [All the women in the room tweet] “OMG I
just made out with @SaulColt and it was
surprisingly good”
3. [All the men in the room tweet] “OMG I just
made out with @SaulColt and it was
surprisingly good”
4. Feel good because you just helped build up
the myth of “saul”

So how do you get to Love?
• Treat her well and you will be rewarded
• Keep her interested
• Show her you care and show her what you
are up to!
• Handsome is not a substitute for
personality
• Handsome does not make you popular
• You will have to sometimes deal with
jealousy

So in the words of Heavy D
“now that we found love, what are
we gonna do…with it?

Do Interesting Things!

Shower your community
with Cereal

See your
Results in
Real time!

Doing this stuff takes
time and effort but…
But Love is worth it

…and so is the time you spend
with your community!

…so in
closing

and this is even more super important
• Building communities is like making love to
customers can never ever ever be a campaign.
• Building communities will deliver incredible ROI
but it can’t be tracked the traditional way.
• These initiatives need to be done in-house and
can’t be given to an agency.
• This is a foundation of a sexy WOM campaign –
Live the 4 E’s

Any Questions?