This month’s Online Community Expert interview is with Jordan Williams, Manager of Digital Engagement at REI. In this role, Jordan is responsible for creating deeper customer engagement through the creation of content and community touch points on REI.com and throughout the social web.
Though firmly planted in the digital world, Jordan is a believer in well-roundedness and previously led REI’s national advertising and marketing strategic planning programs. Prior to REI he was Director of Collegiate Marketing at Red Bull North America and worked on the agency side creating experiential marketing programs for clients such as Sony Music, Mercedes Benz, Wells Fargo and American Express. Finally as a holder of a fine arts degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts he’d like to offer the perspective that marketing is pretty much just theater with better analytics.
Q: What excites you most about your role at REI?
What excites me most about my role at REI is two-fold:
First and foremost it’s the delight and challenge organizationally of helping to move a venerable 70-year old co-op forward in the digital age, especially into increasingly social spaces online. I find that we, like most large brands outside the tech world, are experiencing the strategic and operational challenges of transforming from a push-marketing organization to one embracing a truly customer-centric, two-way marketing and communication model – as many of us have surely experienced: it’s one thing to sign off on the concepts or strategies that drive social media success, but another thing to embrace them at their fundamental core on a day-to-day basis.
Secondly, as a mission driven retail co-op focused on getting people outside it’s exciting to be working on online community because it’s such a natural fit. We’ve been a member-based organization from the day we were founded, we have retail locations around the country where members gather and connect, and we have an extensive outreach program connecting with hundreds of local non-profits, etc. Indeed our troubles are rarely about building a sustainable social media strategy from the ground up, but rather building one that can connect the multitude of connection points, interactions, and content pools we already have in place in the real world.
Q: As a Co-Op, REI already has a passionate and active offline member community. How has the existing community factored in to your online community and social media strategy?
Well you’ve hit the nail on the head as for us it’s really about how we build on the community we already have in place. We want to honor what’s already there while at the same time enable online and mobile connections that will allow it to grow organically and for us that means being able to take a more long term approach. As we’re already supporting our members desire to connect via all of our traditional retail events, classes, outings, etc, on the digital side of things we’re in the enviable place of being able to work on building lasting and meaningful online interactions rather than feeling pressured simply to launch something quickly because of it’s the hot trend right now.
Q. What is the most valuable external (off domain) online community or social media touch point for REI that provides clear and compelling value to both your customer and REI?
We’ve been finding that Facebook is our most valuable external social touch point. The nature of how we want to connect and share with our fans/followers, and they with one another, largely means being more interactive and multimedia that say Twitter might allow. That said we certainly see the opportunity for crafting increasingly platform specific interactions, for example as a retailer we’re certainly aware of the success that Dell has had with their Twitter specific sales strategy.
Q: What advice would you have for a beginning community manager?
For me I see how easy it is to get caught up in the exciting side of the business, e.g. the technology, the platform, the shiny, bleeding edge new feature. But from my experience the way to make an impact is absolutely on the strategic planning and organizational development side of things. It’s not sexy and it’s certainly not easy, but ultimately the real impact if you work on the brand side is found through fundamental organizational transformation.
As an added bonus, I was able to spend a few minutes with Jordan at the Online Community Summit in Sonoma last fall. The video below is from our conversation.
