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Business Week’s Jay Greene, Seattle based Business Week Bureau Chief, recently sat down with Stefan Olander, General Director of Digital Content for Nike, to discuss Nike + technology and the huge success Nike has had with brand building on the web.
Nike + is a small device that fits inside a runner’s shoe that synchs with an iPod touch or nano to track a runner’s speed, calories, and mileage burned. Once the device is docked, the runner’s data gets uploaded to nikeplus.com, an online global community for runners. With just over two years under their belt, Nike + boasts thousands of users worldwide and nearly one million miles logged in at nikeplus.com. 
Between the impressive numbers for nikeplus.com and Greene’s editorial, I began to wonder why so many major corporations and celebrities have failed to make their social networks a success while others, such as nikeplus.com, have become a fertile place for brand building on the web. I believe the formula for successful brand building on the web is threefold: provide a service, make life easier, and engender community. We may not all have the gigantic budgets of Nike, but we can still apply their winning formula to our particular business model and do so with little out-of-pocket expense.
It’s easy to create quick and simple takeaways for people visiting your site and provide a service. Widgetbox is a free online resource that allows you to design embeddable widgets. Be specific and share a ‘tip of the day’ in your area of expertise or aggregate top industry news streams in your specific niche. Align your brand with excellence by becoming a resource that provides helpful and trustworthy information. To sweeten the deal, offer people who embed your widget on their own blogs a special promotion.
Inspire brand pride and make life easier for your clients by dedicating a section on your website for members to pay it forward. Community members can offer all types of freebies from free eBooks to volunteer services, free space for meet-ups or free webinars in your industry, and even movie tickets or air mileage. The idea is to encourage a sense of camaraderie and, especially during hard times, it’s nice to have a place to go where we feel we’re all in this together.
At the end of the day, the success of any social network is all about the community. I like to think of any network that engenders community as a place that typifies ‘water cooler’ mentality; it’s a collection of like-minded people gathered around one another to share trade secrets and feel part of something. FeedBurner provides easy-to-install web-based tools for audience engagement via blogs, podcasts and commercial publications. Make it simple for people to comment on a new product rollout by sending them a personal invitation to give their feedback. Encourage visitors to invite their own friends to come join a particular conversation stream.
Even without the cachet of a proven lifestyle brand like Nike on our side, we all have the ability to get creative and specific when it comes to brand building on the web.
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