A new trend is developing in the world of Social Media: Customer Clustering — A method of grouping your customers who have similar interests and adding the basics of social networking.

A couple examples…

eBay Neighborhoods
eBay is all over the latest social media technologies and strategies. Recently, we mentioned their new desktop app in an article about The Browserless Web. In this article we are covering their latest addition, eBay Neighborhoods.

eBay Neighborhoods are designed to help you find “gathering place for fans of a certain product, team, artist, and more.” Within each neighborhood, you have the ability to share and vote on images, participate in discussions, find guides, read reviews, discover blog posts, and of course, bid on items that match the interests of the neighborhood.

ViewPoints.com
ViewPoints is designed to help you “find reviews from people like you.” By using their “I am” tags, you can find users that have similar interests or traits that you feel would help you agree with their reviews.

For example, if you wanted to find reviews on Baby Carriers, the “I am” tags would allow you to filter by: experienced parent, baby wearers, thirty-somethings, style conscious, earth mama, and more.

Like eBay Neighborhoods, ViewPoints includes some standard social networking aspects in the mix. You can rate the reviewers, comment on the individual reviews, compare prices, upload photos, build friends and fans, post blogs, and more.

Why should I consider customer clustering?

Grouping similar interests has been available in a variety of forms for years. For TV, you have channels that only show programming on a certain topic. Each radio station plays a different genre of music. Online, you have groups, forums, blogs, and more.

So, what makes this different? Previously, this happened outside of a company’s customer base. Now, companies are able to achieve this within their customer base, and by doing so receive some major benefits:

• Build customer loyalty - You will be providing your customers a place to belong
• Promote word-of-mouth - Due to the social nature, if your customers like it they will share with their friends and associates
• Create additional revenue - Advertising, memberships, cross-selling, related products and more additional revenue streams become possible with customer clustering
• Get important feedback - When customers review you products or suggest your services, listen and take note
• Create differentiation from competition - Providing this feature to your customers makes you stand out from your competition

How do I know what my clusters should be?

First, look at the products and services you offer. Build groups for your top products or services, allow your customers to trade ideas, thoughts, advice, help photos and more.

Second, let your customers define the clusters! They are going to be the ones that participate, let them take ownership. Provide the functionality which allows your customers to create new groups.

What are my next steps?

1. Explore and participate in the sites mentioned above
2. Build a list of possible groups for your customer base
3. Add the functionality that would benefit both your organization and your customers to that list
4. Contact your web developer or contact Chief Ingredient for more information on how to build customer clusters for your organization

Tags: customer clustering, examples, market research, marketing research, social media, thoughts

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Industry News, Marketing Misc, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.