As we help our clients participate with their customer communities, we rely on our experience, the experience of colleagues in the US (who have been at it longer than the Aussies), some hard numbers coming from the marketing research organisations and sometimes trial and error. All the while keeping an eye on the literature in order to capitalise on what the collective industry and academic communities can teach us. And the volume of published work is increasing steadily as; channels proliferate and audiences fragment, the opportunity for consumers to talk to each other spreads through the web and consumers' ability to control their own exposure to advertising becomes widespread. These developments are increasing the focus on the generation of positive Word of Mouth as a marketing strategy. We have written about this in previous posts and the MSI research that shows that customers are more likely to participate in an online community if they feel they are insiders, feel 'embeddedness' . Two researchers from the European School of Management (Jacob&Oetting 2007) recently proposed a model that may explain the components and prerequisites for embeddedness in a paper called 'Empowered Involvement and Word of Mouth: An Agenda for Academic Inquiry' (click to download). Interestingly they looked at the research on employee empowerment with the hypothesis that engaging employees may involve the same processes as engaging customers. Hence the success of some employee innovation communities that are extended to include customers; .Dells' Idea Storm and Salesforce.com's App Exchange being great and current examples. The elements of their 'Empowered Involvement' (EmI) ring true to us; customers/employees must feel

• meaning
• competence
• self-determination and
• impact

All of these Resonate with our experience in delivering what it takes to create advocacy (positive WOM) through community involvement. There is one component missing however. If EmI is to produce WOM behaviour that converts to positive business results, you cannot leave the creation of content completely to chance, or the customer. You have to provide the story that will sit inside the WOM behaviour. The best stories make WOM effective at producing the best results for the customer and the brand. Seth Godin's "All Marketers are Liars" could almost be adopted as a text book on this subject. Sometimes the story needs to be reinforced with props; in one case we gave working models to our advocates so they could demonstrate the story while talking. For advocacy through online communities, give members; a subject with meaning to them, a subject about which they are competent or wish to be, a degree of choice in how they participate, proof that they are making a difference when they participate and a story to tell when they discuss the subject with their family and friends.