SPURspectives

In his March 15 post The Neighborhood Feel, Chris Brogan sketches a brief history of the rise of mass communications and describes the resulting “disconnect between businesses needing to reach potential customers and any chance of personalization and localization.”

He concludes by asking, “Do we want that neighborhood feel back?”

The answer is yes, we do.

The real thing

One way to get that neighborhood feel back is to live in a great neighborhood.

I often describe my Eastern Market neighborhood (on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC) as a small town in the middle of a big city. I know many local business owners, store employees, and merchants at the historic market by name. And they know my preferences and my habits. The produce lady at Eastern Market knows I have a weakness for yellow bell peppers. They poultry guy knows I’ll want organic chicken breasts. The baristas at Peregrine Espresso often start making my cappuccino before I even order it. The folks at Marvelous Market know I always bring my own bag.

When a friend stayed with me last week, she commented on how many people in the shops and market stalls knew my name - and how many more waved and smiled hello. She’s right. It’s something I’ve come to take for granted. But when I stop and think about it, I realize that my neighborhood is special - it has a “get to know you” vibe that makes it unique, and that makes living and shopping here particularly satisfying.

The next best thing

Where the neighborhood feel that Brogan is getting at becomes much more important to me is when I get online or pick up the phone to order a product or service from a business I’ve done business with before - or am likely to do business with again.

This is where the incredible potential of social media comes into play. Done right, social media can create a very real sense of neighborhood.

A few months ago in a post on this blog, David Svet, CEO at Spur Communications, likened social media to a virtual front porch - as a meeting place where people are finding and creating the community they are searching for. This is because social media enables a level of personalization and two-way communication that creates a sense of community where people can feel like people, not numbers.

The tools are there to create scalable intimacy, and the potential is there to cultivate long-term relationships with your friends, customers and constituents - relationships that include personalization and localization, but that aren’t dependent on geography. In fact, one of the great things about virtual neighborhoods is that no matter where you live, you can always take your virtual neighbors with you.

We like it when businesses make us feel like we matter. We like to feel like we’re a part of a community. This desire extends to our relationships online, as well. Businesses and nonprofits alike should be using social media (and 1:1 integrated marketing) to give people what they crave: that “neighborhood feel.”

Tags: front porch, mass communications, social media