I own a lot of shoes. I mean, a ridiculous amount. If you went to my apartment, all you’d see are cats and shoes. I have an interest, and specifically, I am interested in DC Shoes. I own a few pairs, to put it nicely.
Sneaker people are like any other group with a niche passion. Sneaker people are nerds. They love their kicks long and hard, and when it comes to their favorite brands, they’re fanatics and fiercely loyal. You really couldn’t ask for a better customer base, or one more primed to go ballistic in their online habitats professing their love for your products. Around here we call them “brand evangelists.”
Which is why I was surprised to find that DC Shoes didn’t have more of a social media presence. Their target demographics are younger buyers, collectors, and skate/snowboard fanatics, all populations who are heavily invested in social media (not to mention have impressive amounts of disposable income). They’re missing out on a very real opportunity for their brand.
They have official Myspace and Facebook pages with huge numbers of fans, 12,680 and 153,468, respectively, despite the fact that their pages don’t have a whole lot of compelling content or activity from their end. And they’re podcasting on a pretty regular basis, so they’ve got a big toe in the water. I just see the potential for a lot more. Here’s what I’d like to see:
Widgets
- News Feed - DC does some amazing collaborations with artists and designers, and they’re constantly adding new athletes to their sponsored teams. I have a hard time keeping up with them, because they have several microsites branching off the main site. Though it’s definitely eye candy, I don’t have enough time to click through everything to catch up. A customizable news feed widget would be helpful here, so that I could decide whether I wanted to know when they released a new line or added an athlete to their snowboarding team.
- Video Widget - They have several channels on their site populated by videos. I want a customizable widget where I can see and share just snowboarding or skate videos, or all of them together, depending on my interests.
- Shoe Widget – I want to pick out my favorite shoes and compile them all into a flash widget so that people can get a sense of my personal DC style. The widget will be eye candy on my blog or page, so I want to be able to customize features like how quickly one image moves to the next, and what the wrapper looks like.
- When I searched around, I noticed there were about a dozen or so fan and group pages related to DC Shoes, but that their official one was called “DC Shoe Co.” Not the most obvious. All these unofficial pages have amassed little battalions of fans who need to be merged into one big army.
- There are only 3 mediocre discussion threads started on their Facebook page. Those pages are really valuable for mining customer sentiment, if you ask the right questions and can get people talking.
- I want a DC Shoes app. I’m sorry, I am just one of those people that likes to “Send your favorite DC Shoe to a friend!” And there are others like me.
Twitter
- Twitter is crawling with sneak heads, including some brands, like @LemarandDauley, with whom DC Shoes has already collaborated. Expand and reach out to other users like @kicksonfire, @robustflava, @Sneakhype, or @nicekicks, for starters.
After what is obviously just a cursory look at what DC Shoes has been up to in the social media sphere, these are some basic ideas for laying the framework. After your company has a solid social media construction, then it’s up to you to start scheming about what kind of creative tactics work for you and your customer base. But you need the means for implementation to be in place first.
Tie laces first. Then shred.
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