@johnrogers founder and CEO of Local-Motors.com tweeted for help in pulling together a talk he's giving on social media for an upcoming executive education program at Harvard Business School.  I don't personally know Jay.  We were both at an Ultra Light Startups event on crowd sourcing in Boston last May and follow each other on Twitter.  At #ULS Boston Jay told a good story about Local-motors.com and I immediately became a fan.  Cool cars built in small local factories!

So when Jay's tweet came across my desktop I reflected on what Jay had said at #ULSBoston:  “Know your crowd, know your customers”.  For a company like Local-Motors.com that relies on crowd sourcing for design ideas, concept validation, and viral marketing knowing the difference between your crowd and your customers is really important.  Jay's key concept was that you have different constituent groups that interact with your business in different ways.  Some are your customers, some aren't.  They're all important!  This concept really resonated with me and has helped focus some of my own entrepreneurial efforts.  So what do I have to add to Jay's conversation about social media? 

Remembering what Jay had said at #ULSBoston “know your crowd, know your customers”,  Jay's concept was screaming for a snappy buzz-word or acronym.  “The Three C's of Social Media”  sounds a lot better than “The Two C's of Social Media”.  From my perspective the customer is just part of the crowd.  Crowd encompasses the people, and customers are people.  The second C is community.  As JetBoil founder Dwight Aspinwall likes to say "you have a community of customers".  Everyone's trying to build community on the web.  Seth Godin and others use the term “the tribalization of business”.  Sure sounds good when Seth talks about it at TED.

The third C is conversation.  Conversation is where the rubber meets the road in the rapidly evolving realm of social media.  Right now we're all scrambling to learn and adapt as one new innovation after the other keeps tipping the apple cart.  TV had the magic beans for forty years, now what?  What's become immediately clear is that the conversation is happening ... with or without you.  So my contribution to Jay's conversation about social media are the Three C's of Social Media: Crowd, Community, and Conversation.  My intention here is to promote practical conversation on using social media for business.  An obvious next step is to identify tools (Twitter, email newsletters, blogs, FaceBook, forums, etc ...) to use with each of the three C's.  Her you go Jay.  

The Three Cs of Social Media:

1. Crowd – Know your crowd
• Fans – I'm a fan of LocalMotors.com – I like cool cars and the concept.  Until my min-van days are over I won't be a potential Local-Motors customer.
• Potential Customers
• Customers
  
  
2. Community - Support your community or tribe
• Community is built around the needs and values of members – not the sponsoring business
  
  
3. Conversation -- Participate in the conversation
   
   • Engage, Listen, Be positive and open minded - @chrisbrogan