I can’t resist posting a link to this truly awesome guest post by marketer Susan Baier on my new favorite blog Convince and Convert.

Setting aside for a minute her first sentence about relevance (natch), Susan’s post goes through various ways in which the company ThinkGeek connects with their core audience.

According to Jamie Grove, the company’s Director of Evil Schemes and Nefarious Plans (i.e. Marketing), ThinkGeek is “all about serving our community. Our social media activities live in our customer retention sphere, not customer acquisition – because the minute it’s in customer acquisition, it changes the nature of the conversation.”

Read the post and see what you think. I love her descriptions of how the company “acts human”, engages rather than sells, and “speaks their customers’ language”. Despite it being about a consumer products company, the post really resonated with me because all of our associations are made up of a membership with particular quirks. I used to work for an association for psychoanalysts – we used to joke (kindly) among staff about how the members were smart as hell and could really debate and work through issues, but man, they took forever to come to any decisions. I hear stories all the time about “my members” and what they are like. “You know, they are engineers. They like rules.” LOL! But read through Susan’s post, and see if that doesn’t make you think of ways you could use social media to speak your own members’ language.

BONUS:  along similar lines, Mashable points to 5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From.