You’re walking down the street. The woman in front of you suddenly drops her bag, spilling its contents onto the sidewalk. You could ignore her and just keep walking. Or you could stop and help. If you do that, you could make her smile and say, “thanks.” This has the potential to make her day. Make her happy. Or you could just keep walking.

Humans are potential. We all have it. And not in the hokey, after-school special way. I mean in the big-picture, all-encompassing, soulful way. This potential is everywhere and nowhere.  You can choose to do something good with this potential or not. The beauty and the burden is that it’s your choice.

Of course, we all have varying degrees of potential. Some of us have potential as large as the universe and then there’s a few of us who have potential as small as an atom. Thankfully, our capacity (or lack thereof) isn’t static. It’s not fixed. Your potential today can be different than your potential tomorrow. It might increase if you help that woman collect her belongings on the sidewalk. It might not. The point is that we all have the power to decide where even the tiniest piece of potential goes.

How will use your potential? Or help others to use theirs?

When it comes to building communities through social media and in real life, big and established brands can learn a lot from start-ups.

Here’s a list of four ways start-ups do it better and how you can learn from them.

1. They’re obsessed with authenticity.

Big brand stunts like Oreo’s Cookie vs. Creme and, further back, Old Spice are just that–stunts. I’m not saying they’re all bad, but they shouldn’t be a part of your short or long-term plans for community growth. No one likes a fair-weather friend, so don’t be the brand that pops up only to deliver good news or fun prizes. You may be giving something away, but it still shouts, “Look at me!” And that’s not authentic. It’s just needy.

2. They ‘get out of the building’.

How do you find out what people think of your product or idea? You ask them. By getting out of the building and heading to the “streets” (or wherever), you’ll get the kind of knowledge that has the potential to improve your product. This is part of a process called ‘customer development’.

Customer development is a fancy term for listening to your  (current or prospective) customers. Start-ups understand this and do it well because it’s crucial to the development of their product. They spend time talking to people. As a result, they’ve an inherent understanding of the long-term value of maintaining conversations–after all, it’s going to make or break the buying relationship.

Established and big brands can learn from this process. Granted, it will mean that they’ll need to re-tool how they currently shape their product. They’ll also need to take responsibility for doing these cust dev style interviews themselves, or find an agency willing to work not as a vendor, but as a partner in product development.

3. They turn users into brand evangelists.

When people love your product, a funny thing happens… they talk about it. When people have a bad experience with your product, they also talk about it–on your Facebook page, @reply you on Twitter, or on your company blog. The thing is, start-ups are great about understanding you can’t hide bad customer experiences. They get that you have to take the good with the bad and harness it to create a better, more transparent experience moving forward. This builds trust. Trust grants you access into people’s hearts and minds. So, take the good with the bad and use service and communication as a means to market your product.

4. They take risks.

It’s more important to build a highly engaged community of raving fans than it is to create a product, brand or service that is everything to everyone. Apple is always lauded for its market dominance, but there was a time when they were a start-up and no one cared what products they came out with. No talked-about press conferences, no long lines, and no stores (!).  For the most part, what propelled Apple to where it is today is due to the stubborn pursuit of customer delight. Start-ups get this. Mimic them.

“If you build it, they will come.”

Famous line from the epic Kevin Costner movie, “Field of Dreams.” Also a very valid statement when applied to brands looking for greater social media ROI.

You see, when you’re a marketer, nearly every day is spent discussing the Holy Trinity: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Everyone wants a new way of harnessing the power of social channels to raise awareness of their brand. Oh, and while we’re at it, how about a big idea for using these social media platforms in a revolutionary new way?

Making matters more complicated is that brands typically want this big idea only when they’ve got a major announcement to make. Thus, they’re often busting ass to build their audience at the same time they’re supposed to be sharing an important message. Needless to say, this is a bad spot to be in. The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

Established brands can reap long-term benefits from social media–and spend less time obsessing over stunts–if they start building their community of brand evangelists before they need to.

Straightforward, right?

You’d think–but I still come across well-known brands that don’t understand how important it is to start building their community before the next big media push. Often, they’ll say they don’t “have it in the budget” to maintain such a strong community year-round. Really, you don’t?

Whenever I hear this, I almost always think of the start-ups I’ve had the good fortune of working with over the years. Barely any of them had significant marketing dollars to work with, let alone a line item for a community manager in their operating budget. But at the end of the day, the founders of these start-ups are on Twitter and Facebook talking to customers, getting a read on customer sentiment, and integrating that feedback not only into the development of their product, but also into their marketing efforts going forward. (Just a few great examples: Elizabeth Yin from LaunchBit; Lance Walley from Chargify; Jesse Lamb from Dispatch; Des Traynor from Intercom; Todd Garland from BuySellAds.com; Hiten Shah from KISSmetrics). 

Building a strong community isn’t about budget–it’s about abandoning the notion that social media and conversations with customers is separate from marketing. Nowadays, that is marketing. And the faster brands realize that, the better off they’ll be.