Now? Yeah, I lived in Austin. I graduated and then lived in Colorado for a while, then Missouri, then Atlanta, and most recently South Carolina. My wife, who’s from New York, came here for an M&A deal. She’s a CFO of a company. She had never been to Austin in her life, and after two nights she came back home and said, “I don’t want to live in Austin.” I told her I promised myself if I ever moved back to Texas, there’d only be one city I’d live in. That was 10 years ago, and we’ve been in Austin ever since.
How to Build Online Communities with Spike Jones
with Shane Barker
In this episode, Shane Barker interviews Spike Jones of Khoros about harnessing the power of online communities for modern brands. Spike outlines effective strategies, emphasizing robust social listening, multiple engagement channels, and proactive customer support. He discusses common pitfalls and demonstrates how integrated social tools can boost word-of-mouth and sustainable growth. Tune in for actionable insights to transform digital conversations into thriving communities.
Today's guest...
Spike Jones
Spike Jones is a seasoned brand strategist, storyteller, and marketing leader with deep expertise in brand development, word-of-mouth engagement, and digital marketing. As Head of Global Marketing at argodesign, he helps brands craft compelling narratives, build strong customer connections, and drive meaningful business impact through data-backed strategies and creative storytelling.
With a background in advertising, branding, and social media, Spike has worked with global agencies and tech firms, integrating WOMM (Word-of-Mouth Marketing) into corporate strategies and building marketing teams from the ground up. He co-authored a book on the discipline and has led high-performing, cross-functional teams, scaling operations and driving 350% P&L growth with a 95% customer retention rate.
A dynamic speaker, mentor, and thought leader, Spike is known for empowering teams, fostering innovation, and transforming brands. His unique blend of strategic insight, leadership, and authenticity continues to elevate businesses and inspire the marketing world.
Episode Show Notes
In this episode of The Marketing Growth Podcast, host Shane Barker sits down with Spike Jones, General Manager of the Strategic Services team at Khoros, to explore the art of building online communities. Spike draws on his extensive experience in digital and social media marketing to explain why creating a strong, engaged community is essential for modern brands. He emphasizes that successful community building goes beyond just broadcasting messages—it requires active listening, responsiveness, and providing multiple channels for engagement.
Spike outlines common pitfalls, such as over-prioritizing influencer interactions at the expense of addressing broader customer concerns, and neglecting the importance of an omnichannel approach. He explains how leveraging robust social listening tools can help brands consolidate feedback, defuse potential crises, and nurture authentic brand love. By transforming online interactions into meaningful conversations, companies can reduce customer service costs and foster a sense of belonging among their audience. Shane and Spike also discuss how a well-managed online community can serve as a powerful driver of word-of-mouth marketing, ultimately contributing to sustainable business growth.
Books mentioned
(None)
Brands mentioned
- Khoros
Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. Today, I’m with Spike Jones, the general manager for the Strategic Services team at Khoros. He has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and social media marketing and has helped big companies create integrated digital and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. In today’s episode, I want to discuss with him why brands need to build online communities and the mistakes they can avoid in the process.
However, before we dive into building online communities, I want to remind our listeners that my team can help your brand build visibility online. We offer services like influencer marketing, online PR, content marketing, and more. For more details, check out my website: shanebarker.com—that’s S, H, A, N, E, B, A, R, K, E, R.com. Now that we’ve got that covered, let’s get back to the episode.
Alright, you guys—hey, today we’re super excited. We got Spike Jones on the podcast. Spike, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today.
Spike Jones
My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. And I know you’re disappointed it’s not the director Spike Jones, but I’ll do my best to fill in.
Yeah, that’s the thing. I honestly think I’d rather have you. I was looking at your background, the books you’ve written, and what you’ve done historically—I think you’re a better fit for my audience. I’ll reach out to the other Spike, but honestly, even if he said yes, I don’t know if I’d interview him. It wouldn’t even be worth our time when we’ve got you today. So why don’t you just give us a little background—like, where did you grow up?
Spike Jones
That’d be Dallas, Texas—good old Dallas. Mostly inner city, but Dallas is where I head from.
Gotcha, right. And then how big was your family in Dallas?
Spike Jones
So I was actually adopted when I was a wee baby, a wee child. It was just my sister and me—she was also adopted. They bought her in San Antonio and bought me in Dallas, and then it was just mom and dad.
“They bought me.” I love that. It seemed to be a pretty good investment. I mean, if they bought you—last time I checked, you’re not doing too bad, my friend.
Spike Jones
It was a crap shoot for them at the time. I’m sure.
I know, but they’re obviously very intelligent parents. They were like, “No, no, not that one, not that one. We’ll take the Spike. We’ll call him Spike. We’ll take that one right there.” That’s awesome—I love that. I love the way you look at it too. You’ve picked up a few things, paid the price, and now things are good. So, tell us—any interesting facts from growing up? Anything fun with the family?
Spike Jones
You know, I was raised by basically Ward and June Cleaver—two of the nicest people you could ever have—and my mom, my adopted mother, who is my mom. She actually grew up in an orphanage herself; she was adopted when she was 18 years old. So, just really cool, some really cool people. One of the highlights of my childhood is I got to spend a lot of my summers on my grandparents’ ranch out in East Texas, punching cattle. I got to do the true cowboy thing, which gave me a lot of respect for ranchers because that’s some hard work. But my grandfather was a great man, and he made sure we had fun while we were there. I have lots of great memories of building hay forts, going cane pole fishing, and then catching catfish in the little pond. And actually, when I was in the talented and gifted program in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, you had to write a 25-page book. I wrote about that and those are some really good memories.
Yeah, you were in the GATE program. I was in the GATE program. I haven’t heard “gifted and talented education” used in a while—it’s been a little while since I’ve heard that acronym. Interesting. I don’t know how I got in; somehow they were like, “Hey, we’re gonna bring you in GATE,” and my mom was like, “Wow, gifted and talented.” I was like, “I don’t know how they did it—they must not have seen my profile, but somehow I got picked.” I was like, “This is super exciting.” That’s funny. That’s awesome. I love that.
It’s really awesome that your mom was in a situation where she was like, “Hey, I’m going to get back to the community as well, and I’m going to adopt two amazing kids.” So that’s cool. And it’s another thing I was thinking about—where I was raised. I remember my dad was always pushing us, “Hey, go to college. Go to college.” And I think about it: when you’re working on the farm with your grandparents, you realize what life is like and how hard it is. For me, my dad was like, “Hey, we’re gonna go put in the sprinkler system in the backyard.” I was like, “Oh, it’s not too bad. No problem, grab a shovel.” And these little delicate, fragile hands—I hadn’t seen too much hard work at that age by any means. We’re digging away, and it’s nothing but hard pan. I remember looking at my dad, and my hands were a little bloody—not overly bloody, but bloody enough that I was looking at him. He goes, “Yeah. Do you want to go to college? I want to go to college right now. Is there any way I can just transfer at age seven and go right now?” Because I understand what you’re saying, and I just wouldn’t like to do that. So I think that was a pivotal point for me when I realized—probably for you too—not that ranching isn’t something you might want to do, but you look at it and think, “There’s got to be an easier way.” When you understand the lifestyle, you definitely gain a new appreciation, for sure.
Spike Jones
Yeah, and you absolutely nailed it. Every summer, my grandmother—she did the books—would write us a ledger, one of those big ledger checks to pay us for the summer. I was 11 or 12 at the time, so it was like 150 bucks for three months of hard labor. Probably broke some child labor laws, but anyway, then my grandfather handed it to me and said, “Boy, this is why you need to go to college.”
Yeah, no, that’s it. I mean, that’s the thing: 150 bucks is awesome, but if I go to college, I can make more. Okay, I get it, I get it. Now I can get it. I think it makes total sense. And then, do you still live in—no, you live in Austin, right? Where do you live?
Spike Jones
That’s awesome. Yeah, you know, I’ve only been to Austin once, and that was probably last year. It feels like nine years together with COVID, but it was last year, and I loved Austin. I wasn’t there for South by Southwest or anything crazy, but it was just a great city—with the culture, the food, and everything about it. I was only there for like three days, and I wasn’t even there for an event; I just made an excuse. I said I had meetings out there just to go and check out Austin. What a great city—an absolutely amazing city.
Spike Jones
Absolutely, we love it. We say the only thing wrong with Austin is that it’s surrounded by Texas. That’s our only thought.
Ah, yes, I didn’t realize that it’s surrounded by Texas. Who knew? That’s kind of funny. So, where did you go to college?
Spike Jones
I went to good old Baylor University, which is actually halfway between here in Dallas. Back then, it was before Chip and Joanna Gaines and Magnolia Farms—before it was a tourist destination. I believe Waco had the highest murder per capita rate in the nation. I was there when the Branch Davidian thing went down, if anyone remembers that. We would pack up every Thursday or Friday and drive to UT here in Austin or go to Dallas and hang out on the weekend. It was an interesting time, but a good school.
So Baylor, is it in Waco?
Spike Jones
It is in Waco. We ain’t coming out yet.
I knew that. So, what’s weird is I saw either an HBO special or something on Hulu about the Davidian group, and I watched the whole thing. Obviously, we only saw it from the media—I mean, I’m in California, so we saw the media and public coverage of what happened. But it was interesting to see the inside and how they did things. I remember back in the day when it happened, I was like, “What just happened?” At the end—obviously, if anybody hasn’t seen it, I probably shouldn’t say the end—it really threw you back. Like, “Wait, who was at fault here? What do we have going on? What were they doing wrong?” It was an interesting time because I didn’t have much background on that story other than hearing about it as a cult or whatever they wanted to call it. So, it’s an interesting backstory.
Spike Jones
Yeah, for sure, we would go out there whenever they were holed up in the encampment, and the psychological warfare was fascinating. The ATF would set up huge speakers and play a baby crying for hours, or like a cow mooing. It was—wow. Really, wow.
It is crazy, because when I started to look at that, I thought, “Man, this is just like, what?” You might not agree with what they’re doing—and I’m not getting into the politics of it—but why the psychological warfare? Like, what’s the benefit of that? What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to make them go crazy? I just remember watching the movie, and it was interesting to see the other side of it, what was happening to them, because we don’t see that part. All we heard was, “This is what’s happening here in California.” Anyways, they did this, blew themselves up, or did whatever, and it’s like, whoa. There’s a whole other part of the story—a lot deeper piece of it that we don’t get to see. We just see the end and what people are making assumptions about.
Spike Jones
Not to belabor it, but another thing is I’ve met some of them before it happened. When you’re around town, they’re really pleasant, nice people.
Yeah, that’s the thing. They didn’t seem— you might not agree with what they’re doing, but they didn’t seem like bad people. I guess that’s what it was: a really bad situation. So anyway, if you guys are listening and you haven’t seen that movie, go check it out—it’s definitely interesting. So what was your first job out of college? What did you do right when you graduated?
Spike Jones
Well, I was a journalist—I double majored in journalism and environmental studies. So, my first job: I actually had a friend in Vail and moved out there for a bit because I got one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to work for the mountain and get a ski pass. But my first real job was working for an environmental remediation company in Atlanta. Their main goal was to remove lead-based paint and asbestos from military institutions, and I was hired to answer government RFPs. Super interesting work—very tight work.
Yeah, I see that. RFPs—those things are, man, I look at them and, being detail-oriented, it’s just so hard. My wife is the first one to catch anything I miss. I’ll be like, “I’m drowning in paperwork,” and she’s like, “Hey, you forgot to sign here, you forgot to do this.” And I’m like, “Oh, no problem, I’ll sign, I’ll read it real quick, I have an attorney, I’ll send it over.” It’s just, you need someone who’s really good at that kind of stuff. I’m always in fifth or sixth gear, so I miss the details. That’s kind of funny. So, RFPs—you started off doing that, right?
Spike Jones
Yeah, no doubt, right? But you know, getting further in my career, entering the creative RFPs was great. Those were cool, but the tediousness of CAD drawings and all that was just not my bag. But, you know, it was experience.
And then, how did you start off at Khoros? I mean, you’ve been there for almost four years now.
Spike Jones
It’ll be five in March, actually. So from there, I got a long story, but I ended up in South Carolina and became a copywriter for an ad agency. This was back in the day before social, so it was copywriting for magazines, television, and radio—super fun. I did that for about 10 years, and then we kind of transformed—I’m not going to get into it—into a word-of-mouth company, talking about word-of-mouth movements and the true community. That really made a name for myself. I was lucky enough to do some thought leadership there, and then I went on to big PR firms and reinvented myself, building digital teams inside Fleish and Hilliard Edelman.
When I got to Element, I’d been there about three or four years, and I thought, “Okay, this is my goal. I want to get to a big, well-known PR firm. This is it. I’m going to spend the rest of my days here, retiring from this.” Then I met a woman I used to work with at Rains on Fire—the creative agency—at a Christmas party. She was like, “Hey, I’m in tech. I think I got a job that you’ll really like.” I was like, “You know what? I don’t want to get into tech; that sounds terrible. And then social media tech sounds just the worst.” But she kept saying, “No, you should come in, talk to the team. Come in, talk to the team.” So I did, and I found out it was basically running an agency inside a software company. I was like, “Ah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I’ll take that job.” And she said, “No, no, you have to apply for it now.” Hands down, one of the best decisions I’ve made—we’ve just seen tremendous growth. It’s really interesting to run an agency inside what we call the warm blanket of a software company.
Yeah, that’s interesting. So, what attracted you about them? I understand it’s kind of like an agency inside a software company, but what were some of the unique things they were doing that brought you there? I’m thinking more along the lines of your unique value proposition—what was the thing that made you say, “Okay, this makes sense”?
Spike Jones
Um, I mean, even just five years ago, it was still kind of an emerging industry when it came to having tools to help brands with social—not only listening, but also responding. And you know, the tech evolved so quickly with the APIs on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all of them. It was such a fast-moving space that attracted me, because we had to learn new things all the time, but we had the inside track. When I was working at Edelman or Flash, we had relationships with Facebook and Twitter. But at Khoros, it was like, “Hey, you know, we want to be your partner.” We knew the dudes and ladies who were making the programming changes—so we were influencing where social was going. For me, that was really interesting, and layering that with being able to do excellent work for our customers using our own tools made it even better.
Yeah, because you guys are pulling in the data and tailoring it to whatever you need for dashboards and tracking what’s happening. Absolutely. For me, it’s all about community building—the fact that you’re able to bring it all together. So why is it so important for brands to build these communities, especially when it comes to using the tool for listening?
Spike Jones
Yeah, I think the very word “community” is something you and I grew up with. I always use the anecdote from when I worked at Fleishman. There was a big telecom company we worked for back in the day on Facebook where you couldn’t comment on a brand’s page unless you liked it. This particular company was one of the biggest in the nation, but no one liked them. People had to like the page just to tell them how much they hated them, and they would get millions of likes. Is that a community? Actually, it is—a community of people that hate you, in a way.
I think social media brought out the idea of taking community back—what does true community mean? To me, it’s a group of like-minded people who share ideas and look out for one another. They might not always agree, but they’re all there for a reason. Brands should use community as more than just a way to deflect calls from a call center or to have people ask and answer questions. It’s a necessity now, not only for the big, sexy brands but for everyday brands as well.
Love that. I love that back in the day, you had to like something to be able to send a flame and tell them how much you hate them. You’re like, “God, this is terrible. I have to like them.” And then they’re like, “Look, look at how many likes we have. We’re really doing a great job.” Just don’t read the comments, but we do have millions of people that like us. So with Khoros, how do you think—how are you guys helping build community? I know that’s a big thing for you guys with the listening, and we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. But how is the software actually helping build communities?
Spike Jones
So I think it’s two different ways. Part of the software helps build communities on social by actively listening to those communities out there. It might not be a destination per se, but, you know, a big-box retail brand—one of my customers—uses it to go out into the social sphere, find people who love them and love them back, and create what we call brand love. Then another part of the software creates a physical destination community. This is a place where if someone has a problem, they can go first to the community to find the answer, which deflects costs from the call center. Those are two ends of the spectrum, which is why I was so excited when SpreadFast and Lithium came together—one had the social part and the other had the pure destination community component.
Yeah, I think it makes total sense. Even brands today have an issue when somebody says something phenomenal about them and they don’t know it or don’t respond—that’s a huge issue. I know plenty of brands that don’t respond on social, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad, you should respond; if it’s good, you should respond. You really need to be in that conversation. The problem is that with social, things can take off in a hot second, and if you’re not there to put the flame out or figure out what’s going on, things can escalate fast. We’ve seen that with plenty of brands—like, “Oh, we were asleep at the wheel for a day, and look what happened.” So I think that’s one of those crazy things. But what do you think? What are some of the most common mistakes that brands make when building an online community? You’ve been doing this a long time, so what do you see as the common mistakes?
Spike Jones
Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes is what you just alluded to—it’s not only about not responding, but also about who you respond to and in what order. We’ve gone influencer crazy over the past handful of years, so people think, “I need to respond to the influencers first.” And in some cases, that’s true. But when your brand’s going through a crisis, you need to be able to listen to what’s going on out there and then decide whether to engage or to stay away from that conversation, because you know it could just add fuel to the fire. You really need to address these issues, then take that data back to your PR team and say, “Here’s what we need to talk about, and here’s the audience we should be addressing.”
Right now, a lot of brands are just shotgunning their responses—they see someone with 5,000 followers and think, “That person looks important; I’ll respond to them,” when they should actually be prioritizing topics first. I think another common mistake is overemphasizing certain channels. We’re probably going to talk about omnichannel soon, but there are just so many ways customers expect to reach a brand. Most brands still have you come to their website, send an email if you can find it, or call a phone number that’s buried somewhere. Or maybe DM on Twitter. But there are dozens of other ways customers expect to be able to reach you, and brands need to be available where their customers are.
Yeah, more and more, right? I mean, there are more and more platforms and ways to reach out, and if you’re not available on a different platform or DM, you’re missing an opportunity. I think that’s interesting because it’s getting harder and harder. That’s why having software that brings it all into one dashboard is so important. I even wrote a review about you guys—when I saw the software, I was like, “Hey, I need to talk,” and when I got the demo, I was thoroughly impressed with how it was put together. Social listening is not easy—it’s virtually impossible if you don’t have software to do it.
Thanks, Spike. It’s been a great conversation so far. It’s time to wrap up this episode, but we’ll continue the conversation soon. On the next episode, we’re going to discuss word-of-mouth advertising and how businesses can leverage it. Stay tuned to the Marketing Growth Podcast to find out more.
00:00
Introduction: Spike Jones on Online Communities
03:30
The Importance of Building Brand Communities
07:45
Common Mistakes in Community Engagement
12:10
Strategies for Long-Term Community Growth
16:30
Leveraging Social Media for Brand Loyalty
19:50
Final Thoughts: The Future of Online Communities
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