Yesterday I wrote about how companies should give things away in order to attract customers and build relationships.

Well, I was looking around for good examples, and today I thought of Nike’s training tools. As an example, Nike got a lot of positive attention a while back for the Nike+ program, where a little sensor you put in your shoe tracks how many miles you run. You can sync your runs with a training program that you put together online. Even without buying the sensor or Nike shoes, however, the site lets you design a training program for yourself with the goal of completing a particular event (5k, 10k, marathon, etc.) or just getting in shape. There’s also Nike SPARQ training, a program to help you “be a better athlete” by improving the “five basic elements of your athleticism.”

All of these incorporate social and community elements. Nike+ for example suggests some playful running challenges like “Democrats vs. Republicans,” and Nike+ and SPARQ can both connect you to groups and events in your area.

Most recently, Nike launched something called the “Breakfast Club” to promote its Jordan line. You start with a self-assessment - or an assessment done by any friends you enlist, and then based on that, you create a workout program for yourself.

Here’s a great interview with Emmanuel Brown of Nike Jordan, talking with social media blogger and podcaster, Jennifer Jones.

Back in my agency life, clients were always asking us to create “viral” campaigns that would get the attention of the digital youth. Our inside joke was that there was a simple three part formula…

• Create a MySpace profile
• Enlist the Black Eyed Peas (they were especially hot at that time)
• Put some videos on YouTube

Then… POOF! it spreads like wildfire.

Even now, reading the latest online pitches from the current lot of would-be gurus, it seems things haven’t changed very much.

The basic pieces of a social marketing campaign today seem to be…

• Create a profile/group on MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/Jaiku
• Launch a blog advertising campaign
• Create a contest that has some viral hooks

This formula is attractive because none of these things necessarily requires much effort on the part of your company. You might get kudos from the Madison Avenue crowd and a few marketing pundits, impressed by your “revolutionary” foray into social media, but the long term rewards from real people will be thin and fleeting unless you do a little more.

Too many social media marketing strategies are still about pushing your brand or your message out to people. The channels are new, but the philosophy is same-old advertising.

I’m personally tired of the whole contest thing. It’s become de rigueur in the web 2.0 world to launch some kind of cheesy campaign where, for example, companies invite people to make their own commercials or slog through a ridiculous scavenger hunt for the chance at a big prize. This doesn’t count as a giveaway because contests like this demand payment (manual labor and/or creativity) in exchange for nothing but a chance at personal glory or tangible rewards.

As the adage goes, you reap what you sow. If you want something from the digital crowd, then think about what you can give them upfront.

What I’m talking about is not all that different from the old concept of a loss-leader. You give away or deeply discount something that will attract people to you, and then you try to deepen the relationship with those people and persuade them to buy more stuff - or simply hope they will. What if Microsoft simply gave away the Xbox for free, knowing that such a move would propel their console market share way past PlayStation? Could the resulting increase in game sales make up for the cost of such a move?

I’m sure Microsoft has already run the numbers on this, so I won’t fantasize about getting a free Xbox, but there are plenty of giveaway ideas that cost almost nothing.

A lot of companies have quite a bit of capital in the form of knowledge. Why not give this away?

Become the expert in your industry. Make your company’s blog the go-to source. Tell secrets. Teach people something cool or valuable. Enable. Entertain.

A while ago, I wrote about Rancho Gordo - a small specialty foods company with a great blog, sharing recipes, gardening advice and commentary on the agriculture industry. There’s also English Cut, the blog of a bespoke saville row tailor. I couldn’t care less about hand-tailored suits, but his blog is wonderfully written and hard to beat for passion and subject-matter expertise.

Some bigger companies get this too. Williams-Sonoma recently launched a redesigned website, and it prominently features their vast archive of recipes. Out of curiosity I checked Geek Squad and found a few self-service resources on their website, but imagine all the things they could give away. Same goes for banks and financial services firms - think of the tools and resources they could offer for free.

So, what could you give away?

Did anyone catch this article about Radiohead’s groundbreaking marketing tactic of offering downloads of their new album online for ‘whatever you think it’s worth’?

I first heard about it a while back and thought it a significant example of major changes in the relationships between producers and consumers. The article spells it out well as it relates to the music business, but I can’t help but see the bigger metaphor for how the Internet and commercial use social media is radically altering our models for commercial exchange.

It used to be that you had a good idea and the first order of business was convince the folks who controlled the distribution in your industry that it was also a good idea. You might retain creative rights over the product, but the mechanics of getting it into the hands of consumers was complex, expensive and controlled by an elite few.

Radiohead astutely observed that 1.) the distribution mechanics of their industry was changing rapidly, and 2.) they were a strong enough band (brand) to take a chance on abandoning the old, slow and expensive model and going direct to the consumer.

What I really liked about this story is the description of what their creative process is like when they work through the old model of distribution with a major label. Their creative output was slow to get to market (albums take much longer to release), the promotional campaign (a tour) for selling the new product (album) was long and boring and kept them from what they really enjoyed the most—product innovation (writing and recording new music).

Getting closer to their fans (customers) allowed them to see what works immediately. A great example of early recording tapes tossed up on YouTube is given in the story. Rather than screaming about copyrights and trying to retain a death grip on brand perception, the band fully embraces the phenomenon of their art (product) being co-opted by the Internet Commons and rightly views it as a highly efficient, low cost feedback loop.

We often talk at Scout Labs about how getting closer to the consumer speeds up innovation. Hats off to Radiohead for progressive marketing innovation that ended up accelerating their product innovation as well in ways they never expected.