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Consumers Will Avoid Purchasing, If They Don't Like The Parent Company Behind The Product

2012-01-30T23:14:00.001-05:00

A newly released study from Weber Shandwick explores the connection between corporate and product brands. Based on a survey of 1,375 consumers and 575 executives of $500MM+ companies from four global markets (Brazil, China, the US and the UK), the study shows that perceptions of a corporate brand can truly affect product purchases:

70 percent of consumers say they avoid buying a product if they do not like the company behind the product
40 percent stop purchasing the product when they see a disconnect between the product and parent brand

The web plays an integral role in this delicate decision-making process. Of those consumers surprised to find out that a product they like is made by a company they do not like:

34 percent will go online to find what other products the company makes
19 percent share or forward information about the company
17 percent make negative comments about the product or company to others
15 percent post a comment online about the brand and the company

Where do consumers get these ideas about corporate brands? The web's influence is almost as strong as offline word of mouth:

Nine in 10 (88 percent) say they are influenced by what people say
Eight in 10 point to online reviews (83 percent) and search results (81 percent)

Consumer opinions have a direct impact on sales and also on companies' market value. Interviewed executives said they would attribute 60% of their firms' value to these companies' reputation. In other words, online buzz can have an impact on a company's evaluation. But reputation is a holistic concept--whether online or offline, at the product or corporate-level, it needs to be consistent and positive.

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What Google's New Privacy Policy Really Means

2012-01-29T22:21:00.001-05:00

How many mainstream Google users fully know or understand how the search engine collects and pieces information together? Probably not many. To "simplify things", Google reduced its 60 privacy policies down to one. Google informed me through my work and personal emails. Catch is - I didn't realize they had my information. Very spooky! But come to think of it, I had probably gladly opted into a Google-owned service at some point. Or used a service (e.g., YouTube), that got purchased by Google. That's Google's game: collecting disparate pieces of personal data and stitching it together.

Here's what Google's new policy says and what it really means:

"...we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls with ease"

i.e: We trace your footsteps from email, calendar, search to video. We then show you the ads based on themes you talk about in your personal space.

"...we suggest search queries or tailor search results, based on the interests you expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube."

i.e.: We connect what you like on google+, with what you frequently email about and what you watch on YouTube. We know you.

"...By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to shre in any Google product or service with minimal clicks..."

i.e.: We know your friends too

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Novo Nordisk Handles Paula Deen Reactions on Facebook

2012-01-25T22:19:00.001-05:00

I received this interesting clip from a friend. Novo Nordisk fans were reacting negatively to the Paula Deen deal on Facebook, but some advocates stepped in to defend the brand without brand interference. Below, you'll see that the Novo Nordisk community manager "played it cool" by only reminding the fans of the FDA guidelines. Good approach to issue management in social media.

Here are the best practices this mini case study underscores:

First, monitor closely
If the community handles the issue itself, continue to host the conversation -- do not interfere
If someone does not abide by the communication guidelines, step in and send a reminder

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Info-Currents January Trend #1 So-Lo-Mo

2012-01-18T07:38:00.001-05:00

Here is a snippet of trends cited in this month's Info-Currents issue:

Emerging Trend: So-Lo-Mo – In 2012, social will grow locally and extend into mobile space. According to Nielsen NM Incite research, nearly half of visitors to local deal sites recommend these sites, fueling online word of mouth. Meanwhile, smart phone users spend majority of their time on apps, customizing their experiences.

Implication: Social networks will offer hyper-targeted local services to users. As smart phone usage becomes the norm, majority of social networkers will access these local services from their mobile devices.

Action: Consider app makers as content and commerce partners. Invest in f-commerce pages, online review features and mobile opt-in lists. Motivate social networking consumers to shop with deal alerts that match their needs and locations.

To subscribe to monthly social media trends newsletter Info-Currents, please click here.

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Great Commentary on What Tablets Mean for Magazine Business

2012-01-15T13:30:00.001-05:00

Check out this interview with Lee Isenberg, the former editor of Esquire and Time magazine veteran. Isenberg points out the growing number of magazine subscriptions among tablet owners. This is a promising sign for an industry that had been struggling to get its fair share of digital dollars. It also suggests that the industry can charge for content and not be as tied to advertising for revenue.

In the interview conducted by Temple University's Dr. Brooke Duffy (ASC Phd '11), Isenberg (ASC '70) says:

"The magazine business is finally getting the opportunity to sell subscriptions (in the past they have not been successful here). The Kindle Fire is the breakthrough in terms of selling subscriptions. Amazon is taking a small share of subscription money, and the rest will go to the publishers. Interestingly the cost of subscriptions will be higher even though the cost of distribution is lower. My guess is that consumers/readers will pay more to get their favorite magazines in tablet form or in bundle form. I do that now. I get The New Yorker at home but I can’t remember the last time I picked up the hard copy; I read it all on my iPad...having the content on a tablet is a pleasant and easy way to consume a magazine. It will be a boon to publishers."

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New FDA Draft of Social Media Guidance Helps....A Little

2012-01-09T18:56:00.001-05:00

The FDA released a draft document on how companies can respond to off-label remarks in social media . Basically, medical staff from the company can acknowledge the off-label post only if the post is unsolicited and mentions the product name.

When communicating with the user, the public response can only include contact information with full disclosure about the medical staff's relationship with the company. The rest of the communication has to be directly with the user, through private channels; and it should include standard response information.

The best illustration of this maze of conditional communications came from Dose of Digital. Here's a great decision-tree that you can use to navigate through the new draft guidelines.

Understandably, sales and marketing cannot be involved in these communications.But I hope that future guidance from FDA gives companies ways to share information publicly that can guide all social media readers towards verified information.

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The One Trend That Will Define 2012: Hyper-personalization

2011-12-31T09:45:00.001-05:00

Behind voice assistant Siri, facial recognition technology and apps that help mobile users find local deals, there is one mega trend for 2012: we'll give up more privacy to get more personalized digital services. Mimics, gestures and voice (fundamentals of face-to-face communications) will enhance app, game and social networking experiences.

Voice: In addition to voice-enabled assistants, our phone, chat and social networking experiences will merge. Skype's Facebook streaming and Facebook's phone will go to the next level, bringing digital conversations closer to offline conversations.

Facial recognition: More advanced social media users will give up their privacy to benefit from facial recognition technology while enjoying photos and games online.

Local deals for 'me': We'll see the next generaion of Groupon, Living Social and Amazon deals that offer customized, local discounts to shoppers based on past purchase habits. Frequent and loyal shoppers will find seemingly better deals based on where they are, what they typically buy and their price limits.

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2012 Will Be The Year of TV+Social

2011-11-30T17:10:00.001-05:00

Social media channels are multiplying TV reach through viewers’ Tweets, posts and messages. As NM Incite and Nielsen research shows, there is a significant correlation between online buzz and TV ratings.

What it means for marketers: 2012 is poised to become the year of television with the Olympics and the US elections drawing millions to TV screens. Advertisers will find added value from social media users who will create and reverberate news through their personal profile areas. As the word will spread from TV to social media, online audiences will tune into programming they hear from their online contacts.

Action: Expand your definition of reach to go beyond traditional GRPs. When estimating TV news’ lifetime, account for social media mentions.

Note the flux of new audience members from mobile and computer screens to TV sets, as they find out about news and shows through social media.

To subscribe to Info-Currents, a newsletter on the future of social media, click here.

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Like Zynga, More Game Publishers Will Venture Outside of Facebook

2011-11-30T17:05:00.001-05:00

With its vast and diverse audience, Facebook has become an incubation ground for game publishers and app developers. Those who can command millions of users on Facebook, have evidence that their business can survive beyond the social network.

What it means for marketers: Experiment with placing brands in games and apps that reach and engage sizable audiences. Add the following to game storylines and app functionalities:

- Coupons

- Videos

- Links to owned media through animated logos

Brands can gauge the success of such initiatives by tracking:

- Coupon redemption

- Video views and sharing

- Conversion from user to site visitor

To subscribe to Info-Currents, a newsletter about the future of social media, click here.

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Tablets To Host Loyalty Clubs

2011-11-27T22:38:00.001-05:00

Tablet entertainment and commerce is getting enhanced with loyalty clubs. Amazon Prime, which gives customers free shipping and streaming services at an annual fee, is offering benefits to Kindle Fire users as well. Those who have not used Prime instant videos over the past year are getting a free month of Amazon Prime service, as soon as they register their device.

What it means for marketers: A higher order of tablet users is emerging – the frequent shoppers who are committed to their retailer relationships.

Action: Go beyond the typical comparison of tablet users to non-users, when calculating the value of this new customer segment. Look into shoppers, loyal customers and advocates who conduct transactions and post reviews through their tablets.

To subscribe to Info-Currents, a newsletter on future of social media, click here.

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PENN State Alumns Start Grassroots Movement, Putting The Focus On The Victims

2011-11-12T12:29:00.001-05:00

A group of Penn State Alums, including my friends Jaime, Jerry and Bob, started a grassroots movement to keep the focus on the victims and to create funds to help them. They partnered with RAINN.org, the largest, anti- sexual violence organization in the US and raised $225,000 in 48 hours. They need your help in reaching their goal of $500,000 by 3:30EST today (the end of the Penn State/Nebraska) game.

Please visit Proud To Be A Penn Stater to make a donation now. Every dollar counts and goes towards helping victims of sexual abuse. It makes a statement about humanity. Football blogs such as Blackshoediaries.com and Huskermax.com have been supporting the campaign. Traditional media channels (CNN, ABC, NBC, and Fox among others) are covering the story.

But with so many of us watching the news and the stories unfold, there is more we can do. Please click here to lend your support.

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For Amazon, it's not about the device -- it's about content

2011-11-03T22:16:00.001-04:00

Amazon announced that its Prime users will be able to borrow one e-book a month for free. I nfo-Currents November issue had highlighted this trend a day prior to the announcement, indicating tablet providers would feed deals to their loyalty clubs.

Currently, there is no time limit on borrowing--but users can take advantage of the freebie offer one book at a time.

Amazon is paying a fee to publishers to buy titles. Meanwhile, becoming an Amazon Prime customer costs $79/year. Sometimes, consumers buy Kindles to benefit from deals like this, thinking of possibilities of endless hours of fun.

Amazon will continue unveiling deals to hyper shoppers, making its Kindle series a service. Amazon is going beyond the device, as any smart entertainment company would do.

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Amazon Starts Kindle Service Bundles

2011-10-31T11:00:00.001-04:00

As I'm waiting for my Kindle Fire to arrive in the mail, I got my first cross-sell email from Amazon. No, it's not for extended warranty. Amazon is offering music storage for $20/year in it's cloud service. Pretty attractive offer, considering benefits: I can download to Kindle, Android, PC or Mac.

I am expecting more offers and bundled services from Amazon in the next 3-6 months.

No, Kindle Fire is not just $199.

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Netflix Will Stream Along

2011-10-30T21:38:00.001-04:00

First Netflix, now RedBox is increasing the price of DVD rentals. One hypothesis would be that there are fewer customers for DVDs, requiring a price increase to keep the business going. If customers are not moving away from movies all together, but rather switching to alternative ways of getting entertainment on demand, then Netflix is on the right path.

Netflix's business model switch was too painful to watch - poor external communications, bold consumer reaction to pricing, inconsistent offerings...But they will survive this ordeal - because they are aligned with the future of TV and more broadly, entertainment. They are regarded as a value add to cable services. They give people reasons to enjoy their flat screens. And early adopters, especially among younger viewers, are streaming on demand.

Those who focus on the number of customers leaving Netflix are acting on incomplete data. How profitable were those customers who complained and dropped off? Did they order one or 10 movies a week, paying the same subscription fee? If they were infrequent users, how easily would they switch to a streaming service?If they were hyper users, are they more likely to stream or wait for the DVD in the mail?These questions need answers, before we make final claims.

The death of qwickster was a distraction. Netflix has some patching to do to mend its reputation. With the right content library and distribution strategy, it can survive.

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Info-Currents November Issue Coming Soon

2011-10-24T18:30:00.001-04:00

The November issue of Info-Currents, my monthly social media newsletter is about to go out. Below is a snapshot from the previous issue. Each month, I delve into the implications of three emerging trends and provide readers with practical next steps. If you would like to subscribe to Info-Currents, please click here.

Info-Currents October 2011 Snapshot

Emerging trend: Consumer electronics buyers are as likely to consider online word of mouth as in-person conversations (29 percent, respectively), when making their purchasing decisions.*

Those relying on online buzz for their electronics purchases have been increasing steadily--from 24 percent five years ago.
Video camera (44 percent), sound system (40 percent) and smart phone (38 percent) buyers have been most likely to rely on the word online.
Among sources of online buzz, reviews have been the most influential.

Implication: As the new holiday shopping season nears, online reviews will play a significant role in smart phone and video camera purchases.

Action: Brands need to watch their star ratings and gear for search engine optimization now. They need to activate their fan base to share and rate their experiences.

*Source: S. Radoff Associates, Large Purchase Study

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Online/Offline Word of Mouth Bibliography Ready for Review and Additions

2011-10-04T09:28:00.001-04:00

More than a year ago, a group of WOMMA members got together, curious to answer the question, “What is the interaction between online and offline word of mouth?” We knew about the Keller Fay research pointing to the dominance of offline word of mouth and we were living through the social media revolution—personally and professionally. Our hypothesis was that offline word of mouth trickled online and social media found its way to face-to-face conversations.

Our search quickly revealed that few marketers had explored this question. We felt that we would do a great service to the larger WOMMA community by pulling together a bibliography of key studies and publications that explored this topic. In this document, you will find a broad range of studies, including:

· Comparison of online and offline word of mouth (BzzAgent, Brains on Fire, Keller Fay, Peres and Shacha, S. Radoff)

· Offline activities’ impact on social media and search behavior (Cheema, iProspect , Lauren F. Sessions)

· Social media’s impact on offline consumer decisions (Chintagunta et al., Godes and Mayzlin)

In addition, we conducted a survey* among our members to see how they approached the topic and measured online/offline word of mouth. We found out that while they measure both types of conversations separately, a sub-set looks at the impact of online buzz on offline initiatives and vice versa. Among WOMMA members:

45% measure online buzz to capture the impact of offline word of mouth campaigns
35% measure offline marketing communications’ impact on online word of mouth about brands

We hope that as the word of mouth marketing field matures, marketers find innovative ways to track results across online and offline platforms, and refer to the studies included in our bibliography as guideposts.

I would like to thank Dr. Walter Carl, Brad Fay, Bithika Mehta, Martin Oetting, Tarah Remington, Jasper Snyder, and Jeanie Son for all their contributions and their ongoing dedication to the project. As the online/offline word of mouth committee, we also appreciate WOMMA’s academic advisors’ input.

We present you with the online/offline word of mouth bibliography and invite you to join our conversation. We welcome your feedback and additions.

*Survey results are representative of WOMMA’s member base, and should be used directionally when talking about the broader marketer universe.

** This post has also been published on WOMMA's All Things WOM blog.

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Facebook Ad Credits Will Not Solve Small Business's Social Media Problem

2011-09-18T21:18:00.001-04:00

Facebook is giving small businesses advertising credit in hopes of getting this substantial audience to use the platform for customer acquisition. The mammoth social network is up against a tough challenge: Grand majority of small business owners do not see social media as a priority in their digital marketing list. IIn fact according to a Hiscox survey published by eMarketer, only 4 percent list it as a must-have. Many small business owners say they could live without it (43 percent). Some add that they don't get to it everyday (24 percent). There are still those who don't even know where to start (14 percent). Facebook may need to think of a more comprehensive plan than an ad push to secure time on small business owners' schedules.

I know the challenges of small business social media first hand. I am West Side Art Studios' self-appointed social media consultant. Greg Kessler, the artist behind the studio, is busy creating and teaching art day in, day out. He uses Facebook to stay connected with friends, but he rarely has time to devise a social media calendar, identify and engage his influencers. He does a good job of announcing milestone events and the rest of his time has to go to creating the product.

Social media outreach requires time -- you need time to build a following and to engage in genuine conversations with them (vs. pushing messages at them). That's not a problem Facebook ad promotions will solve.

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Get The Most Out of Your Social Customer Care Channels

2011-09-09T09:25:00.001-04:00

Standing with empty paper cups in hand, we looked for a recycling bin. Much to our dismay, the grand coffee chain did not separate its trash. “Unbelievable!” we thought and approached the counter. “Nope, we don’t recycle. Can you believe it?” said the employee, agreeing with our protest. My friend turned around and shoved the cups in mixed trash and said, “I’ll Tweet about it!”

That is one frustrated, social media savvy customer who knows she will get the attention of the brand and many others who’ve gone through similar experience, if she posts a mere 140 characters online. Her expectations are not only high because she wants the coffee chain to be green, but also because she wants a solution through immediate and open dialogue.

This is the changing face of customer care in the age of social media. Monitoring online conversations and responding in near real time has become an essential step in maintaining brand health. The complexity of setting up branded social media customer care lines may seem like added cost to an already robust system that handles queries through phone, email and mail. Companies need to have a perspective on the business impact of their social care channels, before determining their role in the customer service chain.

Social media customer service channels can reduce churn, increase satisfaction and bring in new customers:

· Reduced churn: Solving customer problems and preventing customers from discontinuing a service helps maintain a steady customer base.

· Repeat sales: High customer satisfaction yields loyalty as renewed purchases.

· Cross-sell, up-sell opportunities: The solution to a customer problem may be a product bundle or an alternative service. Social care specialists can serve additional products/services to customers depending on need and tone of conversation.

· New customers through positive word of mouth: Resolved cases and happy customer hash tags fortify brand reputation and convince readers that they would be equally well treated if they were to purchase from the company.

Besides expecting benefits, companies also need to ask some hard questions to build social care channels that make business sense for their target audience:

1- Who are the social media savvy customers, seeking a dialogue online?

a. What is their history with the brand?

b. Do they tap into offline channels as well?

c. Among online sources, which social media platforms do they prefer?

2- What questions/issues typically make customers turn to social media channels?

a. What are main topics?

b. What is the volume for each key topic?

c. In what problem stages are these questions? Will they need extensive follow up online and/or offline?

3- What is the cost of assisting a customer through social media, considering staff and technology systems?

a. What are key skills for social care specialists? What kind of training will they need?

b. How many staff members are needed to assist in social media conversations?

c. What is the process in which social care specialists will monitor online buzz and respond to customers?

The opportunity in social care is in addressing customer needs through efficient systems that deliver value fast, at reduced cost to the company.

This post has also been published on NM Incite's blog. Click here to read more on social media trends and business implications.

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charity: water stands out with "THANK YOU!" messages in crowded cause-marketing space

2011-09-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

I got three critical emails in my personal inbox today: One from Seth Godin, asking me to buy an ebook, which would help buy malaria nets for children in need. One from TOMS Shoes, letting me know about their founder's book 'Start Something That Matters'. One from charity: water thanking all donors for what they have given to the cause over the past 5 years. Just this little example goes to show you how crowded the cause-marketing scene is. Everyone wants your attention for something worthwhile. You have limited dollars and time. What's a smart marketer to do to break through the clutter?

How about giving something back, instead of just asking? I got an email last night from charity: water saying they would be releasing the thank you videos online today. They would be thanking their donors starting at 9:30AM. I rmade a mental note to check out the site this morning. Of course, there they were: fun, genuine clips showing charity: water staff thanking all sorts of people who had ran campaigns, given up their birthdays and donated over the years. I thought it was cool, so I tweeted it. In less than an hour, charity water was following me back.

charity: water made a point to connect and treated me as a VIP with premium information. They emailed me a thank you note and they entertained me with a series of videos, while showing me how others have donated over the years (including a 3 year old!). They thanked me again for Tweeting. At the end of my fifth video view, I didn't mind the donate button. I was at this giant, virtual birthday party.

This was labor intensive on their part, but the back and forth was an example of what true (social media) relations should be like.

OK, one last point for staff members who were chugging Ouzo to thank Dimitri for his contributions to charity: water: Guys, you need to mix it with water and have some meze with it. You don't just gulp it down like that! But then, since you're hard core, I understand.

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Positive Stories Stick

2011-09-06T07:21:00.001-04:00

Dr. Martin Oetting and his colleagues at trnd, a Europe-based word of mouth marketing company, have released some interesting research based on a survey of 30,000 panel members. The study revealed that people were most likely to remember positive stories about products and companies, rather than negative. When asked about their latest word-of-mouth experience, an overwhelming majority (89 percent) of survey participants mentioned a positive story, while a mere 7 percent recalled a negative experience.

The study also found that some categories are more prone to negative word of mouth -- such as transportation and telecom (communications) -- than others. Yet, word of mouth about most FMCG products was positive.

These findings echo US studies, such as those from Keller Fay Group , which show that most word of mouth is positive.

What's the takeaway? People want to pass along positive stories and feel good? Perhaps people are more likely to focus on what works vs. what does not because they want to experience the better things in life. I wonder how these findings would vary if we were to ask questions about political and social climate vs. products and companies. How would people report on the news they hear from the media, friends and family after being exposed to so many negative reports on the economy and political battles?

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New twist on charity: water September 2011 campaign: Track Your Donations at Work

2011-09-04T19:19:00.001-04:00

Every year charity: water, the non-profit that drills wells and brings clean water to populations in need, plucks our heart strings with touching human stories from the field. The crew opens our eyes to the lives of villagers in remote areas of Africa. This year, they're taking a different approach in sharing their story and drawing supporters into the donation process.

Charity: water is inviting us to raise funds to help them buy an FS 250 drilling rig.

This investment will allow them and their Ethiopian partners to drill faster, and get to more places. In fact, this campaign is aiming to bring clean water to 40,000 people in 80 communities!

Ever wonder what happens to your dollars once you hand them over? As always, 100 percent of donations will go towards the good deed. Moreover, donors to this campaign will be able to track the truck through a GPS system. They will be able to see the gift of their donations 24/7 for years to come.

This is not only a simple, but smart twist on location-based marketing, but it's also organizational responsibility. Charity: water is transparent in its communication and is treating loyal followers as true partners.

To make a donation or start your own fundraising campaign, click on the highlighted links.

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Google+1 May Face The Same Challenges As Facebook 'Like'

2011-08-28T22:21:00.001-04:00

PowerReviews and BazaarVoice, which are the names behind many customer review and ratings systems, are adding the Google +1 button to their feature suite. The partnership is giving Google an amazing distribution platform -- PowerReviews alone catalogs more than 35 million products and 5,500 branded products. Jockey is among the first PowerReviews brands to integrate the +1 button. While it's nice to see the +1 option in review boxes as a choice of expression, this initiative makes me think +1 may face some of the same challenges as the 'like' button, in terms of user privacy:

Will consumers want to show to their whole Google network what they used and reviewed? Giving a camisole a +1 on Jockey.com connects my personal shopping habits with my email, blog, Google+ network, YouTube and Adsense accounts. This might be a bit too-much-information.

Will consumers give a +1, in addition to using a 5-star system? Within the PowerReviews system, consumers still have regular features to rate a product on a star scale and write reviews. Clicking on the +1 would mean I want to make sure everyone hears about what I have to say. What percentage of consumers would go through the extra step? Will we see a correlation between types of reviews, average star ratings and +1's?

How does the +1 system benefit the ad consumer? If I am sharing so much information about my likes with a giant advertising platform, will I get more targeted, useful ads? How would this type of information matching make consumers feel about using the +1 button or clicking through online ads?

A substantial group of people use the +1 button, across 1 million+ sites. Coupled with consumer review content, Google will be collecting considerable data on the most outspoken word of mouth agents who regularly publish their opinions online.

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Nutbox Moves Fast to Draw Customers Post Hurricane Irene

2011-08-28T21:15:00.001-04:00

If you had the pleasure of shopping for food in New York between Friday afternoon and Saturday noon, your experience could simply be described as mayhem: Long lines, empty shelves, baskets filled with panic - rather than family-budget choices. You may think these shops made a killing thanks to Hurricane Irene. But remember they were closed during what would have been their busiest time in the week, because of the emergency situation in the area.

Many stores in our Brooklyn neighborhood remained closed after the stormed moved from the area with employees stranded in other boroughs. Meanwhile Nutbox, an eclectic store that sells all sorts of nuts and dried fruit, moved fast. Around 3PM, I got an email from them saying their Brooklyn shop was open until 7PM and I could come in for a free taste of their latest coffee flavor. In 15 minutes, we were in the store, buying Spanish paprika and onion flakes.

The cost of coffee to Nutbox is probably 15 cents. The email push is I'm guessing also nominal -- they used Mail Chimp. We paid about $10 for the two items. Two other customers walked in while we were there, after they saw activity in the store.

Nutbox's simple email is chock full of small business lessons:

1- Use nimble technology: Use affordable, turnkey systems such as Mail Chimp e-mail manager to reach out to your opt-in list.

2- Move fast - you're the boss: You don't have to run your brilliant idea up the chain. If it's at low cost to you, just do it.

3- Tailor your messages to customer needs: 'Come and have a cup of coffee,' was the perfect message to increase foot traffic post Hurricane Irene debacle. People were glued to their TV sets for almost two days and were aching to get back to normal - as in times when they could leisurely walk and buy something they can enjoy without a certain sense of urgency.

4- Good service means cross-sell, up-sell opportunities: We could have easily walked in to just grab our coffee and walked back out. But with so many rightly priced items at our disposal, and having just received a bit of an incentive, we went ahead and shopped for nice-to-haves.

5- Don't miss a chance to beat competition: Both Starbucks shops in the neighborhood were closed with signs saying 'Blame the weather, not us!' And it would have been perfectly understandable if Nutbox remained shut through Sunday and even Monday. But, why miss the opportunity to offer something people cannot get elsewhere?

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How to Estimate Value of an Online Coupon Program?

2011-08-21T17:42:00.001-04:00

Online coupons are often used to boost Facebook fan base. But they come at a cost to the company. Brands looking to throw a coupon out there need to have a good estimate of redemption rates for their category and the value of actual purchases couponing fans will generate. Consider this:

CPG brands can expect 17% online coupon redemption: The U.S. Mid-Year 2011 CPG Coupon Industry Facts report by NCH Marketing Services shows Internet home-printed coupons' redemption rate in second place with 17%, right after instant on-pack coupons (23%). (Source: eMarketer.com) In other words, online coupons have become the next best option for deal seekers after finding the coupon on the package.

Online coupons bring in new customers: Another important finding comes from Knowledge Networks, which found that nearly half (46%) of CPG digital coupon redeemers from 2008 to 2010 had not previously bought that product. (Source: eMarketer.com)

This is terrific news so far, but we need to add a few more variable to the equation to make sure that the online coupon will be worth your efforts:

Organizational cost based on:

Cost of product * expected number of redeemed coupons
Cost of fulfillment

Agency cost based on:

Cost of designing/programming the coupon
Team hours to promote the deal
Team hours to manage the process before and after posting coupon

If the coupon is on a Facebook fan page, adding all costs and dividing them by the number of new fans will give us the cost of acquisition for a new fan.

Will each fan be worth the same? Probably not, considering some will never come back to visit the page while others will recruit friends. Let's think of a scenario where

50 percent of new fans never visit the page again, nor do they purchase the product at full price
20 percent visit the page again, but do not purchase again at full price
30 percent become loyal fans who visit again and purchase at full price

The real value of the coupon effort will come from those who become loyal fans and customers. In this case, we'd need to take 30% of those new fans and multiply their number by the average profit they bring to the brand.

Gain from new fans:

(Total number of new couponing fans * % who become customers) * Average profit from new customer

Take the cost of acquiring new fans through a coupon out of this gain and you'll find the real value provided to the organization.

Coupon Program Value = Gain from fans who became customers - Cost of acquiring all fans

In a low or negative value scenario, you may find that you spent too much to acquire the few fans who became customers. In a positive value scenario, you'd find that enough fans converted to customers, covering the cost of the program and bringing profits.

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Obama's Tips on Foursquare: A New Grassroots Political Campaign

2011-08-21T16:09:00.001-04:00

President Obama has been posting tips about his stops on the Midwest economic bus tour through the White House Foursquare account. Beyond accruing 'cool' points, what might be the motivation behind setting up yet another social media channel? Here's my take on what this means:

Mobile grassroots campaign: The President will continue with a grassroots approach that taps young adults in his 2012 bid. Foursquare has set up an automated system so that the White House account immediately follows back every account that starts following Obama. Currently, there are close to 30,000 followers on the @whitehouse Foursquare account. That's 30,000 (and growing) mobile contacts that can be mobilized locally in the following phases of the campaign.

Obama's social media share of voice will grow organically: In the 2008 elections, online searches we ran using social media monitoring tools had to be cleaned of unrelated Obama comments. The name was everywhere. We'll see a rise on search results and posts with Obama tags, thanks to Foursquare check-ins not only from the White House, but Obama followers.

Politics will infuse personal social network accounts: Let's not forget the connecting ties between networks. Foursquare check-ins can easily be Facebook status updates or turn into Tweets. Dashboards like Tweetdeck allow users to manage multiple accounts from one spot. A check-in at an Obama event can spread to multiple personal networks at once.

Security risk? Is it safe for a President to communicate where he is so often and in almost real-time? Arguably, it may not be the best idea. But citizen reporters with social media access are already reporting Obama sightings with updates, pictures, videos. The media are following the Obama tour closely. @whitehouse account is just another official channel of information that's helping the Obama campaign steer the agenda and direct traffic to Whitehouse.gov and the blog.

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Re-thinking Influencer Reach

2011-08-07T18:45:00.001-04:00

Grouping my contacts in Google+ Circles is making me re-think about the way we've been defining reach in social media. The value of your network shouldn't just be based on how many people you know, but also account for 'who' you know. As the recent Harvard Business Review article, A Smarter Way to Network, indicates, successful leaders capitalize on diversified networks. They not only solicit feedback and insights from their contacts, but they know people from different circles. This adds to the richness of information they get and the variety of networks they reach.

While we study influencers, it's important to know the number of their followers, blog readers, Facebook friends, etc. But it's also key to know how many different types of circles they tap and which ones they will choose to send your messages. Years ago, when I was working on the e-fluentials surveys at Burson-Marsteller, a journalist had asked to interview someone who qualified as an online influencer. The selected e-fluential told the journalist how he had separate lists of people he emailed, for politics, jokes, national news and general updates. He explained that he was very careful not to push information out to people who would not want it or not engage with the content.

Perhaps this e-fluencer was ahead of his time or a bit conscientious, but today we have Twitter lists, LinkedIn groups and now Google+ Circles. We need to ask influencers how many people they are spreading news for every different type of message, product or service. Next, we need to understand which channels when they disseminate that particular info byte. Then, we can talk about influencer reach and network value.

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Get The Most Out of Location-Based Services

2011-07-31T22:03:00.001-04:00

You may or may not be running a program on Foursquare, but chances are your customers are checking in and reviewing your products and services on location. Wouldn't it be smart to analyze these trends across multiple check-in services? You could find the optimal path to offer coupons and run promotional in-store programs.

I grabbed this image from a Momentfeed presentation. The company provides a tool for brands to track and manage multiple location-based services from one source. The start-up says it can let users track up to 20 location-based services. This gives marketers a chance to understand where consumers are checking in frequently and then choose the right venue to engage them.

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Google+ Hints At Social Commerce

2011-07-24T23:58:00.001-04:00

You don't have to worry about your Mom joining Google+ and using it with the same enthusiasm as she does Facebook. She will. Because Google+'s next version will combine social clues from peer-to-peer interactions with search recommendations and possibly reviews. Users will be able to go seamlessly from conversation to search and purchase.

One of the most important things to note about Google+ right now is the way Google is soliciting feedback about the various features from early adopters. We are witnessing a massive focus group and a public usability test. In time, we may see some features dropped, some new ones evolve and others tweaked. Mobile extensions are a given. Among these iterations, Google is likely to start pushing targeted ads and offer product recommendations. Consumer reviews will be an organic part of the process as people post about what they have seen, what they have done, search and purchase will be a click away.

Thanks to the plus platform, Google added a whole new data stream to its wealth of information on search behavior. Soon, it will know not only what we are curious about, but also how we get to those questions. It will have all the elements of a powerful, socially driven, product/service recommendation engine.

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What's Next?

2011-07-24T23:20:00.001-04:00

I've been under a rock - admittedly. I was away for a few weeks, first on vacation, then transitioning into a new job at NM Incite - a Nielsen / McKinsey company. While switching gears from PR to consulting, I am also steering my blog's focus to be about the future.

Everybody wonders 'what's next?' The best way to answer that is to read between the lines today and put pieces of the puzzle together. dotWOM will not only be about trend watching (e.g., Google+ launched), but it will be about trend discovery (i.e., what Google+ means for social search and commerce). It will tell its readers what changes and innovations we can expect to see in the industry, based on consumer behavior, mergers, brand initiatives.

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Women Heavily Rely on WOM When Investing

2011-06-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

According to the latest Info-Currents report Investment Conversations, based on the Large Purchase Study, there are stark differences in the way men and women make investment choices. Women rely on face-to-face conversations, while men are more likely to act based on their past experiences. Considering the combined effect of online and offline word of mouth, nearly six in 10 (56 percent) of women say they make investment product and service choices based on word of mouth, while only 32 percent of men do so.

The study validates financial institutions' programs geared towards female customers. It also suggests that companies prepared to answer women's questions and assist with their review process to inform those peer-to-peer conversations will have a competitive advantage.

To download a full copy of the Investment Conversations report, please click here.

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IBM Reveals Gaps In Corporate and Consumer Perceptions Of Social Media

2011-06-26T09:59:00.003-04:00

A recent CRM Study (2011) by IBM Institute for Business Value reveals significant gaps between what brands prioritize in their social media communications and what consumers expect when communicating with companies through social media. Guess what? Consumers are not so focused on activities that are deeply engaging and entertaining. (They probably prefer Hollywood for that.) They are looking for discounts. They want to make purchases or they are looking for reviews that will help them solidify their buying decisions. Meanwhile, companies are spending dollars on providing general information and product updates. A significant percentage of companies believe consumers follow them to feel part of a community (64 percent) or to access customer service (63 percent). As the image below shows, these items are not as high on consumers' list.

So, have we been wrong about polls and quizzes and 2 minute videos that bring color and interaction to Facebook fan pages? Not necessarily. However, we are missing an opportunity to close a sale if we do not bring product to these activities and give consumers the chance to try products, read reviews and purchase in one click. Consumers have their friends and other personal connections on social networks giving them a sense of community. When it comes to b-to-c relations in social media, commerce should be at the center of branded activities.

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cmp.ly Launches Social Media Compliance Solution for Financial Services

2011-06-12T17:40:00.001-04:00

cmp.ly, the company that creates turnkey compliance solutions for blogger engagement and social media activities has just announced a product for financial services. These regulated companies no longer need to fret the technical complexities about information sharing in social media when communicating with their online stakeholders. The tool works for investor relations, brokers, funds and employees. It simply helps them engage in social media, while ensuring that they are in compliance with the law.

cmp.ly appears simply as a short URL at the end of a brand announcement, blogger post or Tweet. The URL takes users to an area that houses appropriate documentation for the promotional activity. For financial services specifically, the tool makes sure corporate messages in social media are in compliance with FINRA, SEC and FTC rules and regulations. cmp.ly is currently partnering with StockTwits to showcase its financial tool. Here's how social media content appears with the cmp.ly/F links:

Each cmp.ly link within a social media post has a unique code. This helps the system track syndication and measure online word of mouth as content gets picked up and quoted elsewhere. The traceable nature of content also means that content that gets syndicated remains in compliance. Companies do not need to worry about liability issues as users share and re-tweet or re-post content.

You can watch a video announcement about this smart solution here.

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Can Your Phone Be Your Wallet?

2011-06-05T09:03:00.001-04:00

According to trends revealed in the March/April 2011 issue of MIT's Technology review, in the US, we haven't given up on our checks but we are increasingly accessing our card information on mobile devices. Meanwhile, a global review of mobile payments show that emerging markets are ahead of developed markets when it comes to this emerging form of money exchange. The analysis does not indicate whether these payments are coming from simple or smart phones, but they do underscore a certain level of comfort with mobile payments.

These numbers also suggest that Google's latest partnership with Citibank to offer a mobile wallet app to Citibank Mastercard and Nexus 4S phone customers is on the right track. When the Google wallet app launches, it will let users simply tap their phones on paypass signs and make payments directly from their accounts. They will also have opportunities to redeem coupons and benefit from special offers. Few merchants, including Sports Authority, Container Store, Duane Reade, Walgreens and Macy's have signed up for the deal. Google is assuring potential early adopters their transactions will be secure.

This is indeed exciting news for those of us with messy bags and multiple gadgets, looking to consolidate everything on a smart phone. But the real opportunity seems to be for those emerging market economies with populations eager to adopt new technologies and need easier ways to access money and make transactions. The next trend to watch is the boost these types of technologies can bring to local economies and help connect publics with merchants in more efficient ways.

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TOMS: What's Next?

2011-05-22T20:03:00.001-04:00

TOMS Shoes' new campaign, Next Chapter, puts a fresh spin on the classic social media campaign model where brands ask their fans to create content. The company that donates a pair of shoes for every purchased pair is about to unveil the next chapter in its history. As it is gearing up for the big announcement, it is asking its fans what they want from the future and how they are contributing to making a difference in the world.

Anyone who's set up one of these campaigns asking for photo and video submissions knows that content creators are far and few in between and it's a lot to ask consumers to go film something, post it and tell all their friends about it. These campaigns need inspiration. They also need a system that makes it easy for consumers to create and submit content.

TOMS is speaking to a certain type of idealist consumer. Folks who choose their brand not just as a fashion statement, but also as a social business. These people are likely to have something to say about the future. They have hope. They have ideals. They want to make a difference. Most importantly, they believe they can make a difference.

For this audience, telling and sharing their story would not be enough. It's ordinary. It's not that exciting. But TOMS is tapping into their ideals and giving nature by asking them to think about the future.

Given the audience's mindset and TOMS' motivating messages, I hope we see many submissions.

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The Word on Banking

2011-05-16T23:59:00.001-04:00

The latest report from the Large Purchase Study shows that offline WOM is significantly more likely to influence banking-related purchases than online WOM. Yet, there is a twist in this all too familiar plot line. The impact of online word of mouth on banking product and service purchases has been significantly increasing over the past couple of years.

Banks have a significant opportunity to grow their customer base and invest in long-term relations through online communications and marketing. The report shows that young adults and ethnic minorities, are more likely than their respective counterparts to listen to online buzz when choosing their banks.

As young customers get older and go through various life events and changes, they will need banks' help with credit, mortgage and retirement products. They will continue to turn to their online sources. Banking brands that earn their trust today will have significant competitive advantages in the future to earn these customers' business.

The latest census data pointed to significant growth in Hispanic population between 2000 and 2010. Considering the Hispanic population's (especially the younger Hispanic segment's) affinity for social media, banks that manage the word online and proactively communicate with Hispanic customers through social channels will stand a real chance with them.

To download the full report and read more about the influence of word of mouth on banking-related purchases, click here.

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Don't Just Call It An App

2011-05-10T13:47:00.001-04:00

Smart clients are pushing back on app ideas -- they don't want an app for app's sake. Considering the sea of content competing for attention in social media, they are right. There are hundreds of thousands of apps being downloaded as we speak. What will make yours noticeable and compelling to use?

Think of an app like a web site or any other destination on the web your brand owns. You need to take care of it the same way: develop interesting content, make sure it fulfills a need, make sure it works without a glitch and promote it!

So, an app is not just a widget on your Facebook page's corner to engage users. It is an extension of your brand and your service. Therefore it needs to be part of your marketing and communication plans.

An app can collect data, keep users focused for minutes at a time and get them to return to your site and revisit your brand. Why not give it the push it deserves, so it can work hard for you?

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Media Converges on The Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T23:14:00.001-04:00

This is a snapshot of our Media Live room at work, where we track both online and offline media. We were doing a drill down on online influencers who were writing about the Royal Wedding. Guess what - it's not just about the dress or the kiss. Everyone approaches this media event from their own angle:

- Mommy bloggers are talking about Disney's approach to the wedding and some criticize the emphasis on the 'princess' role for young girls.

- Tech outlets touch upon the technology challenges (bandwidth) around the Royal Wedding. Apps about the big day are also topic of discussion.

- Travel sites are taking bets on where the honeymoon will be.

- Finance sites are weighing the plusses and minuses for the economy: Will it be a boost? Or will it simply be a huge cost center?

- Forbes.com talks about companies that are making charitable donations in the name of the occasion.

- Health outlets note Kate's noticable weight loss and discuss Briderexia.

Whether you choose to watch it or not, this wedding will be on your screen.

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The New York Cosmos Want You!

2011-04-21T15:52:00.001-04:00

Do you remember the New York Cosmos? Probably not - but not to worry, they're coming back. The famous soccer club of the 70's is being rebuilt from the ground up. Legend Pele is the Honorary President. King Cantona and Cobi Jones are Directors of Soccer. They don't have a team or a league yet but they are busy marketing and communicating. Their jerseys are for sale. They are on Times Square billboards. They have grassroots young players games and training camps. They are smart--they know that a soccer team is actually more than 11 people. They need the fans. Scratch that - they need zealots. NY Cosmos needs tens of thousands of people obsessing about the game - waking up with it, talking about it, posting about it, screaming about it.

So, they are turning to New Yorkers and proposing them a new reason to live. As their CMO and Director of Communications recently shared at the PSFK conference, the new team behind NY Cosmos is trying to create a brand that will start a movement and give way to the club, rather than the other way around. They have a six-act play in turning New Yorkers into an extension of their team:

1- There is no longer old and new, there's just good and bad or real and fake. NY Cosmos is good and it's real. It has a modern day significance with a strong heritage.

2- Provenance trumps personality: The Cosmos are from NY - a mega metropolitan with immigrant populations from every imaginable corner of the world. To appeal to a broader base, the Cosmos are marketing NY to a global landscape through soccer.

3- New York City is their #1 player: the NY Cosmos brand is closely aligned with New York City. There may not be a team in place yet, but aspirational ads are up on Times Square, the heart of the city. This one was up on Pele's birthday, to promote a series of promotional activities the club was organizing. [[posterous-content:mAtkfvcwCfzvDnnduxBe]]4- Dream big and make it happen: Through sports gear (vintage and new), the club is putting the Cosmos shirts on New Yorkers backs. This is not just to spread brand fame through fashion, but also to create a broader team and to generate street buzz. Check out the club's Web site with photos of fans from the streets of NY.

5. Honoring the fans: The Cosmos is not an elusive brand. They want to honor their hardcore fans and recruit at a grassroots level. The club is embracing those amateurs who had been gathering with their friends to play. The games already have the flavor of NY's global span. Where else are you going to get Albanians, Greeks, Mexicans and the Polish play on the same team?

6. Always do more than you say: The Cosmos Academy offers young, aspiring players a chance to train for free. The club is not just for those who can afford the tickets. It's truly for the love of soccer.

Many brands want to tap into the power of advocates and mobilize them, but few have the luxury to start with a base of hardcore believers who share the same passion and code. Having an active fan base makes the franchise all the more valuable to potential buyers. Once they meet M.L.S. requirements, NY Cosmos can really take off with New Yorkers' support and enthusiasm.

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No Matter How You Market It, Travel is About Experience

2011-04-10T20:36:00.001-04:00

Who doesn’t remember the 1994 episode of Saturday Night Live where David Spade and Helen Hunt act as the most insensitive airline crew? We laugh at this exaggeration because we can remember at least one less than pleasant travel incident.

Travel is indeed about experience. Whether shopping for airline tickets, renting cars, going on cruises or choosing hotels, travel purchasers are most likely to refer to their past dealings with brands and establishments.

Findings from S. Radoff Associates’ Large Purchase Study shows that discounts may sway travel service purchasers’ decisions. About one-fifth of travel purchasers say their buying decisions are influenced by such offers.

Like discounts, the impact of word of mouth on travel purchases is also dwarfed by the significant role of past experience. Fewer than a quarter of travel purchasers say they were driven by offline or online buzz when making their final choices.

Word of mouth is more likely to influence cruise and hotel choices and less likely to impact airline and car rental service choices. Cruise fans are the only group of travel purchasers who indicate that face-to-face conversations (32 percent) and online word of mouth (23 percent) influence their buying decisions.

Marketing, media and peer-to-peer channels may drive trial and awareness of travel services. Yet brand trust and customer loyalty are closely linked with experience. Customer satisfaction is travel industry’s key variable for growth.

To download the full report on how consumers make their travel purchases and how sources of consumer decisions vary by age, parenthood and ethnicity, please click here.

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'To Catch A Dollar' Is About Group Success

2011-04-02T21:40:00.001-04:00

To make a dollar you need to catch a dollar. You need a little bit of investment to buy product, supplies or a chair, a desk to be in business. If you are not credit-worthy, you can't get a loan, you can't start a business, you can't get a job--you stay at square one, you remain poor. That is the truth the movie To Catch A Dollar underscores.

The documentary follows the story of micro-lending bank Grameen's entrance to the US market showing Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and his team's tireless efforts to spread this message and empower the poor, help them get back on their feet through micro-loans.

They give loans strictly to women under the poverty line, defined by the US Census. Why women? Their past experience in other parts of the world have shown that women manage their loans better and when women can start businesses an earn their own living, the rest of the family wins - children go to school, health problems can be addressed and women gain power in extended family relations.

Grameen America started it's first branch in Queens, New York. They ask applicants to form groups of five. Loans are given individually but the group has to approve each business plan. The group also becomes a support system and sounding board as women face life challenges. They meet every week, with a Grameen field worker in lead and they pay back their loans bit by bit. Today, the payback rate is over 98 percent.

The personal stories of women's rise out of poverty revealed in the film are truly touching and inspiring. Besides sheer will power and relentless support of Grameen team, there are several reasons why these women are able to succeed:

1- They feel responsible towards their group: For the program to work successfully, everyone must show up. If one doesn't show up, she fails four others.

2- They feel responsible for the group's success: Each person contributes to the group's success. You are evaluated as a group.

3- They get continuous input from Grameen and from their group members: The group is a sounding board of ideas, therapy session and friendly bonding time.

4- They take small steps and have small payments: Paying $20 back a week is not only manageable but it also instills discipline.

5- The call to action is clear and achievable.

The big take away here is that groups work better than solo acts when striving for that big goal. Groups are dynamic and social by nature - they can help sustain activities. They reduce risk of falling out by setting tone and behavior.

We talk a lot about the value of networks in word of mouth marketing. We look for the group leaders and hope they'll just carry the word for us if we impress them enough. Grameen's success shows that there needs to be a bit more careful thought put into the way we identify and work with groups.

When thinking about motivating and mobilizing crowds, think how you can organize these people into groups with common goals and how you can enable each member to contribute.

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Water is Everything

2011-03-27T21:25:00.001-04:00

charity: water is truly the master of online word of mouth. Check out their latest campaign, Water Changes Everything, that educates audiences about the connections between an everyday matter such as water and macro issues such as education, food security, sanitation, women's issues, healthcare and economic development.

The campaign first caught my attention on Facebook with clever depictions of what lack of water would mean for us in the developed nations.

Then I found the trail to the web area where they have six key messages you can Tweet and/or like, each one of them opening the viewers' eyes to the impact clean water can make in a country's economic development and public health.

Between these messages and the photos on Facebook I generated four tweets and three likes, which turned into four additional re-tweets. In other words, one enthusiast created more than 10 messages through direct involvement and pass-alongs. Randomly peppering like buttons on a web site does not guarantee online buzz. Yet giving a community of advocates strategically packaged, byte-size messages can turbo-charge word of mouth.

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What About Direct Selling?

2011-03-21T22:57:00.001-04:00

Ever since I've met Mr. Hakki Ozmorali through his blog The World of Direct Selling, I've been interested in the similarities between word of mouth marketing and this form of network-based marketing. The Avon ladies, the Tupperware parties -- can't they teach us a thing or two about sampling, experience-driven word of mouth and sales? Hakki has lead teams at Oriflame, Herbalife and LR Health & Beauty Systems as their Country Manager in Turkey, and as North American Regional Manager for the Canadian network marketing company Lifestyles in Toronto, Canada. He currently runs his own firm, DS Consulting. Here are Hakki's valuable thoughts on the opportunities in direct-selling businesses.

What do you think is the connection between direct to consumer marketing and word of mouth? Is there an overlap?

Obviously, direct selling relies very much on word of mouth. In its network marketing form, this reliance is even stronger. Companies expect and promote network marketers to conduct their businesses in their close circles. That is, you take the word to your circle of friends and acquaintances and they take it from you to do the same in theirs. As a consequence, people enjoy the luxury of using the products they like, of referring them to the people they like, and make money from this.

Word of mouth marketers are grappling with measurement issues. It is hard to ask for more projects without proving their worth and ROI. Any learnings you can share from direct selling?

One of the strongest aspects of direct selling is its measurability. One can keep track of all the transactions that take place between the direct sellers and the company. And those transactions expand through word of mouth. One might say here, “Hey, you talk about direct sellers. How about the end consumers?” First of all, it is very rare to see a direct seller not using the products the company he or she is affiliated with. So, a direct seller is in fact, always a consumer as well. Secondly, many direct selling companies have “preferred customer” programs where end consumers can directly buy from the company at discounted prices where you again, can measure everything. So, when a company can find the way to register the user, it can do all measurements one can think of.

What are the best approaches and practices that work in direct selling? How does consumer experience play into these?

In time, we have learned many lessons. There are some generally accepted rules now. For instance, you need to have a meaningful product line, a solid compensation plan to reward the field, and an operation that satisfies well the needs of direct selllers and consumers. On top these, we have the Internet. A direct selling operation without serving on the Internet now, belongs to yesterday. And today, we are faced with another phenomenon called the “social media”. With that, we have the most powerful tools ever to reach out to younger generations. As a side note, younger generations have traditionally stayed not-so-close to the direct selling model. Oriflame’s “Dare to Be” that I had covered on my blog previously is a very innovative example to such efforts.

With regards to consumer experience, I can say it is in the heart of direct selling. It is very unusaual that a direct seller who personally did not have a positive experience will go out and promote.

Where do you think the future of direct selling is going, with all the changes in social media landscape? Does powerful consumer mean powerful marketer, in your opinion?

Every single day, the industry is exploring new opportunites that the social media tools provide. If this is all about networking, now a lot of networking is going on the Internet. When you have a meaningful presence there, you can benefit a lot. So, I don’t think the advances on the Internet will challenge the future of direct selling in a negative way. Having said that, another challenge is there because those who utilize these tools better than the others will be winning. It is important to note here that Sequia Capital after investing $37 million in the direct selling company Stella & Dot said it had done so because “the direct selling industry is on the cusp of a new age, with e-commerce and social networking transforming the landscape of the traditional direct-sales approach”.

Coming to your second question, yes, empowering consumer is actually the essence of network marketing. That is, if you have a powerful consumer, that person will be a powerful marketer for your product as long as you show him or her how to do it and compensate for doing so.

You have an interesting trail of international work. What would be your recommendation to global brands in today's communication landscape?

While there is so much going on in the direction of globalizaton, local languages, cultures, tastes, attitudes are still there. I’ll give you an example from Facebook. The Turkish people make up the fourth largest audience among Facebook users. This is not because the Turks are one of the most Internet savvy or technologically advanced society in the world. This is simply because Turks love to socialize, to network, and to share. So, when launching a marketing activity, one may choose not to utilize Facebook in a specific country, but apparently, you don’t have that luxury in the Turkish market.

Thank you very much for your time and insights!

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Experience Is Key in Car Sales

2011-03-21T22:21:00.001-04:00

Is the economy coming back? Here's a sign: According to a Mintel study released in March, new car and light truck sales increased by 11 percent between 2009 and 2010, marking the first increase in car sales since 2000. I had written about the role of experience and word of mouth in getting consumers to purchase cars. The Mintel study also underscores the importance of hands-on experience in getting shoppers to seal the deal. When asked about the influences on the purchase of the last new car model, majority of consumers (63 percent) pick test drive from the list of retailer offers and features. The trend holds true across age, gender and income groups. Consumers across the board are checking on marketing claims and deciding which car suits their needs best through hands on experience, on their own. Word of mouth may bring them to the showroom, but it needs to match what they experience to close the sale.

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Technology with Emotion

2011-03-15T08:07:00.001-04:00

My dance teacher’s email signature said ‘dance is motion with emotion.’ How true! If that’s the case, then social media is ‘technology with emotion.’ Think of the most common terms we use in this field: engagement, sharing, passing along, experience and communication, among others. Outside the marketing context, none of these suggest coupons, samples, downloads or payments. The experiences we are trying to create through social media are successful when people are inspired, entertained and touched.

Let’s say you are trying to create a Facebook page for a brand. There are many elements you need to pull together from design to development. The order of applets (e.g., polls, quizzes, games) you use is not as important as the journey through which you are taking your audience. If your campaign invokes emotion, then it will be successful. That’s when people will have stories to share. That’s when people will have the inertia to take action.

Consider food bloggers or those who write about travel. They talk about creating experiences that appeal to the senses. That’s why they’re intriguing. That’s why there are millions of people who write about these topics and millions more who follow them.

So, before launching another page or posting another announcement in social media, run it through the emotion test. Share it with some people and see how they react. If they talk about how it makes them feel, then you have a good story in hand. If they are worried about where to click and unsure of what they will get out of that click, then go back to choreograph your dance and to create.

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Gap Between Online and Offline Word of Mouth Narrows For Car Purchases

2011-02-28T08:01:00.001-05:00

A study on large purchases made in the past five years confirms the impact of customer satisfaction and word of mouth on car purchases and brand choices. According to the Large Purchase study by S. Radoff Associates, about one-third of car purchasers in the past year said they were influenced by their past experience (35 percent) and face-to-face or phone communications with friends and family (30 percent) when making their car choice.

In the hierarchy of information sources that influence car purchases, offline word of mouth has a bigger influence on consumers than online word of mouth. Yet, the rising role of online word of mouth in closing car deals is a noteworthy trend. Over the past five years, online word of mouth sources (e.g., online reviews, blogs, social networks, forums, friend emails) have been increasingly influential in driving consumers’ car purchasing decisions and brand choices. Five years ago, one-fifth (20 percent) of consumers pointed to online word of mouth among the sources that shaped their decision. A year ago, more than one-quarter (26 percent) indicated that online word of mouth helped them choose and buy their car.

As car purchasers increasingly rely on online word of mouth sources, automotive brands need to be prepared to monitor and join online conversations. For car buyers experience is a fundamental decision factor. They assess their hands-on experience along with others’ experience in driving vehicles. Online marketing and communication initiatives that highlight positive consumer experiences and provide extended service to potential customers are bound to drive sales.

To read more about how various car purchaser segments (e.g., women, parents, young adults) make their buying decisions and brand choices, download the ebook What Drives Cars here.

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E-books: We Will Pay for Online Content

2011-02-23T18:31:00.002-05:00

Majority of Internet users are readers--blurb readers, that is. Most people want short and easy-to-digest information they can quickly absorb. Especially business readers are more likely to consume and share any content with bullets, call outs and fewer than 15 pages. They need actionable snippets of data to make business decisions. Digital readers such as Kindle, Nook and the iPad, as well as the e-reader apps, fuel this trend. Whether from news sites or digital bookstores, users can now search and pull information while reading. 

Self-publishing platforms from Kindle (KDP), Barnes and Noble (PubIt) and Google Books are changing this game and taking it a step further. They are empowering content producers by enabling them to self-publish e-books. The platforms let authors dust off manuscripts arbitrarily ignored by literary agents and publishing houses. It also opens the doors to researchers and thinkers who can publish reports fast and disseminate them to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Google audiences. TED announced it would be publishing a series of ebooks, fewer than 20,000 words at $2.50. The NY-based futurist think tank PSFK has put its reports on the future of healthcare on Amazon's Kindle platform for $25. Wouldn't you pay for it with your corporate credit card? There is little barrier to purchase in these cases.   

As more users seek business information through e-readers, brands, service providers and authors will supplement their subscription revenue streams. Currently, iBooks and Kindle apps are among the top 100 free apps on iTunes, making a second suite of devices open to e-books. For business audiences armed with smart phones, e-books that give them quick, practical advice will be indispensable. E-book authors who can socialize their content and sustain online/offline conversations around their publications will attain notoriety.

Speaking of Social Media at Turkish WIN

2011-02-21T21:22:00.001-05:00

I am a proud member of Turkish WIN, a growing social network of professional women with social, cultural or professional ties to Turkey. The group holds meetings in NY, but there is an extended community online - expanding from China, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul to San Francisco. The goal is to learn from each other and to help support women in their endeavors, whatever they may choose to do. More about the group's values here.

Last Thursday, I gave a talk about social media at one of their events. You can watch me wave my arms in front of the podium here. The video includes my slides as well. I am thankful to everyone who came. I presented for about 20 minutes. Then we went into Q&A, which merged with the wine & cheese part of the evening and lasted a solid two hours! Whether employed at large companies or taking charge at small businesses, the guests had series of questions about using social media to brand and to build a business. Interestingly, their questions applied to any size or type of institution across the board. Where do I start? Should I mix personal and professional in my blog? Do I lose or expand my audience if I write in two languages? Should I create an editorial calendar if I am trying to be authentic? How do I protect my creative assets? If you have an expert on staff, what are the perils of making him the face of your brand? The audience's enthusiasm was proof that there is still plenty to discuss about the fundamentals of social media. It is easy to set up a Twitter or Facebook account, but building your presence in social media requires careful thought and plan.

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Brand Love

2011-02-13T22:38:00.001-05:00

A few years ago, I was co-presenting with Andy Sernovitz at a word of mouth marketing webinar. I had my slides ready, full of data charts and diagrams showing how to identify online influencers and gauge their impact on brands. Andy preceded my presentation with his section. I never forget one of the slides he put up: It was just a big, shiny, red heart. He said, "Word of mouth is about looooovvve." The simplicity in what he was showing struck me. My slides would probably make a business decision maker feel comfortable about their investment, but what Andy was saying touched the core of the matter.

Word of mouth is about love. It is about feeling so passionate about a brand or product that you are ready to scream it from the rooftops-- or in this case, from the windows of a Union Square store in New York. What a smart and eye-catching way to turn consumer satisfaction into authentic publicity. Happy Valentine's!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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My Brand Fast-Trackers Podcast

2011-02-07T22:24:00.001-05:00

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Martin, CEO and Founder of Brand Connections, about word of mouth marketing and my book. He just published the podcast on his site and on iTunes. The podcast series is an incredible wealth of knowledge. Seasoned marketers from AKQA, Salesforce.com, Durex, and NBC Entertainment among others share their points of view about the art of connecting with consumers. You can subscribe to Fast-Tracker s here. If you listen to 10+ episodes, it's the equivalent of attending a power marketing conference.

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US Hispanics Are Creators, Not Just Spectators

2011-01-22T19:56:00.001-05:00

Much has been written about the US Hispanic population's affinity towards social media, but this slide brings it home. We do not have to wait for Census results to recognize the power of the Hispanic audience online. Take a look at their online behavior. Hispanic users overindex in almost every category - particularly in online entertainment (music, videos, photo sharing) and in driving online conversations. They are much more likely than their counterparts to use IM or to go on message boards. Nearly one half (48 percent) of online US Hispanics have a social profile and are considered content creators (47 percent). They also contribute their opinions as critics (41 percent).

Social media offers a shortcut to those marketers who want to honor the Hispanic audience and need to engage the conversation drivers in this segment. Inicie la conversacion.

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Socialgraph Helps Search Engine Listings

2011-01-17T11:31:00.001-05:00

When showing the value of an online community you are building, do not forget about checking the search box. Typical questions about expected outcomes from a community may still center around reach metrics. How many people am I reaching? How many eyeballs am I catching with my messages? The comprehensive answer includes reach (unique visitors, community members, etc.), engagement (i.e., conversations among fans and your brand) and search rankings. And your search listings are related to reach and engagement.

The basic principle of affecting organic search results is strong and relevant content that gets repeated, cited and linked in online conversations. When you build a community page or a fan page, steer your editorial calendar to include bits of newsworthy information that can easily grab and pass along to their networks. When sharing news about a discount, expert tips or a new product launch, your audience expands your digital footprint, brings you more visitors/fans and generate links. The sum of these activities have a positive impact on Google search rankings and your content rises higher and higher as your community expands and chatter grows through tweets, discussions and blog posts.

In fact, Web analyst Brandt Dainow's list of rules for beating Google at SEO includes the following audience behaviors, which help search rankings:

Fans who like/follow you
Impressions from social graph fans (i.e., they talk about your brand in social media, including your message points, brand name)
Impressions from social graph fans with links (i.e., fans are citing your community page and referring traffic)
Secondary fan connections (i.e., friends who tell friends who then become your fans and/or referrers)
Other citations (i.e., links, references from people who are not your fans/followers)
Number of visits, click-throughs

Online conversations increase the value of your community. A bustling online hub means higher visibility and accessibility.

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Online News and Buzz Predict Stock Value

2011-01-11T22:23:00.001-05:00

SENSEnews, a service brought to you by the people behind the semantic search engine hakia, is able to make sense of it all for investors. The system aggregates vast amounts of information such as facts, news events, financial interpretations, speculations, market factors, sentiments and reviews. Then, it plugs this knowledge into an intricate algorithm. The result is a computation of unrealized stock value. You know when your investments are overpriced or undervalued. You decide to sell, hold or buy more.

As the co-inventor of SENSEnews Dr. Riza Berkan, indicates, the average person cannot track and analyze such vast amounts of data. Whether we get our news from the media or through word of mouth, we are always a few steps behind in the information game. Therefore, SENSEnews offers an incredible advantage to traders and those who manage their own portfolio.

While the relationship between news and stock value have been studied in depth, the addition of social media to the mix elevates the conversation about the value of online word of mouth to a new level. Services like SENSEnews also underscore the importance of financial information companies release online. Through the funnel of SENSEnews, what companies publish about themselves, what the media say about companies and what citizens publish online can affect perceived stock value (and performance.)

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Email Still Has It

2011-01-10T22:05:00.001-05:00

Long before myriad of apps took over itunes, there was talk of the sticky app. In Web 1.0 days, techies would wonder "What will be the one application that will have the 'it' factor?" Email would often come up. Then it would be quickly dismissed--many believed it had to be more complicated or futuristic than that. Fast forward to 2011, email is still going strong. In fact, according to a recent Technographics report from Forrester, consumers are now less likely to delete messages without reading. They are also less likely to opt out or wish they had opted out.

Longitudinal data from the report shows a steady decline in what email marketers would consider bad behavior. In 2006, 73 percent of consumers deleted most email messages from advertisers without reading. This incidence dropped to 63 percent in 2008 and to 59 percent in 2010. While one-half (49 percent) of consumers wished it were easier to unregister from email offers in 2006, only 28 percent shared the sentiment in 2010.

While these are good news for e-CRM planners, email could still use the power of organic word of mouth. Majority of consumers do not forward promotional emails. In 2006, some nine percent said they sometimes forwarded promotional emails to their friends. This incidence climbed merely to 12 percent in 2010. In the age of tell-a-friend systems such as AddThis, ShareThis and Gigya, the likelihood to forward an email could have been higher.

Since the days Microsoft encouraged friends to tell friends to get hotmail accounts, email remains a strong and viable marketing channel. It is increasingly on target. Marketers still need work on delivering value and telling amazing stories to convince their audiences that emails are indeed worth passing along.

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Groupon and Yelp: The Combo Works for Small Businesses

2011-01-09T17:54:00.001-05:00

I am fascinated to watch the growth of a small business nearby our home: Dahn Yoga Center. They are masters of word of mouth, because they know how to create and share stories. They are also using new tools, such as Groupon and Yelp, to increase trials.

Part of the ritual in classes is a tea ceremony at the end where happy members take a few minutes to sit down and share how they feel. Some talk about their aches, some talk about moments of enlightenment. Most of the time, the stories are positive, as the method increases and improves circulation, helps people stretch and coaches people to find that point of mental calm. Happy customers, happy business! The center has been getting a lot of new members through genuine, enthusiastic referrals. Friends bring other friends and family in, saying 'You must try this!'

Most recently, they participated in a Groupon deal, offering participants a significant discount on a 10-class card. As a result, the center in Brooklyn Heights got 17 sign ups, Manhattan locations saw 50 participants and Boston Cambridge area got more than 100 walk ins. Thinking about the college audience in Boston area who is hooked on social media and emerging platforms such as Groupon, the high level of participation in Cambridge makes sense. I was told the Boston area center is also doing really well on Yelp. So, people who saw the deal on Groupon were able to check out the real people stories and review the ratings on Yelp before making a final decision.

The Brooklyn Heights center is going to rely on good service and honest stories to turn these trials into long-term members. I heard that one of the Groupon leads loves the classes so much that she is taking a cab from her far away home to the center for every class. That's dedication! And it is very promising.

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Pucca's Diary: Authentic Authenticity!

2011-01-09T17:34:00.001-05:00

During my latest trip to Istanbul, I had the pleasure of coming across the latest web phenomenon that every other Turkish girl is talking about: Pucca's Diary. It's raw. It's from the heart - more so, written off the top of a young woman's head. Pucca writes about her angst to find love. Nothing new you might think, but her tone and her writing voice is so strong, it makes everyone stop on their tracks. If you can't read Turkish, let me paint the picture for you: Think a young girl who's thinking and talking a mile a minute with slang, SMS shorthand and observations that every woman makes but no one dares to utter. Her chase for the neighbor's son, her competition with an Angeline Jolie-esque colleague to get the only decent looking boy in the office, her bitter break up with her less than handsome and intelligent boyfriend. It's all stories where readers can find a piece of themselves, giggle and tell their friends to check out.

In fact, that's why the blog has been so successful as a series of authentic drama. Pucca has more than 55,000 followers on Twitter. Her blog has been published as a book in June 2010. By December, it was in its 11th (!!!) print. And it's priced at 20 TL/ $13. For your information, that's very close to the cost of foreign classics whose price tag include import tax. It's not so cheap considering the Turkish book market or what the local publishers coin as 'laptop books.' Go girl!

Authenticity is a much frequently used buzz word in social media circles. While we craft ePR messages, maybe we should first jot down what we really mean and want to say and then dare to publish it. Edits, reviews, 'multiple cooks in the kitchen' sometimes boil tweets and blog posts down to, well, water. If you know your audience, if you know what they want to hear and how they talk, you should write in freestyle like Pucca.

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What Will Happen By 2015?

2010-12-12T20:56:00.001-05:00

We know what will happen in 2011. Marketing plans are ready. Teams are staffing up for research, ideation, and launches. There will be news of acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and inventions. We will need to be nimble enough to respond to these ad-hoc changes. Yet we truly need to plan for the future, not just for today and tomorrow. We need to start thinking about how content, distribution technologies and audience behavior will change by 2015. The following are predictions on the landscape shifts that will become increasingly defined within the next five years.

Content:

1- Short entertainment will be standard on phones: Audiences prefer short excerpts to long exposes. Most people do not like to read. Many of us need to or would like to stay in the know. With the advent of tablets and mobile broadband, we will read 300-500 word stories on our smart phones. Since online video will be near ubiquitous, content providers will produce more infotainment clips and rely on visual communications to tell stories in creative, succinct ways.

2- We will arrange the features on your favorite Web sites: We will see click and drag web sites. The content management systems will move to the front end from backend. Brands and news portals will have a better understanding of their users’ preferences and have the chance to improve on their services.

Audience:

3- CSR audiences will be more demanding: Generation G (giving) will scrutinize philanthropy and CSR efforts more closely. Donating two to 10 percent of proceeds to a cause will not be enough. They will expect more creative approaches from brands that produce tangible results and offer meaningful engagement.

4- Information filters and organizers will regain popularity: People will use filters to organize their ever-growing list of contacts and prioritize among them. Instead of switching to 50-people networks, such as Path.com, online audiences will defer to new group and folder features on their Facebook pages.

Distribution:

5- Facebook will turn people info into business (and it won’t be just advertising): Facebook will fight with Amazon and smaller players like Yelp to be a word of mouth search engine. The vast amount of personal information it collects will continue to help marketers map out consumer preferences based on social connections and profile details. Privacy battles and issues will continue. Users will search for experience-based recommendations and listings within their extended networks.

6- Google will become a content distributor: Google will expand its e-stores to include music, movies and clips, creating a vast indie market online. Audience ratings on these pieces of content will be added to Google algorithms.

7- Word of mouth marketing will become more precise: Marketers will successfully target beyond the inner/immediate circle of influencers. Our understanding of second and third cycles of word of mouth will improve. There will be more sophisticated program offerings to mobilize crowds and offer innovative products/services to a wider range of influencers.

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Study Shows Social Media Has More Impact Than Paid Media on Car and Technology Sales

2010-12-08T14:15:00.001-05:00

S. Radoff Associates, a NY-based research company, just released a report about the impact of word of mouth on large-ticket item purchases. The results remove any shadow of doubt on word of mouth’s impact on tangible business results. And we understand that social media drives sales for considerable investments in cars and technology, not just CPG products.

The study delves into large purchases made in the past year and the information sources that shaped brand choices. The results show that one-half of consumers say word of mouth was a key influencer for car (50 percent), technology and electronics (49 percent) product choices they made in the past year.

We know from Keller Fay Group that much of word of mouth actually takes place offline. Interestingly, these two categories are pretty balanced in terms of their source of buzz. In fact, online and offline word of mouth were just as likely (29 percent, respectively) to influence technology and consumer electronics purchases.

Online reviews are at the source of online buzz. Consumers say online reviews influenced nearly one-quarter of technology and electronics purchases (24 percent) and 17 percent of car purchases made last year.

The most counterintuitive factoid from the study is that consumers are four times more likely to be influenced by social media than paid media for their car purchases made in the past year (21 percent vs. 5 percent). Social media has been more influential than paid media for technology purchases as well (26 percent vs. 7 percent).

Considering the typical budget spending on advertising vs. social media, these numbers signal the need to seek efficiencies in our integrated marketing plans for 2011 and beyond. Marketers planning for automotive and consumer electronics/ technology brands can shift dollars from traditional advertising budgets to social media and focus on elevating consumer opinions and customer experience.

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Improvised Storytelling with Pixels

2010-11-28T21:47:00.001-05:00

Since this is a blog about the spoken word, I thought it would be interesting to show how we do not always need words to communicate. I attended an experiential art show organized and lead by Prof. Philip Baldwin of Stonybrook. He asked a small group of dancers to improvise some moves in front of a computer propped up on a chair. The trick was to be close enough to the computer so that the sensors would pick up the moves. As dancers shifted and floated across the floor, their gestures appeared in pixel clusters on the wall. Each move also made a computer-generated noise. Their communications transformed into imagery and sound, fueling viewers' imagination. While we wondered what these moves might mean, we were also trying to make sense of their 3D reflections and unique music.

Later, using the Michelangelo software, we were able to get a sketch of these movements on the computer screen and project them on the wall. Impromptu stories in 3D, told through dance...

Professor Baldwin was joking that what he put together with his fellow artists was the same gaming technology that sold millions. I was thinking it could be used at events, house parties or even in virtual events where consumers are asked to create their own iterations based on a given theme. For the record--Baldwin didn't charge us for the show though he could and should have.

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Wrapping Up WOMMA 2010

2010-11-21T19:28:00.001-05:00

I wanted to thank everyone who came to my session at WOMMA Marketing Summit this year, where I presented about social media KPIs. It turned out to be a pretty big crowd. I got many thoughtful questions from the audience. I wanted to share some of them with you here:

Q: You mentioned the role of social vs. paid and earned media. What about owned media?

A: Yes, owned media is gaining more traction as companies embed social and engagement features into their brand sites.

Q: You showed a connection between large ticket-item purchases and word of mouth. What about CPG products?

A: I wanted to make the point that what someone else thinks or advises influences even those purchases that are in the thousands. For CPG products, the trend is even stronger. Word of mouth does influence shopping decisions.

Q: You showed some strong results for charity: water's September campaign, that was created with donated services. How much would it cost to run a similar campaign?

A: Yes, those services cost a bit. But the point I want to leave you with is that the campaign was optimized for measurement from start to finish. The most important success metric was the amount of money charity: water could raise to bring clean water to people in need in Central African Republic. Yet, they also knew how many fans they had, how much traffic they were getting to their web site from Facebook and media, and how many campaigns were starting at any given point. [[posterous-content:pid___0]][[posterous-content:pid___1]]

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Inspiration: First Step in Word of Mouth (and it's not turnkey)

2010-11-16T23:13:00.001-05:00

I was honored to participate in a panel about non-traditional advertising at the recent Digital Hollywood conference, with a great group of seasoned marketers and creative thinkers. Much of the discussion centered on social media marketing. While we drifted into the nuts and bolts of how to identify influencers, get conversations going, there were several insights that stood out as the fundamentals we often forget.

1 1- There is no such thing as a ‘viral’ video – A producer or a team of creatives does not come up with a viral video. Viral is the best possible marketing outcome for a well-told story.

2- The best stories inspire people. They inspire them to tell their own stories, to take action, to share, and to think how they would act if in that situation. This is the secret ingredient in word of mouth.

3- You have to have a good story AND a good product. This is especially relevant for new product launches or re-launches of products that need to be re-introduced to their core audiences. Facebook ads will bring eyeballs to your fan page. Coupons certainly help boost the number of ‘likes.’ Yet these marketing efforts need to be validated by positive consumer experiences. When brands can deliver on their promises, consumers will be moved to take action and serve as advocates. Otherwise, there will always be a discrepancy between marketing messages and consumers’ candid online stories.

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WOMMA Summit 2010 - Taking Questions Now

2010-11-07T20:55:00.001-05:00

I will be presenting at the upcoming WOMMA Summit in Vegas on key performance indicators in social media. I'll go over the metrics I cited in my article here, with case studies. I will show how to set up and apply these KPIs to real life campaigns. I know that many colleagues and clients are wrestling with the challenges of measuring social media. I'd like to start the Q&A session now. Please post/tweet any questions or thoughts you might have about this topic until November 17th. I'll respond to each either during my presentation or online (through my blog/Twitter account). Hope to see you in Vegas!

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Making Social Media Work for Your E-Commerce Site

2010-10-24T16:33:00.001-04:00

While many marketers remain doubtful of tangible returns from their social media endeavors, transactional sites (e.g., e-commerce, donation, banking, etc.) are uniquely positioned to show the loop from conversation to purchase. To gauge conversions from social media posts to purchases, brands need to look further than the flux of traffic from their social network profile areas to their Web sites. Search advertising, e-mail programs, mobile apps, branded videos also fuel word of mouth, increase online visibility and lead people to online payment pages.

Consider these social-media driven tactics to boost online transactions:

Say it with pictures: Having a clear, easy to adopt and pass along message is priceless in social media. On Twitter or Facebook, you do not have much room to pitch. Use these spaces to hit on key points and plug in photos and videos to tell a deeper, emotional story. Charity: water’s recent fundraising campaign to bring clean water to the Bayaka people in Central African Republic (CAR) did just that. The organization made the strategic decision to use Facebook as the hub of the digital campaign. Visitors could choose from a series of one-sentence key messages, bundle the phrase with a striking photo of people who lack access to clean water in CAR and send it off to their newsfeed.

Offer value on the (engagement) spot: The pathway between social messaging and transaction should be short. The longer your visitors have to look for the check out button, the more customers will lose interest and drop off. Smart shopping apps allow brands build pop-up stores on Facebook. Take a look at these custom tabs 1-800 Flowers and Delta, powered by Alvenda.

Use social media to enhance search engine visibility: Repeating calls to action or news announcements on Twitter is a necessity. Your message may otherwise be lost in a steady stream of updates. Tweeting regularly and updating social media posts increase the number of tags and keywords associated with your brand in cyberspace. These activities give search engines more to grab and catalogue. Embedding keywords in your Twitter editorial calendar can bring you closer to shoppers who start their online journey on Google.

Set your mobile app to accept credit cards: Apps are not just for fun and games on Facebook. Boost your branded app’s functionality with an online store. The grocery store Fresh Direct cuts to the chase with its mobile app that lets customers fill their shopping carts, change orders and have items delivered to their doorsteps. Moviefone’s app marries trailers and reviews with movie ticket purchases.

Get closer to your loyalist through e-CRM: E-newsletters can offer a steady stream of shopping news to brand loyalists who opt-in to receive emails. While Facebook and Twitter give brands a place on fans’ walls and Tweet Decks, the inbox is still one of the most coveted places in social marketing. Membership clubs, insider deals and discount offers delivered through email can turn engaged customers to e-commerce sites and Facebook tabs.

Customer stories weigh more than star ratings: Star ratings sure help to scan through hundreds of product reviews and note the top performing products on a retailer site. Yet there is much more behind a 3.5 star rating. As case studies from BazaarVoice repeatedly show, authentic customer stories have a positive impact on Web sales. If you are sharing customer reviews on your brand site, consider replicating these stories on Facebook where customers are already getting advice from their friends on what to buy. The online customer service system Get Satisfaction now offers Facebook and Twitter integration, channeling customer Q&A to brands’ social sites.

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What’s Next? Five Digital Trends To Watch

2010-10-19T17:48:00.001-04:00

Social media is competitive. Brands need to break through the clutter achieving a delicate balance of creativity and innovation. To get ahead in the game, we are always wondering about the next big thing.

New York Times (online) broke the news about Google’s hands-off car, specifically engineered to reduce human error in driving and increasing drivers’ time for ad exposure and search. The news come on the heels of a recent Forrester report on iPad users, in which the analyst is encouraging readers to think of additional surfaces and dashboards besides portable devices where online marketing could play a role.

Will brands be communicating from dashboards in the next three months? We may need a bit more time for that. However, it would be smart to start putting the following pieces together when devising digital strategies:

Social media advertising will compete with authentic influencer chatter: The new Twitter ads are a testament to increased targeting and customization in online advertising. They also point to the competition between sponsored vs. real recommendations in social media. Will your audience click through your sponsored tweet or an influencer’s retweet? In either case, the results will be better than 0.02% click-through rates.

Semantic search caters more closely to consumers’ needs: Google’s instant search suggestions improve brand impressions and make it easy for consumers to articulate and find what they are searching. However, there is room for improvement in search result precision. The semantic search engine Hunch asks users 20+ questions about their likes/dislikes upfront. Based on these responses, Hunch offers recommendations on what to read, visit and taste, among other choices.

Location-based marketing will spark loyalty programs: There is more to the simple genius behind FourSquare than check-ins and special offers. We will see a convergence between loyalty marketing and geo-location. Imagine being offered a coupon that converts you from a shopper to a buyer, the fifth time you visit the same store.

The sandwich generation will turn to e-commerce: Time and resource strapped boomers who feel sandwiched between the demands from their children and parents will increasingly revert to search engines and e-commerce sites to do their shopping, to find services and to place orders.

Digital will play a bigger role in teens’ relationship with TV: According to eMarketer, teens (12-19) have a personal purchasing power of $176 billion. The number of hours they spend watching TV exceeds the minutes they spend watching online videos. Meanwhile, they also defer to the Web and to their friends before making purchasing decisions. (See Daisy Whitney’s article for Cynopsis Media for more details.) In this landscape, digital media properties (e.g., Web sites for TV shows) will compete with established social networks, hosting and harnessing teens’ peer-to-peer conversations. They will have to bring rich experiences to their tech-savvy audiences, offering content teens cannot readily find on the big screen.

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iMedia Connection: - What drives the premium iPad experience?

2010-10-19T09:10:00.001-04:00

IPG Media Lab set out to answer the million-dollar question: Is the willingness to pay for iPad apps driven by the early adopter audience or the form factor?

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Translating Facebook Likes Into Impressions

2010-10-03T19:10:00.001-04:00

I participated in an informal research experiment conducted by our friends at Keller Fay Group. The participants got an email invitation from Ed Keller on late Friday afternoon, asking us to post this simple statement on our Facebook Walls. "Hi friends. Please help me with a research project. If you see this, please click 'like' on my status. It's that simple. Thanks." We were to report back to Ed in 48 hours with the percentage of our friends who actually clicked through.

Mine hovers around 10 percent. Not bad, considering I am connected to 428 friends, family members and colleagues through Facebook. The one qualitative finding that didn't surprise me was who commented and who got into a conversation under this comment. I had six comments from four unique users - all of whom are what I would call 'intensive' Facebook users and natural conversationalists. I know that their offline networks are pretty broad as well.

But if you go from 428 to four to have true engagement, then maybe we should not equate the number of friends to actual impressions on a wall post. Of course, we have to consider that my message was not anything counter intuitive or newsworthy. It was a simple (perhaps questionable) call to action that got posted at a time when most people were drifting off of work. In a more formal rendition of this experiment, I would also vary time, quality and content of the message. That would yield pretty interesting results. I am sure not all wall posts are equal.

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Search Words + Online Buzz = Patient Insights

2010-09-27T17:59:00.001-04:00

I was just thinking through the online trail of a patient, looking for disease information. He might be in his mid 50s. He's probably content with the browser his computer pops open for him. He plugs in some key words and off he goes to a list of information sources. NIH.org, Mayoclinic.com, webMD are his first stops, because they come up above branded sites supported by pharma companies.

He peeks into some forums as he digs deeper, but does he trust the information from other caregivers and patients? Spam messages about Canadian drugs and links to cheaper pills make him want to click out of there as fast as he can. He goes back to emailing his friends for a referral, turning to people in his immediate circle.

The sheer volume of disease-related posts in forums makes us think that majority of healthcare conversations take place in these areas. I feel like we also need to look at behavioral data on how a journey that typically begins with search leads to engagement, if at all. Do the key words patients/caregivers use match up to what's being discussed online? Do they match up to what brands provide on their sites? Is there a way to be as authoritative as the Mayo Clinic site on a given topic as a healthcare brand?

Reviewing most commonly used search terms and online buzz about a given health topic can provide significant color to our insights. Online posts may reflect the opinions of those who dare to post public questions about their health. But search is (relatively) anonymous and can show what people are truly interested in finding.

My two favorite tools to understand how Internet users search for content are: Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Trellian Keyword Discovery

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Key Performance Indicators in Social Media

2010-09-02T10:11:00.001-04:00

Today’s social media landscape is significantly more cluttered and complex than its early days. The abundance of content that is easy to access and consume makes launching and sustaining noteworthy online projects challenging. As social media matures, the need to measure online word of mouth and demonstrate success becomes indisputable.

A comprehensive measurement plan should consist of three parts—gauging the audiences’ reactions to the brand before, during, and after the campaign. The first step in measuring online word of mouth is to listen and monitor audience chatter across blogs, forums, and social networks. This effort helps uncover existing issues, attitudes, and behaviors. It marks the starting point for a campaign. The second step requires tracking the campaign’s progress and studying the interaction between message senders and receivers. During this phase, marketers can take note of attitudinal and behavioral changes among their target audience. The third step involves comparing final campaign results with benchmark scores to demonstrate the momentum and change the campaign generated.

When setting benchmarks and tracking online word of mouth throughout the course of a program, marketers can use the following measures to show how their initiatives generated buzz, changed brand perceptions, and lead consumers to take action.

Volume of discussion: Using blog search engines such as Technorati, Google Blog or research firms’ proprietary software tools, count the number of posts that mention key words or messages related to your program. The numbers of unique mentions indicate online word of mouth reach.

Influencer mentions: When writers quote and reference a source, they deem that information outlet reliable and useful. Similarly, every link that points to a social media address boosts that source’s authority. Desktop monitoring tools such as Radian6 and BuzzLogicÔ measure the number of in-bound links to blogs from brand sites, news sites, forums, and other blogs. The higher the score, the more influential and authoritative the source will be.

Stickiness: To show the full impact of word of mouth programs, we must account for those who received and shared a message. Impressions and unique visitors are metrics that speak to the broad universe of people who may have been exposed to a message. However, not everyone passes along every bit of information they receive. A survey measure developed by research firm S. Radoff Associates called Stickiness addresses this issue. Stickiness is based on the percentage of people who pass along a message among those who are exposed to the message.

The Echo Factor and Tone: When reviewing the overall volume of mentions, analysts often distinguish between positive and negative tone. Marketers can take this assessment a step further and measure how their messages echo through consumer conversations. Through surveys targeting representative samples of their audience, they can probe how many people received and passed along a positive or negative message. Next, they can look at the ratio of positive to negative mentions. S. Radoff Associates’ Tonality Index, which is based on this ratio, indicates the dominant tone of word of mouth and gives brands a pulse check.

Engagement: Online media engagement can be a qualitative measure that gives directional information about consumers’ online experience. To understand the nature of users’ interaction with the blog content, marketers can study comments’ tone and length. They may find a detailed, positive review more meaningful than a neutral or negative monosyllabic comment. Furthermore, they can classify the topics commentators discuss and analyze the quality of information these social media agents share.

Advocacy: Differentiate between those conversations that are descriptive and those that contain recommendations or warnings. To identify those networking agents who are advocating for a brand, product, or a company, look for those who are making solid recommendations, telling others what to do, and potentially influencing others’ opinions and decisions. For instance, MotiveQuest, a strategic consultancy that analyzes online consumer buzz, has coined the term online promoter score™, distinguishing between those mavens who are generating much of the volume on an issue and those advocates who make recommendations

Action: Online word of mouth campaigns yield recommendations, votes, and purchases. When organizations engage word of mouth agents and infuse networks with their messages, they hope to see an increase in sales and public support. To connect such outcomes with their marketing initiatives, communication professionals need to document their audiences’ online behaviors and show online buzz can lead to posts, clicks, downloads, or offline actions such as votes, coupon redemptions, and in-store purchases. Marketers can review sales trends during and after the campaign and note any increases that correspond with online buzz volume. Political strategists can explore how visits to online information hubs affect votes, signatures, and donations.

To read the complete version of this article, please visit PRNews Online.

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Online Connections Do Not Replace True Friendships

2010-08-22T20:53:00.001-04:00

It has been a long while since I read sociologist Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone. At the time, I was an international student facing her first year in college and quite frankly, I did feel alone. Coming from a more communal culture, I felt that I had no hope in a country where the norm was isolation in suburbs and moving away from families for work or school. Over the years I built some wonderful friendships, but I still wonder what my life then would have been like if I had Facebook and continuous access to updates from 400+ connections I have on this site.

According to CafeMom's Mom Index (TM), things may not have been much different, despite the Internet. This study states that moms have an average of two true friends. Forget all the social networking, conversing online and participating in online chats. Moms are pretty isolated in their daily grind of work and family time. This finding is echoed by work published in the American Sociological Review, which states that the average American has only two close friends and a quarter do not have any.

In other words, boasting hundreds of online connections may not mean that we are in touch with them or engaged in what they have to say. Technology helps spread word faster but does not replace the human factor.

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WWW Now Stands for World Women Web

2010-08-08T23:17:00.001-04:00

10 years ago, I was perplexed by the discrepancy between women's purchasing power and their hesitation to buy online. I ran a fancy regression analysis and discovered that privacy concerns were the leading barriers to women coming on board full force. As confirmed by a recent report from comScore, Women on the Web, this issue is far behind. According to comScore, U.S. online women are the key drivers of Web purchases. They make more transactions online and they spend more than men. In fact, they are responsible for 58 percent of e-commerce dollars.

Globally, women are slightly less likely than men to be online (46 percent vs. 54 percent). However once women go online, they are more connected than men. Across Latin America, Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, women spend more time than men on social networking, emailing and sending IM messages. Health, apparel and family/parenting sites have the widest reach among women worldwide.

The study also offers insights on smartphone usage in the US and in Europe. As of April 2010, men are more likely than women to use smartphones in the US (60 percent vs. 40 percent) and in Europe (63 percent vs 37 percent). Yet it's important to note that women are taking to social networking apps on their smartphones. If their PC networking habits are any indication, as smartphone usage becomes mainstream, women will shape this medium as well.

To download the full comScore study, please click here.

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Moms to Corporations: "You Just Don't Understand!"

2010-07-25T22:01:00.001-04:00

The online community CafeMom recently launched a new measurement tool called the MomIndex, tracking moms’ quality of life. A quick review of highlights suggests that brands need to convince moms of their authenticity and truly offer great value to grab these women’s attention. According to the CafeMom study, only 7 percent of moms agree that corporations understand their needs and work to make their lives better. Only 6 percent trust brand advertising messages.

Moms are also concerned with the state of world and national affairs. Only one-fifth (22 percent) believe that America is headed in the right direction and 14 percent trust the government to help improve their lives. As low as these percentages may seem, it is worthwhile to note that moms are more likely to trust the government than corporations and brands. They have more hope in an institution that is criticized daily by multiple sources through numerous channels, than companies that try to communicate positive aspects of their products and services.

The gaps between these numbers show the long way ahead of brands that want to earn moms’ trust and generate positive word of mouth. They will need to fight moms’ cynicism and be ready to withstand these savvy consumers’ scrutiny. Above everything else, their messages will need to be believable.

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Legal Expertise Needed!

2010-07-19T21:42:00.001-04:00

Increasing brand presence in social media calls for help from legal departments. As brands step into open commentary space, they need to protect their name as well as the rights of those consumers creating content on their company sponsored pages. The latest updates to FTC guidelines--which insist on disclosure of all material connections and hold marketers liable for false information that may transpire as a result of their social media programs--are all the more reason to get professional legal advice before launching an online campaign.

As social media is still an evolving marketing area, many marketers and their counselors are challenged by the absence of precedents. New tools and functionalities pop up almost every day. Existing platforms, such as Facebook, may change their rules as they go along, responding to public criticism. Moreover, content ownership in social media remains a gray area, where one company provides the frame (e.g., Facebook), another sponsors the area (e.g., your brand) and audience creates the content.

Here are some suggestions that can increase collaboration between marketing teams and their legal advisors, while helping brands navigate social media waters as safely as possible:

1- Disclosure should be top priority. Include the necessary statements in your social media communications and Web areas to abide by the FTC guidelines. Refer to disclosure statements suggested by WOMMA. Consider adopting a system such as cmp.ly, which provides an FTC-compliant software platform to organize all communications between a brand, bloggers and other social media participants.

2- If you are signing contracts with bloggers, spell out the terms of disclosure as part of the deal.

3- If employees are likely to chime into social media discussions about your brand, provide them with the necessary training and information so they know how to disclose their relationship with the brand.

4- Work with legal teams at Facebook, Twitter and other popular communities. It is best to go to the very source and ask. Often times, their rules of communication and participation will be laid out under ‘about us’ or ‘corporate’ sections of their Web sites.

5- Encourage all of your team members (i.e., brand marketers and legal) to familiarize themselves with the tools you are deploying. You can have more fruitful discussions, if everyone understands the social media tools’ basic functionality.

6- Speedy response is critical in social media communications. Before launching a project, arrange a core set of team members including a legal counselor who can be on-call to evaluate questionable comments.

7- You do have (some) control of content in branded areas. When planting your brand’s flag in social media and creating areas dedicated to your topics, communicate your rules of communication to your audience. You may reserve the right to remove inappropriate postings. If you are planning to use consumer-generated media in corporate promotions (e.g., ads, releases, etc.) be sure to indicate this as well.

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Global Web Index Lite Is Here:

2010-07-13T21:54:00.001-04:00

The smart folks behind the Global Web Index just launched a smart widget that provides top-level data on social media habits from 16 countries, ranging from the US and Brazil to Japan and South Korea. The cool thing is that you can slice the data by age and by behavioral segments, such as Informers, Internationalists, Premium Lovers and Risk Takers. What a great way to package rich information!

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Can't Buy Me 'Like'

2010-07-13T21:14:00.001-04:00

Facebook has more than 400 million active users, who spend over 500 billion minutes per month on the site and interact with 160 million features (i.e., pages, groups, events, etc.). While the typical Facebook user is connected to an average of 60 pages, groups and events, how is a brand supposed to attract fans and keep them interested?

There is a surge of campaigns online that encourage users to ‘like’ brand pages on Facebook in exchange for a discount, product trial or charitable donation. As the pressure to show ROI on developing and maintaining a Facebook page mounts, marketers resort to these tactics to give their communities a boost.

The reality is that Facebook is cluttered space and a brand needs a cohesive set of promotions and smart posts to break through and grow their fan base over a reasonable amount of time. The quid pro quo approach will create a spike for a week and then the brand may need a new idea.

Moreover, this approach is a big no-no if you read the fine print in Facebook rules for companies. As stated in this section, “you cannot administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your page.” Brands cannot use native Facebook features to run campaigns. Instead, they need to build apps that sit on separate tabs to run their campaigns. The main reason behind this separation is data ownership and potential liabilities that come with it. Facebook wants the brands to handle their own data and provide the following disclaimer: "This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to [recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used for [brand needs to disclose any way that it plans to use the user's information]."

Among brands looking to acquire fans with the quid-pro-quo tactic, Ann Taylor has a more refined approach. The brand is leading loyal customers (called the Insiders) to their Facebook page with an e-mail invitation and offering them a discount in a tab dedicated to this initiative. To get the discount, users need to ‘like’ the brand. Considering that they have already opted in to receive emails from Ann Taylor, these customers are bound to click ‘like.’

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Shout out for Implementing Word of Mouth!

2010-07-05T19:36:00.001-04:00

I recently had the pleasure of participating in AMA's Marketing Power podcast series. You can download and listen to it right here. My interviewer and program manager commented on my book Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing as '...the most comprehensive guide for carrying out social media based programs that make an impact.' Thank you! It's really gratifying to know that the book's value is understood. It's also wonderful to have a venue to share my thoughts and get feedback. If you have been asking yourself 'I set up my Facebook page, now what?' or 'I really want to delve into social media, but do not know how big of a team I need?' or 'What else can I measure besides fans, followers and clicks?', then check out this podcast.

And I have to send most heartfelt thanks to Mr. Hakki Ozmorali, an expert on direct selling and a prolific writer/blogger. He interviewed me about the synergies between direct selling and word of mouth marketing a while ago. We conducted the interview in Turkish and he just translated it into English and posted it online. You can read it here. A bit of background info on Hakki: He worked as country manager (meaning regional CEO) for direct selling companies Oriflame and LR in Turkey, and as Regional Manager, North America for Lifestyles in Canada. He also wrote the first book in Turkey on network marketing. Perhaps I need to interview him for dotwom!

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Rain Brings More Than 1,000 Acts of Kindness

2010-06-25T00:18:00.002-04:00

It’s pouring and you forgot your umbrella at home. Don’t you wish someone would hand you an umbrella? Volunteers for the Pittsburg based non-profit, The Sprout Foundation, may give you just what you wish. True to its charge to use innovative grassroots tactics, the foundation is acting as a catalyst of positive change with its Here You Go project. Volunteers roam Pittsburgh on rainy days, giving out umbrellas. Their only kind request from the recipients of their gifts is to return the act of kindness and help someone else out. Each umbrella comes with a waterproof card. Recipients are encouraged to write about their experience on these cards and mail them back to Here You Go. The organization posts them here.

Besides promoting good deed and creating a chain of positive interactions, the Here You Go project shows how we can add more meaning to marketing programs and draw audiences into a cause with a simple call-to-action delivered at the right time, in a creative way. The program is memorable because it solves a consumer problem from the get-go. It delivers the product to people at the moment they need it. The experience Here You Go project creates before it asks consumers to generate new acts of kindness also taps into emotions.

The Sprout Foundation inspires and leads by example. It first demonstrates a good deed and then asks for the same in return. The message is clear and direct. Finally, the volunteers enable their audience to pass along the message with the postcards. The organization has an online platform, equipped with social media bells and whistles, which amplify participants’ voice. This web site also helps to showcase the program’s impact.

The Here You Go program serves as a model for those who are planning to give product samples, and those who wish to get community members to take civic action. Read more about this program and similar ones sprouting in Seattle, Baltimore and Sydney here.

Despite Facebook's Popularity, E-Mail Leads Brand Communications

2010-06-13T21:54:00.001-04:00

As Facebook users increasingly use their social network emails for peer communications, the e-mail marketing industry is pointing to a new study almost every month, underscoring the medium’s validity as a branding and sales channel. The latest is a study by ExactTarget and CoTweet that takes a high-level look at online consumers’ email use.

According to the study, based on more than 1,500 interviews conducted among Internet users15 and older, brands have conquered online consumers’ inboxes, they’ve seized the attention of a sizable audience on Facebook, but they have ways to go on Twitter. The study results show that grand majority of online consumers (93 percent) have signed up for some sort of daily email. Four in10 (38 percent) of online consumers are a fan of some brand on Facebook. Meanwhile, a mere five percent of online consumers follow a brand on Twitter.

Internet users’ daily surfing habits show that checking personal news reign over other online activities. Six in 10 (58 percent) users say they start their day by checking email, one fifth (20 percent) go to a search engine, and one in 10 (11 percent) begin their day on Facebook. Visits to corporate and brand sites trail behind. This hierarchy suggests that the personal inbox is the ultimate place to connect with consumers.

As Facebook took over the Internet, many focused their attention on turning the social network into a valuable relationship platform. While throwing an ever-growing online party with hundreds of Facebook fans is a significant accomplishment, email remains a critical component of full-fledged e-CRM plans. E-mail’s popularity among consumers may pose challenges to marketers to break through the inbox clutter. Yet a balanced program that blends relevant emails and entertaining Facebook content can build brand equity and increase open-rates.

For additional information on this study, click here.

Posted via web from Speaking of Social Media

Social Media Within Your Walls

2010-05-13T12:10:00.001-04:00

Networks are the backbone of social media. Disparate groups of people connect to one another through links, posts and messages. They participate to connect and to express their opinions. By this account, employee groups present companies with networks that are poised to share, discuss and socialize content. Employees have a vested interest in joining communities, participating in forums and following blogs as these tools help them gain insights about their field and their competitors and perform better at their jobs.

While social media seems to be a natural fit for connecting employees across departments and geographies, many companies face challenges in using such open forums of communication for business. The first barrier to action is the possibility that employees may create liabilities for the company by participating in social media. Next, the company may not have enough resources to stimulate and sustain conversations with internal stakeholders. These efforts may seem to be too much work for little gain.

The key to creating noticeable change and attaining business goals through social media in a company is to educate employees about the best practices and pitfalls of participating in online conversations. Coaching employees in best practices for sharing opinions online can help companies find the right balance of creative thinking and responsible communication. In fact, guidelines and processes can help companies be more efficient and agile in fostering online employee communications.

Today internal blogs, forums, wikis, instant messengers and employee social networks are popular tools among companies who wish to connect their workforce. There will be more seamless ways to share knowledge across organizations in the future. Yet, regardless of the platform a company chooses to employ, there are a number of basic steps organizations can follow to get the most out of their internal communications based in social media.

Start with a social media policy and training: Establish formal rules of communication on company-branded social media platforms. Tap into the expertise of communication, legal and human resource departments, as well as your IT expert. Assign roles to a team of people who should review and approve content. Note any types of information that employees should not exchange through internal social media channels. Explain the company’s position about external, informal social media communications in which employees may engage. Do they have to put disclaimers on their personal blogs? How should they identify themselves if they are speaking about company matters in public forums? Guide employees on how to use social media forums in a safe way that will not generate liability or messy legal issues for them or for the company.

Listen first, then lead: Before launching a social media platform for internal communications, take employees’ pulse. Conduct brief surveys or qualitative discussions to uncover the most pressing communication needs. Ask employees which social media channels they currently use and which tools they find effective for the communication goals you have in mind. Scan online conversations in public forums for traces of any issues. Then consider the right platform, topic areas and employees who should lead the conversations internally.

Choose the right platform for the job: Think of the communication goal that needs to be accomplished before deciding on the social media channel to use. Consider your team’s time, resources and talents. The latest, most advanced tool in the marketplace may not necessarily be the right choice to get the job done. For instance, a high-level executive who has deep experience to share and limited time to dedicate to social media may best be served through a blog that gets updated once a week. Meanwhile, a team of people who need quick feedback, several times a day may prefer a forum or an internal community set up as a marketplace of ideas.

Know your culture: Social media tools are for engagement, but will your employees participate? To ensure high levels of adoption and compliance, consider how your company’s culture may affect internal, online conversations. Will your employees respond to an invitation from management? Will they need to build consensus at the department level before joining an online activity? Will you need to find internal influencers who can be early adopters and lead the pack?

Bring online meetings offline: Supplement online meetings with offline, fireside chats. Technology can speed up information exchange, but more traditional face-to-face meetings can enhance employees' satisfaction and increase their dedication to their online groups and shared projects.

Plan for sunset: When planning the launch of an internal social media channel, consider its lifetime in light of your mission. Does the project rest upon the expertise of a single employee or department? Can the company sustain it for the foreseeable future? Is the channel built around a specific event (e.g., Olympic sponsorship) or a broader theme (e.g., new business wins)? Have a communication plan ready, in case the conversation leaders leave the company or the project runs its course and comes to an end.

Measure success: Contrary to common belief, social media is not amorphous and there are a number of ways companies can analyze employees’ usage patterns to gauge the success of their online initiatives. Volume, content and tone of online conversations, adoption and participation rates, as well as employee satisfaction are among the many metrics companies can use to evaluate the success of their social media communications. If the channels are set around a particular project or business goal, there may be additional outcome metrics (e.g., closed sales, number of reservations, submissions for a contest) to consider.

Whether internal or external, all branded social media communications are employee communications. Your workforce represents the company and carries titles whether commenting on products in online review sites, posting comments on blog networks or participating in discussion forums on the Intranet. Establishing the ground rules of communication and teaching best practices in social media communications will give employees the opportunity to share their creativity and enhance their professional knowledge as they experiment with new technologies. Social media tools that facilitate idea generation and sharing will help companies bring new projects to life faster than before. In addition to contributing to employee satisfaction, internal social media platforms can increase productivity and unearth new opportunities for collaboration.

For additional insights on employee communications, please visit our Insidedge colleague's blog InTake and follow their newsletter In The Know.

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Art Industry Gives Crowdsourcing A Shot with Blue Label

2010-05-12T22:30:00.001-04:00

The art industry is one to bloom late online. Major deals are usually cut offline at auctions, at reputable galleries or behind the scenes between collectors and dealers. It's certainly driven by word of mouth. When collectors invest in an artist's work, they do everything to showcase it and talk about it and recommend it to others, so that the demand for the artist increases and their investment gains value.

The high-end art world is truly an imperfect market. Information is in the hands of select collectors and few reliable communication channels. Sure you can walk into a gallery or go to an online site and pick a few paintings, but do you really know what you are getting? Probably not. Is there a public reference system like the stock market to see which blue chip name is going up or down? Not really.

The newly launched site Blue Label offers a fresh and simple approach to seeing works of art and getting accurate information on them. Artists can post images of their works and label them (title, medium) securely. Each painting is assigned a Blue Lable code. While the site doesn't have sales data, collectors can follow artists, look up art works and catalogue items that are in their own collections. Through shared knowledge, the database grows and becomes an accurate referral guide for art enthusiasts.

The site has a membership fee of several hundred dollars, which might make some artists think twice about posting before Blue Label proves its worth and deters amateurs. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing initiative for an industry that largely kept to traditional ways of doing business.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Implementing Word of Mouth at UPENN

2010-04-11T23:23:00.006-04:00

I had the opportunity to do a book reading and a presentation on word of mouth marketing at University of Pennsylvania. Having presented to business audiences at many conferences before, I am used to people checking blackberries, Tweeting, typing with purpose on their laptops. This time, audience focus was 100 percent on the screen. They listened. They took notes. It was very refreshing to present to such an engaged group.

The students, who were MBA or media studies students, asked really thoughtful questions. They wanted to understand how to measure buzz and how to predict what kind of start-up would be poised to take off. When I talked about networking agents who drive online word of mouth, one question kept coming up - how do you identify your own set of influencers? How do you know someone you're targeting is truly a powerful word of mouth agent online?

The dynamic Q&A session confirmed my initial belief when starting to write this book: We are no longer discussing the importance of social media, nor are we describing the changing communication landscape. The revolution happened. Now, the online word of mouth space is ripe for business. Developers around the world release hundreds of applications per day. The start up scene is replete with smart companies that are harnessing word of mouth data and helping consumers publish like professional creatives.

No matter what the next big thing is or whatever the social networking idea du jour may be, we still need to figure out the flow of information in influencer networks and find ways to bring brands into these conversations. Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing aims to do just that. The book helps readers - whether they are seasoned marketers or curious students seeking the next opportunity - how to formulate and carry out their own word of mouth marketing plans.

Opportunity is in Asia-Pacific

2010-04-07T22:15:00.006-04:00

Trendstream, a research firm based in the UK, has published global trends on social media usage. The firm’s Global Web Index, based on 32,000 online interviews across 16 countries, shows that online marketers in the Asia Pacific region have tremendous opportunities as their audiences trust and engage with brands that communicate with them through social media.

As compared with the global average, consumers in the Asia Pacific region indicate that brand-driven communities, fan pages and blogs improve their opinions of that brand. They feel similarly if a brand takes note of their mentions and starts following them on a microblog (e.g., Twitter).

This trend may well be based in certain Asian populations’ positive attitudes towards technology and the Web, coupled with their preference for privacy. For instance, when asked about brand communication methods that improve their opinion of brands, Chinese and South Korean respondents are unlike anyone else. While in the US, Latin America, and in Europe, consumers are more likely to be impressed with face-to-face communications, Chinese and South Korean consumers prefer online recommendations from a contact or a friend.

The Global Web Index data have strong implications for programs that need to work across multiple countries. Marketers need to be attuned to the ways in which their audiences prefer to receive communications and make necessary adjustments in each local market. Brands that can decipher cultural attitudes towards information sources, knowledge and experience are bound to communicate more effectively and build global equity.

Tweet for The Hungry - Get Egged!

2010-03-25T14:25:00.005-04:00

Full disclosure: I am working on a campaign to feed the hungry led by the United Egg Producers Certified. The widget you're seeing on the left hand bar is our initiative. Please send a quick, fun Tweet to a friend - whether they be a #goodegg or #deviledegg. United Egg Producers will donate a dozen eggs for each of your Tweets. If you'd like to send it your Facebook page, add it to your blog or bookmark it, check it out at getegged.com

Smart Sensors Save Lives (And Billions in Healthcare Costs)

2010-03-17T12:32:00.001-04:00

When looking to the future of the Internet, do not just think about flat and small screens with keypads. Think about sensors with Internet Protocol people carry with them or attach to objects. Think how pill-shaped microcameras can create significant efficiencies by collecting hard-to-find data and alerting doctors and caregivers to changes in a patient’s health condition.

As the recent McKinsey Quarterly report, Internet of Things, highlights, such Internet-based technology can collect and send thousands of images from the human digestive tract and help physicians detect illnesses. There is also tremendous value in gathering real-time data from a patient’s daily routine. Spotting symptoms early on helps patients and hospitals save on cost of healthcare and most importantly, can help save lives.

In fact, a trial using sensors on patients with congestive heart failure collected data on basics such as weight, blood pressure, heart rate and rhythm on a daily basis. This was significantly more information than what physicians could gather on a routine check, during a patient visit. Using such systems, physicians can detect early warning signs and prevent unplanned hospitalizations.

To read about additional applications of smart sensors in healthcare, marketing and energy fields, among others, please click here.

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Now The Internet Can Save Lives

2010-03-17T12:28:00.001-04:00

To read about additional applications of smart sensors in healthcare, marketing and energy fields, among others, please click here.

Posted via web from Speaking of Social Media

The New Profile of America

2010-03-10T11:24:00.001-05:00

The countdown to the 2010 Census has begun. As of March 15^th, we will be receiving the forms. The U.S. Census bureau has been leading a multi-faceted communication campaign, encouraging publics to participate and educating them about the importance of being represented. The census results will inform budget allocation on public programs. It will alert the business world to emerging forces among consumer groups. It will make all of us appreciate the richness in U.S. population’s diversity.

The 2010 Census has a lot of bearings particularly for the Hispanic population. Experts are predicting that Hispanics will emerge as the largest minority group at 50 million - surely a force to be reckoned with. The bureau is making significant efforts to capture demographic information accurately and to reach as wide of a population as possible.

To this end, they’re mailing Spanish forms to highly populated Hispanic areas – without requiring special requests from citizens. They’re partnering with Univision and Telemundo for Spanish public service message broadcasting. Finally, they are present in every key social media channel, with relevant videos, photos and stories to Hispanic (and other) populations. You can follow the U.S. Census on Twitter, on Facebook, on Flickr and on YouTube.

These efforts are on target to reach the Hispanic population online. As I wrote before in my post about online Hispanic adults, they are young, tech-savvy and eager to spread the word. What will need to happen next is that Latino community-based organizations (CBOs) will need to weave these online hubs into their communications. The referrals to social media sources when engaging crowds offline and online will inform Hispanic online advocates and empower them to educate and recruit their community members.

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Vodafone's Mobile Solutions Community Solves World's Problems

2010-03-03T22:31:00.001-05:00

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about mobile communications in the U.S. is that it's mostly for teenagers and gadget gurus. Yet for many around the world it's the way to access the Web and do business. Globally, mobile subscriptions are about to surpass 3.4 billion -- and most of these users are in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Mobile presents a lifeline to many in these areas. Imagine rural populations banking without a single branch in sight. Imagine youth groups having a national debate through a mobile social network. Imagine those who suffer from lack of information getting health alerts, news alerts, trade alerts on their cells. Sellers meet farmers, doctors meet patients, crisis news move populations to safer places through mobile phones.

Projects similar to these are looking for sponsors, partners and developers on Vodafone's open community Web site Betavine. NGOs and communities go on the site to pose challenges they would like to overcome using technology. Developers collaborate to offer solutions and come up with new applications. The community members pose questions and educate themselves through shared resources. They also get the chance to apply for grants by participating in challenges. Betavine is not restricted to Vodafone technologies and platforms. It's open source R&D in the truest sense. Indeed, some of the best ideas to solve big problems come from stiff competition.

You can read more about social entrepreneurs finding mobile solutions on SocialEdge.org.

Posted via web from Speaking of Social Media

Emerging Markets Far Ahead in Social Media

2010-02-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

Accenture’s latest report on consumer electronics products and services is an eye opener to consumer quest for innovation, technology and social networking in emerging markets. The study referenced in the report is based on a vast sample of 16,000 from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States. The results show that innovation is more likely to be a driver of electronics purchases in emerging markets than in mature markets. Almost all (94 percent) of respondents from emerging markets consider it important to buy most innovative technologies, compared with 82 percent of respondents from mature markets. Moreover, consumers in emerging markets purchase technologies more frequently and spend more on these devices.

Emerging market consumers desire to get the most out of the latest in technology is also evident in their use of social media. Simply put, they are more likely to be active on those channels that are cast as niche in mature markets. Consistently, emerging market consumers are more likely than their counterparts to tweet, watch videos on mobile phones, write blogs, contribute to Wikipedia, play video games on the go, participate in online communities and connect with people on social networks.

Given emerging markets’ intensity of using social media, one might hypothesize that online word of mouth campaigns with appealing messages could take off faster and go further in these areas. The differences between the two groups point to the significant role culture, values, norms, and aspirations play in peer-to-peer communications.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

When Reader Opinion Weighs More Than Author's

2010-02-15T21:54:00.001-05:00

Last Friday, I grabbed a copy of B-to-B online to keep myself busy on the subway. Somewhere between 59th street and Grand Central, I got struck by a sentence in Paul Gillin's column, titled Sidewiki could spell trouble. As he discusses collaborative technologies that layer user comments over public (e.g., Google news) and personal news (e.g., gmail) Gillin states in a prophetic manner "Marketing messages will be less important than the audience's validation of those messages." So well said!

Today, it would behoove any consumer to go online before completing a major purchase and check what others' experiences have been. My words as a marketer are only as good as the positive comments and enthusiastic recommendations from my customers. Studies point to decline of trust in pushed messages and rise of trust in word of mouth.

I am going to venture that word of mouth and 'side comments' will be even more important for purchasing higher-priced items and making critical decisions. When the stakes are high, people will be more open to hear what others have to say. This will also require more systematic ways of sifting through the clutter and identifying those whose opinions matter.

When the sidewiki bubbles with comments, I'd like to see some sort of rating for commentators -- not only based on how many times they have commented, but also based on their experience and expertise.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Taxihack - Most Useful for Lost & Found

2010-02-07T22:55:00.001-05:00

Back in October, I had written about NYC's search for NY-themed apps. The winners were announced recently. The finalists share a common fundamental theme: ease of use and application. Were you ever stuck looking for the nearest subway stop and walked five blocks in the wrong direction? With WayFinder, no mas! The geo-targeting app lets you spot the nearest entrance in one wave of the arm. Big Apple Ed is useful for parents or real estate hunters who want to look up NYC public school. But Taxihack is the quintessential NY app, in my humble opinion. Anyone who's been to NY, has had a cabby experience. You're bouncing from one side of the car to the other, your driver insists he knows the way better than you do, there are dubious sticky things on the back of the seat in front of you. But then you're so happy you found one when it's raining, when it's 1AM and you need to go home safely, when you're in a mad, mad rush or when you have simply too much to carry up and down the subway.

Now you can tweet @taxihack or email alert@taxihack.com and talk about the positives and negatives of your ride. It may be tricky for passengers to match the medallion number to the car when they're eagerly waving and patiently waiting on the curb, but this new channel give both the passengers and the drivers room to vent!

The app is still new, so I would expect the next iterations to organize information by neighborhood or by cabby number. Yet, the lost and found section is not cluttered and is pretty practical if you've left anything behind or looking for a particular passenger.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Research and Markets Adds Implementing WOMM

2010-02-06T18:04:00.001-05:00

Research and markets, the leading source for international market research and market data added Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing to its roster. The company holds close to 800,000 major research publications from leading publishers, consultants and analysts. The news appeared on Fox Business, CNBC, Forbes, Yahoo! Finance and Globe Investor. Within a month of its publication, Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing went up to #65 on Amazon.com's list of retailing bestsellers. At the time I am writing this post, it ranks as #28 on Amazon UK's bestseller list for retailing.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Nike's GreenXchange Is A New Way of Selling

2010-02-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

As Fast Company's Ariel Schwartz recently wrote, Nike partnered with the likes of Yahoo, Best Buy, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op and salesforce.com (among others) and launched a collaborative workspace called GreenXchange. Schwartz reports that the idea behind this initiative to join intellectual powers to create sustainable solutions came from Wikinomics author Don Tapscott and Nike's Sustainable Business and Innovation Lab.

Upon visiting GreenXchange, you will notice that it is still a work in progress. But a noble one, indeed. The site states that "transformational change happens when individuals are willing to share ideas, work together, and seek solutions that create more efficient, more profitable and more meaningful business opportunities and models." Visitors can look up abstracts and licenses under various sustainability topics. They can connect to a discussion on a 2degrees network to continue the conversation or go onto the nGenera platform to collaborate.

The brands that participate in this initiative are clearly showing their commitment to innovation and green product development. But they are not just doing this for earning public approval. They are also enhancing their business. Smarter solutions can mean efficient production, shortened time to market, higher consumer demand. It can also mean cross-branding (remember Cole Haan's Nike Air heels?) and broadening target consumer groups.

This is a smart initiative whichever way you look at it. And it stands as a great example of how companies can use social networks in the b-to-b space.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Fast Company Selects AIDG's Cat Laine As One of the Five Social Capitalists To Change The World in 2010

2010-02-02T10:11:00.001-05:00

This just in: Fast Company's latest edition features Cat Laine, humanist, blogger and amazingly strong woman. I had written about the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group before in this blog as the organization was helping with revival efforts in Haiti. AIDG runs projects in developing countries, using technology to develop sustainable economic solutions for the locals.

While the AIDG team is still working relentlessly on the ground in Haiti, it's great to see that they are recognized and applauded for their efforts. Cat's touching interview with Boing Boing is a testament to how technology is essential in connecting people in times of crisis, when all else fails. Amidst all this tragedy, it gives me hope to see a small group of determined idealists shine and bring their ideas to the masses.

And Cat, we're keeping you and your family in our thoughts...

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing in the Media

2010-01-28T23:35:00.007-05:00

My book Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing was recently mentioned inThe Globe and Mail and in the Canadian broadcasting channel CTV's Web site . And thank you to the reader who dropped it in Bloomberg BusinessWeek's idea exchange site, Business Exchange. Funny enough, I didn't find these through Google. I used Hakia, a semantic search engine.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Moms with Children At Home Are On Facebook

2010-01-28T18:26:00.001-05:00

Moms are actively using social media and spreading buzz about their activities, likes, preferences, coupons. We knew that. But sometimes we get lost in the tactics and think that any approach du jour will work when it comes to reaching moms online. There are many segments to this group: those with children at home, new moms, expecting moms, those with toddler, those with teenagers. And they all behave differently, as they have varying needs for information and communication.

Here are some interesting findings from a study conducted for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association by BIGresearch that bring some clarity to our perspective about marketing to moms through social media: Women with children at home are more likely than average adults to use Facebook (60 vs. 50 percent), MySpace (42 vs. 34 percent), and Twitter (17 vs. 15 percent) than average adults. Additionally, 15.3% maintain their own blog.

Among these channels, Facebook is clearly the heavy weight one. Next steps will be in finding ideas that will cut through the clutter on Facebook and communications that will offer enough value to these busy moms that they will revert their attention from personal conversations to marketing messages.

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

This just in: Global Social Networking Audience Spikes 27%

2010-01-27T17:17:00.001-05:00

You know you've been spending hours on Facebook. But it's not just you, the whole world has been doing it! According to Nielsen, unique global audience to social networking sites increased by 27%, from 242 million in December 2008 to 307.4 million in December 2009. On average, people are spending five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds on these sites. I guess our definition of face-to-face talking will soon change. Ping you later!

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Boomer Households Expand, While Young Adult Homes Fold

2010-01-27T12:56:00.001-05:00

"Hold that wedding!" or "No kiddo yet!" say the young adults hard hit by the economic times. According to a recent Pew Study, 10 percent of 18-34 year olds have moved back in with Mom and Dad. An additional 12 percent have acquired a roommate. So, it comes as little surprise when the study uncovers that 15 percent of adults under the age of 35 have postponed wedding plans and an additional 14 percent have delayed having a baby.

The boomerang trend (i.e., adult kids returning home) is likely to fade in the next couple of years, assuming the economy will improve. Yet speaking for today, it affects consumer spending on CPG products and the real estate industry. I had heard that the size of weddings had decreased over the past couple of years, but this finding suggests we might also see slight demographic shifts in the size and composition of the 'American family.'

Posted via web from dotwom's posterous

Online Hispanic Population: Young, Tech-Savvy and Ready to Spread The Word

2010-01-27T11:50:00.002-05:00

The Hispanic Cyberstudy, conducted for AOL by Cheskin Research, has eye-opening findings on how to best communicate with the Web’s most rapidly growing population segment. As demography experts point to the rise of an increasingly diverse US household population, it behooves marketers to understand the nuances in Hispanics’ online behaviors and attitudes towards new technologies.

The online Hispanic population is mostly US-born and English speaking (41 percent). An additional one third (31 percent) are bicultural, speaking both English and Spanish at home. The study indicates that the online Hispanic is much younger than the typical Internet user (37 vs. 46 years old) and they are more enthusiastic about the benefits of the Internet:

o 72 percent of online Hispanics visit product rating sites
o 64 percent consider the Web the best place to keep up with current events
o 57 percent always go to the Web to find deals
o 28 percent turn to the Web for friends’ opinions

As these numbers suggest, the Internet influences Hispanic consumers’ purchasing habits a great deal. While many consumers shop for information online, Hispanic consumers are more likely than the general Internet population to learn about where to buy a product, compare prices and make a final purchasing decision.

How to best approach Hispanic consumers online? Word of mouth marketing tactics that let users read reviews and converse about experiences would be the first step. But here’s the twist: When it comes to tech-based communications, acculturation levels may not matter in the way traditional marketers may think. In fact, Hispanic customers are universally open to new technologies regardless of their acculturation level. In fact, those who are Spanish-speaking (41 percent) or bi-cultural (40 percent) are more likely than US-born, English speaking Hispanics (31 percent) to indicate that they are considered tech experts in their social circles. All the more reason to make sure Spanish versions of Web sites are culturally relevant and are en par with their English counterparts and are not mere translations.

Who is most likely to spread your news among the Hispanic online audience? The power user is male in his mid-thirties who’s married with young children. He often goes online through his phone and other devices. He e-mails (79 percent), remains active on social networks (68 percent), pings friends and family on IM (64 percent) and keeps a blog (59 percent). Sounds like a no brainer for the likes of Best Buy, RIM, iPhone and automotive companies.

Social Media @ Work

2010-01-21T09:13:00.001-05:00

According to Nielsen (September, 2009), US employees spent the equivalent of 23,267 years on Facebook while at work. Considering the National Bureau of Labor Statistics' average hourly earning rates, this equals $4 billion in productivity. Employees are not just sending colleagues and friends short messages. They are also watching videos. The Nielsen study points to an increase in the number of workers who visit YouTube and Hulu at work. In fact, 42 percent of all video viewed online is at work.

While this may not seem like great news for those who need to track timesheets, the trend has positive implications for marketers. Brands have an expanded period of time to reach consumers online. They can also count on colleague circles to reverberate messages and spread word of mouth. Meanwhile, they need to keep their communications byte sized and videos under two minutes because employees are inevitably multi-tasking or taking short breaks between projects.

Help Haiti, Follow AIDG

2010-01-14T20:38:00.006-05:00

The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group is a non-profit based in Boston that helps communities in Haiti (and Guatemala) get affordable and environmentally sound access to electricity, sanitation and clean water. They maximize the limits of social media when it comes to telling their story and reaching out to their audiences. I wrote about their blog in my book as an example of an organization that shares its knowledge and helps its followers spread its message.

The minute I heard about the earthquake in Haiti, I went on Twitter to see if the staff was reporting anything from the ground, if they were safe. As I suspected, their deputy director Cat Laine had news to share. She was tweeting about the telecom providers that seemed to work, the buildings that were not safe, the charities that were sending aid. I am not sure if Cat's in Haiti, Guatemala or in Boston -- but she has her ear to the ground and she's giving me information I cannot find elsewhere.

The next day, I turned to their blog. Sure enough, AIDG's Founder and Executive Director Peter Haas had posted about how his organization was working on helping people in Haiti. Below is his call to action and suggestion to support medical teams in Haiti. Please consider supporting them and follow their news.

"We are currently developing opportunities for AIDG to aid in reconstruction with the help of partners. We will make another announcement on this shortly.

As you all know we are a small organization. We require some basic additional budget resources immediately to help run an assessment that will determine this longer term response aimed at infrastructure and reconstruction. If possible mail checks to:

AIDG
P.O. Box 104
Weston, MA 02493

We will actually receive these funds faster than online donations. We will be running a larger campaign in concert with our reconstruction announcement.

For those wishing to have an immediate direct impact on populations in Port Au Prince we are recommending supporting the medical response teams of Partners In Health. www.pih.org They are working with a field hospital set up by the UNDP that immediately needs pain meds, bandages and other medical supplies.

We ask you all to hold Haiti in your hearts and prayers as this tragedy unfolds.

Sincerely,

Peter Haas
Executive Director, AIDG"

Enough Talk: Let's Talk About Implementing Word of Mouth

2010-01-10T10:16:00.016-05:00

Five years ago, I attended the first word of mouth marketing conference organized by WOMMA. I still remember the energy that gathering had - people from a variety of professional backgrounds were presenting how they were tapping into the power of peer-to-peer conversations. There were advertisers, political consultants, brand consultants, widget makers, professors, researchers... Each presentation was more interesting than the other.

I was really disappointed by one speaker though. He got up on stage and said that we had all been doing word of mouth for a long time and that all things lead to word of mouth. All communications generated conversations. At the time, I didn't find this so novel. I really wanted to see a case study and hear about counter-intuitive facts. Today, I cannot agree more. If we're in the business of communication, marketing, planning, storytelling, advocacy--simply put, selling--then we're in the business of word of mouth marketing.

I've been working in the Internet sector for over a decade. I have always been interested in the way ideas spread online and trickle offline. Today, we're no longer debating the importance of emerging platforms such as blogs and social networks. While we continue to debate their impact on business and our daily lives, we sense that these tools are the first versions of communication platforms that will make news spread even faster and further.

That's why I wrote Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing: Online Strategies to Identify Influencers, Craft Stories and Draw Customers. It just hit the shelves. The book is a comprehensive guide to understand, engage and sustain relationships with online audiences. My goal was to go beyond explaining the importance of word of mouth marketing in the Internet space. I wanted to give my readers a step-by-step plan they could customize to fire off their business, using Web-based tools.

I use several images across the book:

I start with a computer to explain how the Web fits into the overall mix of communication channels.

I continue with the eye and the ear to indicate that we first need to watch and listen to identify and better understand networking agents--those cybercitizens who create content, speak up and drive buzz.

Then I open my mouth, to show best practices in communicating with networking agents.

I pick up the megaphone as I offer campaign design ideas and measurement plans to launch online word of mouth marketing programs.

As the global Internet population approaches the 2 billion people mark over the course of the next few years, I believe we should pay closer attention to conversations that percolate online.

(images created by Greg Kessler)

Harvard Pitch for Change Contest

2009-12-28T04:29:00.002-05:00

The upcoming Social Enterprise Conference organized at Harvard University on February 27th and 28th, 2010 has an interesting opportunity for young social enterpreneurs. In addition to promising a solid program full of innovative and socially-driven speakers, the conference organizers are launching an elevator-pitch competition called, "Pitch for Change."

Pitch for Change is open to individuals and teams with an idea for a new social enterprise venture. The criteria for submissions help teams write down their ideas following a short and sweet business plan model. At least one team member has to be a graduate student.

If you have an idea that can create change --local or global-- write up 500 words about it and submit it here. You may end up being a semi-finalist and get the opportunity to present it at the conference.