Have you ever seen a presentation that is just too slick?
The presenter is just too oily smooth? Kind of scary in an inhuman sort of way
but you know you’re going to buy, because what choice do you have when you’ve
fallen into the dark side?

Tara’s jet-lagged talk (I empathize having once presented
toa  boardroom full of investors while
suffering a full-blown attack of the flu, yikes!) at e-day 2007 adds to the human quality of the
subject matter, which is How
to Make a Gabillion Dollars with Social Marketing .
. . or something to that effect.

For those too busy to watch the 30-minute video, or go
through the 178 video slide presentation, I’ve summed up the key points here if
the topic comes up when you’re offline.

• …this
  year Forrester Research
  found that only 13% of consumers say they buy products because of their
  ads. Contrast that to 60% of small business owners in North America that
  say they use peer recommendations to make their buying decisions and over
  70% of 18-35 year olds who report the same for their media purchases.

• Companies
  like Pay-Per-Post, who cater to clients who want to tap into Social
  Networks and the power of blogging, think they will influence others
  through word of mouth, but they have it dead wrong.

• New
  studies on Social
  Intelligence shows scientific evidence that we are fundamentally wired to
  connect.

• Whuffie? Whuffie is a
  concept invented by Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame. In his futuristic
  Science Fiction novel, Down
  and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory uses whuffie to describe the
  capital of the future …Social Capital.

That’s the gist of her presentation, but you also need these
5 sure-fire steps to transform yourself from a … spammer into a connector:

1.  Turn
   that bullhorn inwards. Stop
   talking and start listening!
2. Become
   part of the community you serve. Figure out whom it is you are serving.
   It isn’t everyone. Then get out of your office and into the community.
   
   
3. Create
   amazing experiences for your customers. Design for maximum
   connectedness, happiness and joy. Empower and elate.
   
   
4. Embrace
   the chaos. Don’t over plan. Learn to be more agile and recognize
   everyday magic. (She offers 7 very Zen steps on how to embrace chaos which
   I’ve distilled down to enjoy this moment now as everything is out of your
   control anyway. Ommmm. . . . )
   
   
5. Find
   your higher purpose. Social Capital only gains in value as you
   give it away. Figure out how you are going to give back to the community
   and do it…often. 

The Bottom Line: Tara Hunt is one of many avatars of the new
consciousness that is awakening. Whether it’s a product of the social
connectedness of the Internet or vice versa remains a “chicken or the egg”
dilemma.  Namaste

Chris and Jaketalk about Marketing and Communties.

Western consumers are blasted with so many promotional
messages a day – some estimate up to 3,000 – that they simply tune out and move
on. This year a Forrester Research study found that only 13% of consumers buy
products because of their ads. Online, the marketplace is even more cluttered.
New e-commerce shops are cropping up by the thousands. Webmasters scramble to
develop the next big SEO strategies, while the corporate websites they serve
are becoming less trafficked by the day. So how do businesses break through
when they’re likely to be ignored in this sensory-overloaded environment?

Welcome to community marketing. Sites like MySpace.com,
Multiply.com, LinkedIn.com and Facebook.com have created social networks that
are ripe with opportunities for businesses to connect with online communities
in a way that builds credible brand awareness, tests new products and,
ultimately, drives interested customers to the virtual door.

Facebook.com, which started as a place for college students
and alumni to connect, has opened its platform to all users to become one of
the fastest growing sites of its kind. It features a clean, professional look
and multi-use, customizable functionality. For marketers, this means that they
can develop a portal that extends their reach to thousands of targeted prospects
by building communities of like-minded consumers who then become brand
ambassadors, spreading the word about the latest and greatest product lines.

The irony of this strategy is that, in order to be a
successful marketer on Facebook.com, you must NOT be a marketer. This approach
hinders on your company’s ability to connect with consumers in an organic,
relationship-driven way. After all, people don’t join these sites to seek out
advertisements; they’re there to make connections with others. As soon as paid
ads, opinions or reviews enter the picture, credibility is lost. Game over. 

Clearly, this can be tricky business. Where do you start?
First and foremost, get to know the site on your own. Set up a personal page
and experiment with the platform. Almost immediately, you’ll become fluent with
the basics:

• Profile: A rich data source of
  background information, blogs and personal preferences that users can see
  and share amongst friends.
• Networks: Users can join groups of
  a regional, business or scholastic nature or create their own.
• Homepage: The news feed that keeps
  the user up to date on all activity surrounding their friends and
  networks. It lists events, connections and other posts adjusted to limit
  or increase the amount of content.
• Events: Groups can organize,
  invite, manage and promote online or in person gatherings to their
  members.
• Multi-media: Facebook allows
  audio, video and live streams to be posted on its platform to engage
  visitors.
• Advertising: Savvy marketers can
  post “flyers” on the right hand column of the site, which can be highly
  targeted to specific markets based on Facebook’s vast data system. 
• Applications: This is the
  distinctive advantage of Facebook.com. Users have hundreds of interactive
  applications at their fingertips to share with friends. These range from
  basic “gift” sending capabilities to the ability to play online Scrabble
  with their community.

Once you familiarize yourself with Facebook, you’ll quickly
find that the one way to make a splash and create a viral phenomenon is through
the applications function. Users can build their own applications within the
platform to create a customized experience.

Wal Mart has effectively applied this strategy with its
College ’07 Facebook campaign. Users can research the store’s offerings, create
dorm room checklists, and even compare notes with their new roommate. The
“Roommate Style Match Quiz” allows students to determine their personal living
style and learn what the items will match that personality. Roommates can then
compare notes on each other to find a compatible (Wal Mart) décor that suits
them both.

For the innovative retailer, this type of relationship
building holds great promise. Consider a clothing business that is exploring
potential inclusions for next season’s collection. A company representative can
test new designs within the Facebook community by forming a group of
style-savvy consumers. These “insiders” will receive sneak previews of
pre-store fashions that, with the right application, can be personalized.

Perhaps users can send photos that can be manipulated so the
users can virtually “try on” the clothes. They can invite friends to vote on
their favorite looks, thus expanding the network and encouraging future
purchase while the voting is collected into application that ties into the
backend buyer system for making good calls on potential new lines before they
come out.

Social marketing is still evolving as a powerful tool to
connect to your. Social capital is the currency, but losing credibility in the
community can bankrupt your online status very quickly.

George Dearing talks about some predictions for 2008 for social media. CIO Insight has a piece on Microsoft being the Facebook for the enterprise.
There is an absolutely great amount of interest that I hear from folks at Jive, Leverage Software, Shared Insightsand Small World Labs. There are several others that are more B2C focused, but these four appear at the top of most B2B communities decision makers that I talk to.

Usually that’s an indicator of future success. If I ask the customers about who they would like to work with, the early adopter almost always prefer smaller companies like the ones I mentioned.

But the early majority has the “No one got fired for buying IBM” mentality. So I expect at least 3-4 acquisitions in the next year.
Valuations: Typical software valuations instead of “eyeballs or community users”. Expect 7-8 times revenue.

Check out their blogs to get more of a perspective:

1. Daveat Jive Software
2. Mike at Leverage
3. Aaronat Shared Insights
4. Mike at Small World Labs

Francois had a great conference call today with David Weinberger.

David Weinberger is a technologist, professional speaker, and commentator, probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto (originally a website, and eventually a book, which has been described as “a primer on Internet marketing”).

David’s writing a new book: Everything Is Miscellaneous(http://www.everythingismiscellaneous.com/).

Markets are conversation, but marketing does not have to be a conversation.

Having been on both sides of marketing – as a consulting vendor and as a VP of marketing, I have to say its extermely difficult to give control of marketing to your customers.

I just can’t help
it. Reading about marketing neuroscientists brings forth images of white mice
watching beer commercials wearing tiny colanders sprouting spaghetti wires.
Substitute humans for mice, and that sounds like what neuromarketing is about.
I’m willing to keep an open mind on the topic. Anyone have a persuasive
argument?

Mya Frazier’s
article in Advertising Age gave a fair assessment of the current
state-of-the-art of neuromarketing. She includes both proponents and detractors
of using EEG machines and fMRIs to scan people’s brains and monitor eye
movements while viewing ads. It’s an effort to determine consumer behavior like
focus groups. But is it really value-added?
 

The biggest argument
against is that studying brain waves in isolation removes cultural factors that
have major impact on purchasing decisions. Hmmm . . . like theoretical value
vs. realistic value . . .

When Mya asks the question: 

Is neuromarketing any better
than what’s out there now? Or will the unfulfilled promise of uncovering the
neurological basis of consumption thrust a research industry already flirting
with dysfunction into crisis?

. . . a smile forms.

 

The Bottom Line:
Consumers aren’t truthful. Real-time visibility into your supply chain is. In
fact, it’s a “no-brainer”. (Couldn’t resist.)

This is a controversial topic for sure.

While I spoke about Apple community a few days ago I mentioned how happy the community really was. Well today I am questioning that for sure.

I am not going to repeat all the $200 (or $100 depending on who you ask) fiasco with iPhone. Anshu mentions the very difficult time that Ismael had with ordering 500 iPhones.

Just to reconfirm: Apple made it so hard to order 500 iPhones that he had to do it 10 phones at a time.

I remember the book by Jack Welsh on GE, there was a chapter devoted to strategy and it was titled “Sometimes its all in the sauce”. Long story, but the only reason why a certain pizza place near his home did well inspite of bad service, not friendly staff and expensive food was that the sauce they put on the pizza was awesome.

Makes you think for sure: If you do create a great product, who cares about the community? They will come no matter what.

But most others (except Apple for e.g.) make OK products, not earth shattering, awesome, mind blowing products. That’s the number one reason to have the community then. Even with an ok product you can still have a great community that helps you get the experience to be great.

<img src="/images/64360-56413/iphone_comp_01.jpg” border=”0″ width=”420″>

I attended the Office 2.0 unconference yesterday. Being my 5th “unconference” hosted by Kaliya and Ross Mayfield here are some tips and tricks that I have learned about getting the best value from BarCampand Unconferences.

5 things to do:

a) Come with questions, get multiple perspectives: As you prepare to attend your unconference, spend 15 min while you are waiting in the line for the registration to come up with 5-10 questions you still need answers to. These help you plan your sessions better and focus on specific people you can seek to answer these questions.

b) Seek out people between sessions: If you want answers to specific questions you have, do it after. After you finish a session,  understand whose opinions  are valuable then seek them out later to get answers. Realize there are many in the discussion who feel like they are “experts”. Understand during your session whose opinion would be most beneficial to you.

c) Take notes, but process later: At least 3/4ths of the folks feel more confused after the sessions. The full impact of the major trends or answers to your questions will not be obvious until you spend 15 minutes thinking about the answers a day or two after the sessions.

d) Most folks attending conferences are expecting to learn to “experts” and network with peers. Unconferences turns this around by helping you learn from peers and network with everyone. Learning from peers is great as long as you know they tend to have a perspective of usually “one” experience or single project. Their results may not be typical.

e) If you are leading a discussion dont feel you have to be the “expert”. You may have volunteered the session to bring all the folks who care about this topic together. People appreciate it more when you get all the perspectives together rather than push your agenda forward.

What not to do:

a) Dont expect closure on all topics: The facilitator of the discussion is usually not a conversation police.
When discussions start on a topic, they may go to several topics.

b) Dont expect answers to all questions to be a simple Y/N: When you have experts presenting, they will tell you most times that “X works and Y does not”, when you have your peers, though, you will get “It depends”. This may be the most frustrating part of the unconference, but realize everyone’s situation is slightly or very
different.

c) Dont dominate the conversation as a session leader: You’ll find the answers to your questions will
never get answered.

IDC did a report on the market for Social Networking and white label business community software.

“ The social networking application market
is experiencing significant growth and change this year — setting the
tone for the next three years, according to a market forecast and
analysis by IDC. The social networking application market will grow
from $46.8 million in 2006 to $428.3 million in 2009. Along the way,
three social networking market segments will emerge. Social networking
functionality will be built into core communications platforms, and
used for many purposes other than consumer socializing.”

I participate in the Online Community Roundtable that Bill Johnston & George run every so often and have met with and spoken to Tim the community guy at Apple. Its a great event that comprises mostly of practioners, who meet and discuss the ins and outs of running business communities.

Tim (last name withheld by request) has a great job according to all of us who are struggling to get community traction and keep the ball moving forward each day. Their communities are full of passionate, happy (mostly) and smart folks that care deeply about Apple products. I know Jake personally as a good friend and this is pretty amazing. He’s going all the way to provide phone numbers and email addresses for NBC execs to tell them how they feel about their decision to not put their shows on Apple ITunes.

So I asked a few Apple fans about the top 3 things they like about the Apple community:

1. Great products drive passionate usage (& users): This one was obvious. I personally own 3 ipods, an iphone (but not a Powerbook yet). These products rock. If you see the most powerful communities they do have this common trait.

2. Give your community a sense of empowerment: The community feels they have a HUGE say in all matters related to Apple products.

3. Ability to make one-one connections with individuals that are like you in the community. The sense of discovery is amazing. Since I assume that most people that like Apple products love good design (I know this is judgemental) I tend to like most other Apple users. There are more meaningful conversations with these users.

Let me know if you have any questions for Tim and I’ll make sure to ask him.