Word of Mouth is 78% trusted – Now On Steroids

In their October, 2007 Trust in Advertising Global Report, Nielsen reports that

“78% of respondents said they trusted – either completely or somewhat – the recommendation of other consumers.”

Word of mouth has always been an important source of information, but it is perhaps more important now than at any time in the history of modern economies, because “word of mouth” has been put on steroids through the Web – and especially as a result of Social Media (blogs, twitter, BigTreetop) – where people are highly connected to each other. Here’s how we got to today’s world:

Telephone – allowed consumers to tell one friend at a time about a product or service

Email – allowed consumers to tell one friend at a time + tell a group of friends at a time about a product or service

Social Media – now allows consumers to tell one friend + a group of them + to publish their own opinions for millions of friends and other random people to search and discover

BigTreetop Videos

We’re considering periodically producing some quick videos for our home page to give a less academicky-sounding introduction to BigTreetop, and highlight some of the recent action. Here’s my first try using a new platform called Animoto:

Please vote on this idea back on BigTreetop.com so that we can gauge whether you think this is a good idea.

Second attempt:

Customers at the Company Conference Table

Dell and Starbucks are showing serious commitment to online customer involvement a core part of their business—promoting the feature in their stores, on their websites, and through their employees. Starbucks has even added “idea partners”—48 specially trained employees who act as hosts of the discussion. Without them, Bruzzo (Starbuck’s Chief Technology Officer) argues, the conversation could intimidate newcomers. “These are the people at a dinner party who make sure everyone is having a good time.”

Here are a few quotes from a recent BusinessWeek article:

You could say this is nothing but a fancy suggestion box. Benioff (CEO of Salesforce.com, which provides the software to Starbucks and Dell) argues no. “The dead-end suggestion box and the auto reply are symbols of corporate indifference and are no longer tolerated,” he says. In this age of nonstop, immediate communication in blogs, wikis, Twitter, and YouTube, he says, “your customers are having a conversation about your products and practices. The question every company has to ask is: ‘Do I want to be part of this conversation? Do I want to learn from it? Am I willing to innovate on the basis of it?’ The idea partners also act as advocates for customers’ suggestions back at their departments, so that “customers would have a seat at the table when product decisions are being made,” Bruzzo says. “To close that loop in an authentic way,” he argues, the company must make a commitment to “building those ideas together with customers…. We’re truly going to adopt it into our business process, into product development, experience development, and store design.”"

Bruzzo advises other companies to follow Starbucks’ example in using Ideas. “Don’t underinvest in adopting it into your business process,” he implores. “See it as an important part of how you run your business.” He also says it’s O.K. to make mistakes. “Your community is incredibly forgiving, actually, if you show a real interest in listening and responding.”

A very important takeaway from this article is the commitment Starbucks has made to online social media and customer involvement. For them it is not just a gimmick or a “try and see,” but a new part of their business process. For small businesses, the specifics of the commitment to social media like BigTreetop.com will be different, of course (most small businesses cannot hire full-time “idea partners”), but the importance of that commitment will be the same – or perhaps greater, as they seek to find the unique advantages that they can use to compete with larger organizations. We’ve already seen that, with just a little bit of effort and a platform built for their purposes, small businesses can innovate rapidly and effectively with the help of their customers. I believe that the next generation of really successful small businesses will be the ones that band together to make customer outreach, involvement and innovation both in-person and online as much a part of their business philosophy and process as any other function.

Note: Here is another article about MyStarbucksIdea.com

The Speed of Social Media Marketing

For those of us who are more accustomed to traditional media marketing and advertising like radio, print, television, internet, it is not always easy to quickly make sense of Web 2.0 and social media marketing using tools like blogs, social networks, Twitter or Bigtreetop. One very big difference is the cycle of impact that a typical social media effort will follow. Traditional marketing often follows something like the blue curve in the chart below, where a big media and public relations push generates a great deal of quick impact as customers learn about the company or the product, and make their decisions to or not to buy. The impact, though, starts to fade relatively quickly after the initial push.

A social media effort, on the other hand, usually starts off relatively slowly as a business begins to share its thoughts, ideas and goals with the customer community, inviting customers to join in the discussion. Over time, however, the impact of a social media effort begins to increase more quickly as the members of the community begin to participate more in the conversation and in inviting their friends to be a part of it as well. Eventually, if the organization puts in its time early, the community becomes practically self-sustaining as more and more people continue to contribute.

(note: this chart is not based on actual numbers – just used to illustrate the difference)

If you are at the beginning of your use of social media, therefore – just starting your blog, or a Twitter account or your BigTreetop Treetop, it’s important to remember that:

1. you should expect to put in some early work yourself, but that you will see powerful, long-lasting results later if you stay focused
2. you may want some sort of a mix of traditional and social media marketing to both raise initial community awareness – but then to sustain that awareness effectively over time
3. the later parts of the cycle can bring very large ROI (return on investment) as the community begins to do the marketing for you via word-of-mouth

Improving Conversations in BigTreetop

Right now the “conversations” within BigTreetop are a little stilted – we think due to the design. Many of our users have expressed concern, so it’s time to think it through a bit and improve it. For example: Steve writes an experience on George’s Personal Treetop congratulating him on the Celtics’ win last night. George wants to respond, but it’s sort of unclear whether he should respond to this on his own Treetop or on Steve’s Personal Treetop. If he responds in his own Treetop, other people will be able to see the conversation and understand it. If he responds on Steve’s Treetop, Steve will be able to see his response, but no one else will be able to follow the thread of the conversation.

The Twitter Model

The Twitter model could work, where i always post things on my own Treetop, but tag content as referring to someone else if it’s a response. For example, George could have posted “Thanks, @steve.”, and the “@steve” would be a link to steve’s Personal Treetop. BigTreetop, though, is fundamentally different from Twitter, though, in that people can post things in specific contexts in Organizational or Personal Treetops.

Is there another model that could work? If you are a BigTreetop user and have ideas, be sure to submit them at http://bigtreetop.com/bigtreetop/thinkup/10103

6 Weeks to Communities of Steel

It occurred to me recently that, for any organization that is just starting to use social media like BigTreetop.com (or any social media, for that matter) to connect with their community, the process is very much like a person starting an exercise program. Here’s why:

• Neither yields immediate results
• With a little discipline and the right equipment, a good program can take minutes per day
• As they start to work, both tend to be far more effective and healthy than other short-term alternatives

For some idea of how comically close this analogy is, check out the SoloFlex website’s guide to “Getting Started Lifting Weights.” Here are a few quotes from the guide, with some of the words replaced below in italics to make the quotes fit the use of social media:

• Weightlifting Using social media is like anything else: it takes a little knowledge and time to do it properly and see real results. However, you will probably be surprised how quickly you your organization and its community start to feel and look better connect and create a better future as a result of properly lifting weights using social media.
• In your first couple weeks lifting weights using social media, your objective is learning and creating community, not muscular development big business gains.
• When you start your workout program social media efforts, only do 5-6 repetitions with a light weightreps post an idea or experience every few days. Doing more posting can bring on fatigue and the possibility of social media soreness or injury.
• If you desire greater strength and/or muscle mass gains in your community, you will have to gradually reduce the number of repetitions top-down control while increasing the resistance empowerment of your customers and employees and number of sets frequency with which you implement their ideas.
  
• Never sacrifice form honesty, manners or respect for weight increases blatant marketeering.

In the near future, we will be posting some more specific “social media exercises” that you can do to work toward your own “Communities of Steel.” For now, though, the best thing you and your organization can do is to get familiar with the equipment, see how other people are using it, and begin the regular discipline of reading experiences and ideas, voting on them, and posting some of your own! Some of the organizations on BigTreetop.com are already “exercising” on a regular basis and starting to show results.

Consumers are Getting Social and Creative Online

Here are some very interesting numbers about consumer online behavior from a 2008 Deloitte and Touche survey of 2,081 consumers from age 13-75. I haven’t had a chance to check their methodology, but the numbers are pretty compelling even if their methodology isn’t perfect.

• 32% of consumers actually consider themselves to be a “broadcaster” of their own media
• 45% are creating personal content for others to see (up 11 points from our 1st edition)
• 54% are increasingly making their OWN entertainment (up 14 points from our 1st edition)
• 69% of consumers are watching/listening to content created by others (up 17 points from our 1st edition)

More results from the report are available here.

Here are a few more numbers from the more detailed PDF of the report downloadable here:

• 89% of consumers’ reported that they visit websites based on Word of Mouth recommendations
• 88% of consumers reported that they visit websites a result of search engines
• 54% of consumers are currently socializing on social networking sites

The Organizational Diary

Ever notice that great people always seem to keep diaries? John Quincy Adams, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wilberforce – heck, even James T. Kirk had his “captain’s log.” The list goes on and on. Personally, i don’t think it is the case that great people keep diaries. Rather, i think that keeping diaries helped to make these people great. There’s nothing magical about a diary, of course. But there is something (almost) magical about writing down your thoughts on a daily basis. Here’s my take on why it works:

• Outside perspective on myself - A diary allows you to look at situations more objectively. Once i have written about a situation or a thought, i can then observe it from the outside, which provides different perspective.
• Historical learning – Reading back through a daily diary is like reading your own personal history. And learning from history is the best way to predict or plan for the future.
• Lets other people learn from and about me – If i dare to share my personal diary, other people can learn from and about my experiences. They know who i am and what i’m about, and if they are friends, they can then help me out more effectively.

Blogs, Twitter, and of course BigTreetop.com are a new form of the old diary. They provide some of the old benefits of the paper and pen diary with the added benefit that they can be read instantly by anyone with a computer or a cell phone or some other device like a chumby.

For the organizations who are starting to use BigTreetop.com this week, its value really peaks when you treat the experience posting feature (on the left side of every treetop) like a public diary for your organization. Try to get a core of your managers and employees to take 5 minutes to Post at least one thought about your organization per day. These might include:

• A feeling you have about your business
• A favorite product or service that you use personally
• A story about one of your customers or employees (even better if you post an accompanying photo!)
• An introduction to and photo of a new employee
• An organizational event you’re looking forward to
• A community event you’ve attended
• Interesting news about your organization or industry

Over time, this “diary” will help your organization by allowing it to think collectively about itself, to have an informal history over time, and it will allow your customers and partners to get beyond the advertising pitches to really know what you are about.

The Business Value of the 3-Second Sentence

The Sentence
A few days ago my wife was shopping in Bloomingfoods when she overheard one of the associates/employees say to another that

“..the ‘chicken wine’ is selling so fast we can’t keep it on the shelves.”

Now by any normal account this was not a brilliant marketing message. As a matter of fact, any marketing professional would laugh off the suggestion of putting it into any sort of advertisement. The comment was made quickly in passing, and except for the fact that my wife happened to be nearby, it would never have traveled beyond the moment. As it happens, though, my wife is always on the lookout for a good wine recommendation, so she asked the associate about his comment. After finding out that the wine is very popular, affordable, and, according to the associate, very good, she bought it and we like it. Since then we have told other people about the wine, and have even had conversations about it (by the way, it’s officially called “La Vielle Ferme”), where we have discovered that it is also the house wine at FARM – a great local restaurant.

The Value
So what started as a passing comment between two employees has turned into at least one product sale (probably more), significant positive word of mouth marketing for Bloomingfoods, as well as for FARM, a restaurant which was not in any way involved in the transaction. Advertising cost: $0

Without knowing it, most owners, managers and employees of organizations keep their most cost-effective, interesting marketing bottled up in their heads or stymied in the back rooms of their business. The trick is getting those thoughts out to as many of their customers and employees as possible. While blogs and newsletters can be time-consuming to write and to read, a new movement in internet technology (led by Twitter.com, Brighkite.com, and i have to mention, of course BigTreetop etc.) is focusing on sharing very short ideas or thoughts with lots of people. The perfect way to get the maximum business value out of that 3-Second Sentence.

Great Examples!
http://bigtreetop.com/goods/experience/details/208083
http://bigtreetop.com/BloomingfoodsEast/experience/details/208074
http://bigtreetop.com/BloomingfoodsWest/experience/details/208095
http://bigtreetop.com/goods/experience/details/208054

If You Ask, Customers Will Answer

I’ve been chatting with a lot of small business owners lately about the possibilities of consumer involvement, and just how much people are willing to do for/with a business. Once we launch BigTreetop.com, we’ll have a better answer to this question for small businesses. Obviously the BigTreetop team is confident that with the right mindset and a good set of tools, the answer is going to be very, very positive. We are especially confident that if we all do it right, local businesses can get even more consumer involvement than big chains because of the close proximity of the customer to the actual decisionmakers in the business.

In the interim, here are a few examples of how much people will contribute to big businesses which have little or no real local loyalty:

Kroger “Design a Green Bag” Contest (http://www.designagreenbag.com/)

Details: Started in Spring of 2008. Allows people to submit a design online for a new green grocery bag and vote on other people’s designs. The top-rated idea in the end will be used, and the person who designed it will receive $500

Participation: 32,288 entries as of May 14th, 2008, with the top-voted bag receiving 110,196 votes.

Comments: This site, a one-off design, is probably costing Kroger at least $20-30,000 dollars to implement – not including the advertising to attract people to the contest. They obviously realize the power of customer involvement. The $500 reward may have been a motivator for the first 1000 people who may have felt that they had a chance to win, but for the next 30-something-thousand, the motivation had to be the enjoyment of participation in something public – something bigger than their normal everyday lives.

My Starbucks Idea (http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp)

Details: Started in April 2008. Allows people to submit ideas for Starbucks and vote and comment on other people’s ideas

Participation: 37,400 ideas as of May 14th, 2008 with the top-voted idea receiving 94,120 votes.

Comments: An interesting phenomenon has occurred more often than not, where one customer posted a very anti-Starbucks comment and other customers jumped in to defend the company.