Find and Promote Social Objects to Improve Your Business

“Social Objects” are everywhere, and may be the key to the success of many products and businesses. The theory of “Social Objects”, though based in a lot of great Anthropological study from the 1900’s, and recently laid out nicely by Jyri Engestrom with respect to social media, is perhaps even more relevant today, and can be attributed to the runaway successes of businesses like YouTube.com, Flickr.com, Fantasy Sports, Apple, Starbucks and lots of others.

Since the main audience for this blog is a bit more results-oriented than semi-geeky academics like myself, i’ll quickly share the common-sense approach to the theory. Here it is, based on 2 premises:

Premise 1: Humans have a hard time relating directly to one another. Instead, we tend to relate through or around social objects. Most events where 2 or more people are involved occur around a meal, a movie, a sport, a candidate or a location. It is extremely rare that two people will just sit and talk about each other.

Premise 2: Humans like to share social objects for free. A story about a great (or a lousy) movie, meal, celebrity, product, device or service serves as the “social object” that helps people to relate to one another. It therefore does not usually require (though sometimes that can be useful) a discount, payment or other monetary benefit in order to be shared.

Here are 4 simple tips (based on Jyri Engestrom’s excellent presentation) on how to turn social objects loose in a business through online and offline channels (which should both be utilized if at all possible).

1. Be on the lookout for social objects. What are employees or customers talking with each other about in your business? Are people blogging (google your business to find out), commenting (check your suggestion board), twittering (use www.summize.com to search for your business on twitter) about your hamburgers? Your employees? Your excellent customer service? The photos on your website? A recent concert at your venue? These are all social objects, and they’re everywhere if you look hard enough.
2. Promote community around social objects. Once you’ve identified a few objects, promote community around them. Are people talking to each other about your yoga class? Find a way to allow them to continue those relationships outside of the class through a saturday yoga mini-conference, or a think-up on BigTreetop.com to get ideas for how to make the class better, or encourage them to post their photos or experiences or thoughts on your blog or through Twitter.
3. Allow people to share the object. People tend to want to share social objects. Is your fantastic hamburger a social object? Provide them with a way to tell their friends by posting an experience and a photo online, or by giving a printed card to friends inviting them to try it.
4. Turn invitations into gifts. To make the act of sharing even more fun for the sharer, give them a way to share their social object as a gift. Instead of providing a customer with a discount for telling her friends about your fantastic new coffee blend, find a way that that invite means a discount or a benefit for the friend instead.

* AP Photo above from Mike Ditka’s Restaurant in Chicago

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

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