Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

Womma Blog Panel: Session and Questions

We had a great session. I want to thank Deborah and Rick.

We started by asking everyone some questions and the audiences answers:

How may know what a blog is - 95%
How many people read blogs daily - 40%
How many have personal blogs - 30%
How many have company blogs - 20%

Questions:

How influential are bloggers?

How can you tell how many people are reading blogs?

How are big brands using blogs internally?

Talk about corporate blogs, and transparency.

We needed another hour to get close to answers everyone's questions.

Blogging Panel Live - After

Using Blogs for Word of Mouth Marketing

I am going to be speaking today at the WOMMA Summit in Chicago. I have been asked to participate in a panel discussion on how blogs can be used to do word-of-mouth marketing. On the panel with me is Deborah Schultz from Six Apart and Rick Bruner from DoubleClick.

I wanted to publish some thoughts here for people who are (and are not) attending the event.

I think there are four reasons why companies should be using blogs to support word-of-mouth marketing:

1. Blogging is Personal - The vast majority of blogs are written by a single individual. This is what makes the medium compelling. You are hearing directly from another person what they think and how they feel. People talk about their passions. People talk about their day at work. They talk about just about everything.

The people who are drawn to blogging like to talk. They like telling others things. They like being the authority. Just the sort of people you would like talking about you.

Key point: Get to know the bloggers talking about you and your industry (and I don't mean by sending them press releases).

2. Linking - The use of hyperlinks is an integral part of blogging. Bloggers may reference a news story or the latest video game they bought. Those links are recommendations. They are telling people, "Go check it out."

   By linking to someone else, they also are giving them a gift. Robert Scoble (Microsoft Software Evangelist) calls it GoogleJuice. The more a site gets linked to, the more relevant search engines believe that content to be. Again it is like word-of-mouth--the more you hear about something, the more you start to pay attention.

   Key Points: Make sure your blog posts have permalinks and get familiar with Technorati.

3. Permanance - The trouble with most word-of-mouth marketing is that it is taking place one person at a time. And each conversation has to take place over and over again.

   The "conversations" that take place on blogs are (relatively) permanent. Before I make any purchase now, I check to see if any blogs have had anything to say. I can see if people liked the hotel they stay at or if I should buy the new Mac Mini.

   Key Point: Consider starting a blog to pull together what bloggers are saying about your company and your products (bonus points if you list the good and the bad).

   P.S. people are going to find both sides whether you like it or not.

4. Syndication - You are going to hear alot about RSS. It stands for Real Simple Syndication. RSS lets people subscribe to your blog and get notified when you post new content. This lets your biggest fans find out the moment you launch the new product. What would happen if you broke a story on your blog and simply let your evangelists spread the word?

   Key Points: Make sure you have a RSS feed on your blog and start using a RSS reader (like Bloglines) to keep up with blogs.

I have a great list of blogging links in my del.icio.us account. Start at the bottom and work your way up. You will find everything from what is a blog to how to pitch stories to bloggers. I highly recommend the Fortune article on blogging. It is the best mainstream media piece written on blogging thus far.

On the panel today, we will be giving lots of corporate examples of blogging. I wanted to give you a list of other business blogs you can check out. These are smaller companies using blogs in different ways to talk with their customers.

• Jewelboxing - This is product by Coudal Partners. They have a great feature where they list the cities they shipped to each day. It is a great way to give a nod to customers publicly without creating privacy problems.
• Green Cine Daily - If you like indie films, there is not a better site on the internet to find out what it going on. When they talk about movies, they link to them in their catalog.
• 800-CEO-READ - I am a little partial since I do alot of work for 8cr. Here is another example of a company taking their niche (i.e. business books) and striving to provide an unparalleled resources. With reviews/news, text excerpts, and audio content, they...I mean we are well on our way.
• Atomic Books - This is Baltimore based bookstore. It is a "slice of life" kind of blog, and next time I am in Baltimore I have to go visit them.
• English Cut - A Saville Row tailor talking about his craft and why his suits are better. And he gives lots of reasons...

WOMMA Summit - Day 1

Here are my notes the first day of the WOMMA Summit:

Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent

4 Keys to WOM

• Community of Influence
• Experience and Training
• Coummunications
• Analysis & Adjustment

Why do people share things via WOM?

• Helping/Educating
• Proving Knowledge
• Find Common Ground
• Validating Our Opinion
• Pride

80% of WOM occurs offline.

Value of Negative WOM:

• Learn by Listening
• 50% of Negative WOM is result of injustice
• Wake up your quiet advocates

George Silverman, author of the Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

People take action on 1 in 15,000 ads they see
People take action on 1 in 3 recommendations they receive

WOM is 5000X more powerful.

WOMMA Ethic Guidelines - Lots of Talk. Key tenet in the Guidlines is the Honesty ROI.

• Honesty of Relationship - Say Who You Are Speaking For
• Honesty of Opinion - Say What You Believe, Don't Shill
• Honesty of Identity - Say Who You Are

There was an interesting discussion around the developing area of WOM metrics. Too much to summarize.

Pete Blackshaw and Jim Nail had a great session on how the customer is in control. Check out HybridBuzz.com and BlogPulse. They have research that shows after WOM the next two most trusted sources for consumers are websites and email they receive. I found this amazing.

Here are Guy Kawasaki 10 points on Selling the Dream:

1. Make Meaning
2. Niche Thyself
3. Don't Be Paranoid
4. Localize the Pain
5. Let 100 flowers bloom
6. Look for agnostics, not atheists
7. Enable Test Drives
8. Provide a Slippery Slope
9. Make them feel a part of the team
10. Don't ask anyone to do something you wouldn't
11. Be a mensch

I attended a panel on WOM in the music industry. So-so.

I am now attending one on using WOM in specialty markets. Greg Stielstra, author of Pyromarketing is talking about Purpose Driven Life, the 22 million copy bestseller. I just said critics are as important as praisers. They help frame the market for your product.

Friendster is using its network to start WOM campaigns. They chose members whose interests matched that of the campaign. They have done things with Apprentice 2 and The Aquatic Life.

Last session is brands using WOM. Interesting stuff from Jake on the stuff he is doing with Lego.

Michael Wiley is talking about the GM blogs. He gets it.

Enough for today. I need dinner.

Robots is Terrible

Amy and I went with two of our friends to go see Robots yesterday afternoon.

I thought it sucked. It was a complete waste of time.

The problem was the story was really weak. I was bored halfway through. How Fox could spend $100 million on a movie like this and not make sure you had the right story baffles me.

I would give it 1 star and that is only because of the animation.

(How is that for WOM?)

Get People Talking

To coax audiences into the theater this weekend, Fox is launching a wide range of promotions for items including a wide range of promotions for items including a Robots Pop-Tart. It's also making a heavy merchandise play, licensing the creation of some 10 children's books related to the movie, a coffee-table book on its making, action figures of Rodney and his friends, and a video game. Selling the movie, says Fox's co-president of marketing, Pam Levine, "is really about creating an event for the general audience and telling them how much we believe in the movie."

This quote is from Thursday's The Wall Street Journal article [sub. needed] about Robots, Fox's new animated film.

This stuff drives me nuts. If you think you have produced a good movie (book, album, product, service,...), the market is going to decide quickly whether or not it is good. Anyone who is going to see Robots opening weekend knew it was opening this weekend without the cross-promotion at Burger King and Verizon. Those folks are going to say yea or nay and that is going to determine the success of the movie. Scoble said at Blog Business Summit that he could see The Incredibles DVD was going to be enormously successful by looking at all the blogs they have talked about how great the movie is.

Word of mouth is the most important form marketing that exists now. I don't understand why companies don't understand that. Produce a compelling product, let your biggest fans experience it, and news will spread. Maybe, the problem is there is so much money invested in these projects that companies believe they have to spend lots of money to "make sure" the projects are successful.

We are going to see Robots today. You'll see word-of-mouth marketing in action (or not).

The Next iPod?

"The [Playstation Portable] will be the most in-demand consumer electronics device of the year, even more than the iPod."

-Richard Doherty, Envisioneering quoted in March 2005 Business 2.0

Podbrix II

Have you been following the Podbrix phenomenon? These little artistically modified Lego men are all the rage.

The $16.99 first edition was an ode to the dancing figures in the iPod commercials. There were 300 produced and they sold out in 10 hours.

The second edition is a carbon copy of Mr. Jobs holding an iPod and an Shuffle. The release coincided with Jobs' birthday on Thursday. Again, there were 300 numbered units and it only took 36 minutes to sell out.

I put a ebay tracker on these little guys as soon as I heard about the first sellout. There were three first edition Podbrix that showed up this morning. Each of the auctions has more than 5 days to go, but the top price is $157.25.

Citizen Marketers, Rise Up!

Have you seen the latest post from Jackie at Church of the Customer?

There's a new breed of marketer taking shape these days: Citizen marketers.

Can I add to the list?

• Jones Soda invites customers to submit photos for their labels. It creates a great partnership between the company and citizen marketers. If they don't choose your photo, you can order your own Jones with the photo of your choice.
• Jackie used Amazon's photo submission option. I like ThinkGeek's Action Shots better.
• How about Howard Dean supporters running to Kinko's, making fliers, and going door-to-door handing them out? And this was before anyone even knew who Dean was.
• Might I say the Business Blog Book Tour is a form of Citizen Marketing?

This needs another look - lying is not OK

My friend Jackie at Church of the Customer had a great post last week on Stealth Marketing.

The California Management Review advocates using deceptive, covert methods for marketing to your customers. Read the article. This is coming from the Hass School of Business.

This didn't get the buzz I expected.

I wanted to make sure you saw it.

BzzAgent: Be Open

I am a little behind on my feeds, but I wanted to point out an significant change at BzzAgent.

In the past, BzzAgent has asked its BzzAgents to "Be Discreet" about their involvement with campaigns. I was a BzzAgent on a couple of campaigns, because I wanted to see what the process was like. I was always a little bothered by having to keep a secret identity, but didn't have a thoughtful response for an alternate course.

Dave Balter announced a change about two weeks ago. BzzAgents are now requested to:

Be Open

BzzAgents should be entirely open about their identity. As long as you’re sharing your honest opinion, being candid about your involvement with BzzAgent actually helps create better Bzz. If you like a product or service, it doesn’t matter where you found out about it, so don’t feel as though you need to be anonymous or stealthy. Just be open and honest and let your opinion count.

I think this is a great change. I think this will give their efforts even more validity.

Bzzing about Balter

Dave Balter, the man behind BzzAgent, has a changethis manifesto called The Word On Word of Mouth.

It is short and sweet, and highly recommended.

Great Firefox Marketing Q&A

Steve continues the great job and posts a Q&A with Rob Davis, the lead behind the Firefox. There are lots of answers to questions people have been asking. Also read the comments and Rob's thoughts on what to call what they are doing.

Word of Mouth Marketing

I saw this on the back of a bottle of Tuborg Beer in Sweden.

They have left spots on the back for your name and telephone number. Beneath the telephone box, it says "A golden opportunity to let someone else indulge."

I thought this was great.

Change This!

I want to point people to Change This! I think the project has a lot of potential. Most of the talk I have seen has been criticizing the format and not really talking about the ideas. I realize pdf files are not ideal, but the control over design that you have and the ubiquity of Acrobat readers outweighs the shortcomings. I also think they have done a great job of catering to bloggers by creating permanent pages to link to and trackbacks on those pages.

As for talking about the ideas, it will be interesting to see how that evolves. I think alot of blogs have a small set of topics that they talk about. You are not going to find political editorial on this blog. You are going to find business editorial and (more so lately) thoughts on the evolution of blogging. I think that limits in some ways the viral nature of these manifestos. I wonder if ChangeThis needs to create a medium where the ideas can be talked about.

The interesting part of the project is just starting though. ChangeThis! invites anyone to submit proposals. The proposals are put into the Slush Pile and everyone gets to vote. The most popular proposals move to manifestos. I think that is way cool. And it is very interesting to see which ones are bubbling up.

An Evangelism Q&A

Q: What company has designers mocking up what they think the next version of a product is going to look like.

A: Apple does.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has two posts (here and here) on the latest design speculation based on a trademark that was filed in Europe.

Update: Engadget is having a contest to guess what is new is coming from Apple. There are prizes too.

My Apple Store Story

When I was in San Francisco last week, I made a specific point of going to the Apple Store. I thought it would be cool to see one of the flagship stores and see if something jumped into my hands that I had to buy. I walked into the store and immediately saw the trademark translucent staircase. I pulled out my camera and took a picture.

As I was putting my camera away, a store employee walked up and told me that no pictures could be taken in the store. He was very polite about it. I became pretty upset and I left the store.

I am sure there is a reason for no picture-taking. They probably want to be able to control the images that people see of their stores. The trouble is it stops customers and fans from talking about Apple and their stores. I wanted to share the experience of visiting the store with all of you. I don't think this is the story Apple wanted me to tell.

Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz

Buzz.

Everyone wants it. It's generally free. There is always people motivated to jump in.

I mean who wouldn't want the buzz Clinton was getting last week. The National Journal has a good essay on that very subject. Writer William Powers' question is "What if you can't trust the buzz?"

More tips for evangelizing

Ben Sliverman at PR Fuel tells companies how to let your customer be your evangelist.

Getting turned down

If you are interested in the evolution of business blogging, check out this post from Hacking Netflix.com.

There are going to be more stories like this as bloggers want to get closer to companies. Companies and more importantly the people in them don't know how to deal with their evangelists yet.

[ via Dave]

Invite Only

How many more example do we need to show that word of mouth marketing works?

I like this post at MediaPost about Gmail Marketing [via PR Opinions].

I like even better how Matthew at the nonbillable hour is thinking about using an invite only method of acquiring customers.

P.S. Anybody have a spare Gmail invite? Dana came to the rescue.

More Signs Things Are Changing.

On the top of B1 in the WSJ today, there is an article titled, "For Big Marketers Like AmEx, TV Ads Lose Starring Role."* Big companies are starting to spend their money in other places. This isn't huge surprise, but the article give some insight into what the big guys are thinking. This from AmEx chief marketing officer John Hayes when he addressed NBC's ad salesforce:

Your business model needs to change...It used to be that we bought time, shipped you the commercials, had lunch or a glass of wine together once in awhile; you took care of the quality of programming and we made sure the check did not bounce. We all sat back, checked the ratings , watched our business grow...those days are woefully over.

The article reports that TV ads now account for only 25% of total ad expenditures. Here are other ways they are spending their money: Jerry Seinfeld/Superman webisodes (here was my post on that from Brand Week), an touring photo exhibit of classic photos from past ads, and sponsorship of the Sheryl Crow Central Park concert.

*subscription needed

More Questioning Of Buzzing

Katherine at Decent Marketing generated some discussion around her view of hired buzzers (here and here).

There is another article from Silcon Valley Metro that takes a similarly questioning tone. The article is called "The Secret Agents of Capitalism" [via Media Guerilla].

I strongly recommend it if you are interesting in this evolving space.

A Bzzing Business Blog

BzzAgent is a word-of-mouth marketing firm based in Boston.

They keep an interesting blog, which keeps customers and bzzAgents (people who create buzz for them) up on what is going on inside the company.

Their post today was a copy of the email they sent to shareholders and investors. I think it is pretty gutsy to tell the world about the angel funding you are looking for, who you are doing projects with, and who your big prospects are.

Creating Demand

Just wanted to make sure you saw this great post from the Church of the Customer. It about the importance of word of mouth with movies.

They are talking about me

The Church has a great post on an article from the Chicago Tribune. With the drop in young men watching TV, the newspaper went on a quest to find them and found out what they are doing.

The attitude they found describes me to a tee. When my wife and I give gifts, we are always looking for something unique, something that fits the recipient, and something that wouldn't expect. That requires some searching (which I love doing) and requires keeping your ears open for suggestions from others.

At my other blog, getting opinions from others is the whole point. I posted a request for suggestions on a carrying bag for my new Powerbook and 14 people told me what they thought was good. After initially buying a bag, I returned it and went with one of their suggestions.

Word of mouth is powerful. Trust is precious. A lot of companies need to get on board.

Blogging on the Viral

I hope everyone has seen the Viral Marketing Blog. I originally saw the link on FC Now.

It only started in January, but they are putting up three or four posts a day. They find ideaviruses, and rank them on coolness, ease of passing on, and strength of marketing tie-in.

My current favorites:

• William Hung - A True American Idol
• 867-5309 for sale on Ebay
• Barbie Take PR Cue from J-Lo