“We can fix your reputation on search engines and put good reviews first”… If you’ve turned on the radio or network TV in the past year or two you’ve heard the companies claiming to fix brand reputation by reordering results and even creating content. The ethical ones draw a line at impacting existing reviews while the bottom of the barrel doesn’t just outright admits they’re making stuff up and either way the message is clear to consumers: the review system can be gamed.

Of course gaming is not only bad companies trying to pretend to be good; scan through enough reviews and you’ll find gems like this one: “I haven’t bought this but everything XYZ makes is overpriced so I give it a one star”. Whether its brands attacking each other, service providers raking in money with promises of hiding bad reviews or consumers gone rogue in a negative [or even positive way], there’s a growing credibility problem with reviews.

There’s no doubt that reviews are downright vital…. in fact Millennials place more trust in others than friends & family, and we’re only getting started. However as reviews grow in importance, the efficacy of the system is taking a serious hit – reviews will become less trusted and now is the time for companies to tackle the problem.

1. We need to validate reviews on our sites.

When Starwood announced their review program last year what stood out was their move to validate every comment. Knowing what’s on their site is real is a powerful move, and moves the ball to trusting that they don’t filter, not that the reviews were made up.

2. Reviews must be presented authentically.

When companies re-order their reviews or even worse, just list the top ones, the entire concept becomes useless. As research has shown, it’s not the 5-star rating people want to see… it’s the reality of the product, the fact that someone has an issue with it, even if the issue is a non issue. Being honest with how we show reviews gives people a reason to believe that what we’re showing is all inclusive.

3. We need to provide a method for others to validate off of.

Amazon is as much a research site as a purchase one – etailers and content sites are not just getting reviews from their own sales / bookings. They need a way to authenticate too and that means those of us making products or selling services have to move to being more open, to provide  a mechanism identify a real customer by anyone.

This is not an easy path. If you sell in store how do insure a product review is real? If you turn away someone because they don’t validate aren’t you just encouraging them go to a third party site and make even more noise? Validation is by no means a simple process but it’s the right step to move towards to make those reviews count and to root out the problems, whether they’re negatives or positives. In the end transparency wins out.

Social media, while powerful, authentic and important only works if people see what you’re doing and that’s where advertising comes in as a symbiotic partner

The problem we see today is that people expect everything to just go viral. We’ve all be asked [told?] to make a viral video; to make a product get “out there” with sharing alone. The reality is that very few products even have a chance to “go viral”. For every blendtec or old spice is a thousand more brands with a good product that simply isn’t what people want to share around the web. That’s why on any given day the top 50 YouTube videos include one product related videos. Yup, one.

Advertising is the dependable version of viral

Instead of asking “how do I make this ‘go viral’”, which is something you can’t control or guarantee, you need to ask yourself: “how do I take something that is credible, authentic and trustworthy and make it get exposed”. This is why advertising becomes remains so important in an era of social media – advertising is your guaranteed source of visibility that insures success whether or not a viral pickup takes place.

Social Media changes how you advertise

Google AdWords, Targeted Banners, Lead Generation Campaigns, Facebook Ads. Advertising has been used to sell your brand’s value under your voice, with your credibility attached. Social integrates into this chain to make your ads authentic and stand out [at least until everyone gets on board].

Rather than saying “50% off on the Amazing Widget” say “50% off on the 5-star rated Widget” with quotes from reviews visible around the ad unit. Rather than a stock photo of actors enjoying their new RV pull in a video from your Facebook campaign of a real family talking about their experience with a link to read more stories. Bring the same transparency you have on your reviews, Facebook page, user community and other social features right out and into your advertising – the more real time and authentic, the better.

Product packaging is another great place to bring social to life and get in front of the customer. Think about two boxes with nearly the same product, one has a summary rating, an expert rating and a QR / RFID / short url link to read more reviews while the other doesn’t even have a mobile friendly site. Even at a higher price the brand willing to put it all out there is worth a closer look. Mobile has become far too prevalent to think you can hide or out impulse research, so instead beat the customer too it.

Don’t assume that simply because you have UGC on your website or social channels people are going to find it. You need to tell them it’s there.

The reason is of course is value. Wendy’s isn’t better than the fine dining but if [I’ve never ‘dined’ there]  if it’s delivering a better service, quality of food or price than McDonalds and Burger King down the block, it’s going to get good reviews for the few times people rate it. Conversely, at a higher end establishment people expect a certain level of service and, as they move up the cost chain, are very apt to write about it if it’s anything but.

This same reality applies to just about any service from a hotel to a computer to glassware.

The problem of course is that our reviews are flat. You go to Amazon and a $2 product has a better ranking than a $50 version with thousands of reviews to back it up. While it’s possible that the $2 option really is better, more often than not it’s simply a great deal getting well reviewed by those willing to take a cheaper version – but someone expecting the $50 quality ends up sorely disappointed and not understanding why.

When consumers rank on stars and stars alone we are doing them a disservice by giving the appearance that everything is on the same field, it’s not. Reviews need to be compared on value.

As our sites go from 10 reviews per item to 1,000s, it’s no longer enough to say each product has freeform comments and a 1-5 rating. Instead marketers [and their review vendors] need to adjust for value, time and price before we sell ourselves down… and sell our customers the wrong level of solution.  This means pulling price, features out from review details and summarizing them up to quantify a $5,000 amp versus a $500 one so that consumers aren’t just seeing what’s most popular, they’re seeing what’s most respected in the category of value they are looking for.

Gunnar Opticks provides “digital performance eyewear”. Yes, that’s a real category and according to the Gunnar marketing materials, a very important one given how much we stare at our monitors these days. For gamers vision become even more important as eye fatigue can lead to [virtual] death, as well as cause long term “real world” problems.  [my disclosure on gunnar optiks at the end of the post]

So what do you do when you’ve got a product that solves a problem people don’t know they have? You could talk up the benefits until you were blue in the face, or you could take the social road and get the top customers of arguably the top mainstream gaming system manufacturer in the world to do the talking for you. But getting people to talk requires them to have your product — and that’s where seeding comes into play.

Gunnar’s seeding program is straight forward – take the top 10 posters on the Alienware Arena forums, send them out a pair of shades and ask for their initial thoughts & a full review in return. Throw it all into its own sub-forum for branding & to keep the conversation visible and in less than a week you’ve got a few hundred comments and thousands of views from the core of your target market.

4 ways to social success with Gunnar’s seeding program

1. Encouraging honest reviews.

In their program overview the request is simple: Post an initial comment, in-depth review and final thoughts. No mention of the tone of the posts, no requirements for a good story, no pulling unknown members who may just be employees. It’s up to the, already respected, user. By not forcing “positive” you actually encourage it – transparency goes a long way to winning people over, add a solid product and you’re in business.

2. Asking for a follow up [keeping the conversation alive]

Gunnar didn’t just want to get a week’s visibility, they want mentions down the road and they want people to know the long term benefit too. So rather than taking a one hit & go approach they’ve asked for 3 phases of comments getting them 3 waves of exposure. On some forums people will put their gear & reviews right into their signature; it’s all about fitting into the individual community to make the most of it.

3. Engaging with the testers & other users

This isn’t set it & forget it. Gunnar’s done the right thing getting the forum staff involved and also bringing their own employees onto the site to answer questions and provide the facts. It’s full transparency since those employees are marked as a part of the company and are sticking towards the facts, offering positive thanks and leaving the opinion to the user. The seeding program shows their commitment to the community, the one to one engagement puts them in the “good brand” category.

4. Backing it up with sponsorship banners [the action opportunity]

You don’t want to stop in front of the finish line, you want to cross it. Gunnar’s program is all about conversation but with people talking, sharing comments, and hyping the product up, it’s essential to have a way for those not in the program, whether it’s other members or casual visitors of the site, to have a way to act. Gunnar chose to sponsor the forum their post is in with a few targeted banners – nothing too strong but an easy click to get members around the community into the area & reading the review.

As the Gunnar example shows, forum seeding is a great way to stir up conversation about a brand people may know about but not have tried or just aren’t talking about. In the world of community, nothing is going to outweigh a trusted member’s opinion on the overall perception of a product and getting involved with a few giveaways is at the same time a great way “in” to a community without having to worry about seeing as spamming or advertising – it’s value for consideration – a win all around.

* Disclosure:  I know the team at Gunnar [although finding this example was a pure coincidence thanks to @alienware on twitter] and use a pair of Gunnar 3D glasses and sunglasses in addition to my Oakley shades.

Van Veen’s comment, while just a single remark in a much broader interview, pries into an ongoing dilemma that marketing is facing – who influences consumers?

In the “old days” brand marketing became almost formulaic: Take a compelling message, put a compelling plot behind it and pair it up with an icon to really drive results. Browse old TV or Print ad archives and its clear: this worked. Fast forward into the modern age and celebrity visibility has not gone away, in fact thanks to inventions like reality TV, twitter and just the simple amount of information consumers are able to access, celebrities have likely become even bigger.

But the role of the celebrity has changed.

Today’s celebrity is important and visible making them an ideal cornerstone to whip up attention. Attention however is not, as any direct marketer will tell you, sales. Today’s consumer is informed; right or wrong there is more information out there than anyone wants to read, a significant shift from when John Wayne put his name behind Camel cigarettes.  A celebrity is an icon.

“Some 70% of Americans say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before making a purchase” – Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates – October 2008 via Business Week

On the other hand, if you take a look at the Social Commerce Stats page BazaarVoice maintains and you’ll find literally hundreds more quotes about the power, demand and use of ratings and reviews like the one above. When it gets down to brass tax, it is the everyday user who, through a good post, a bad post, or even no post, makes or breaks the sale.

One conversation between a group of friends; one pseudo-anonymous 5 star review on Amazon; one rant on a Facebook wall. It all adds up to trust, credibility and authentic support. Technology has made people aware of what other people think. The user is now the influencer.

The right celebrity still has value, but relevancy matters.

When Eminem paired up with Chrysler for the Super Bowl / Detroit ad the first comments were surprise and after a few minutes the conversation became very positive (10 million views later it’s still rolling with 32,000 thumbs-up to just  1,600 down). Eminem wasn’t saying this was the best car ever – he was an icon of the location bringing attention back to it and the brand that is represented by it. An endorsement of the brand and where it’s going was something authentic and it worked.  

Similarly there are many celebrities who have built their brand in social channels. Ashton Kutcher is probably the most common example, and why not, he has over 6.5 million twitter followers and while the vast majority of these individuals are likely not even using Twitter anymore, have little “Klout”, he’s spent enormous time setting up his personality as someone accessible and connected. If you can get @aplusk to talk about a brand that’s relevant to who is as a persona, you can find success.

Flip it around and unfortunately there’s a lot more bad than good. Look at the 10 Strangest Celebrity Endorsements  blog and you’ve got the former U.S.S.R. president positioned next to one of the flagships of consumerism: Louis Vuitton. Flip on TV and you’ve had the outspoken A-Team member, “Mr. T”, talking about cooking products. These are ads that draw visibility, perhaps get the person’s attention, but are not going to close a sale [unless it’s a practical joke].

It’s not a black and white subject… brands will not, cannot just drop celebrities, too much visibility is at stake; but the icons that they use must be the right partner to support their brand, and frankly, the icon’s as well.

So what is a marketer to do?

In my career I’ve had the chance to work on a number of celebrity driven marketing campaigns and without giving away any specific on which ones or at which role, I’m quite certain that they create noise, attention and awareness which are all good things. Sales however require something more – visibility paired with believability.

In a world with social media nothing is more important than the authenticity that user generated content can bring, except perhaps for people wanting to see if the product is really that good in the first place. You can’t do a good job in convincing people to buy when no one is looking at you, so while I wouldn’t rely on a random celebrity to sell my products any more than I would believe their ad as a consumer, their voice can bring the right attention to push people to take that next look.

Just imagine an ad where a major celebrity, someone with a family, in the spotlight talked about their first trip to Disneyland and told you to read a million “real” experiences on the new Disney stories page. Or an ad with a musician telling you that they went to iTunes for the best new songs, rated by you, the users. Attention getting, believable and relevant.

Celebrity marketing can work. It just works best when you understand that an icon doesn’t influence, we do.

Chief among the disparity issues local business face versus their larger competitors’ is access to marketing channels. When Target wants to drive Black Friday sales, TV ads hit millions of homes, banners flood the front-pages of CNN, and inserts get mailed out to every home. Even a local business able to afford enough marketers to output the same volume of creative assets will be drowned out in media buys and volume efficiencies.

But now there’s social media.

Social offers all businesses an effective, low cost and, when done right, extremely influential way to reach customers.  And as a new channel, it’s something all businesses are struggling with.

While small businesses have an opportunity big business struggles with: the ability to be truly relevant.

Think about your local gym… what’s more likely to peak your interest: a twitter account to follow with 2 way dialogue about the latest classes or a national chain that’s trying to roll out a 50-state branding campaign to leverage their new celebrity? The celebrity may make the national guy feel more relevant, more “wow” but it’s not more actionable, in fact, the more the fan engages, the less they are likely to feel connected as it’s unlikely the brand will be able to respond to them at all.

Crystal Springs Produce - A local business with a complete Yelp profiles with photos, numerous reviews, even a special offer

At the same time, the relevancy tools large networks are using like Facebook’s “Edge Rank” favor a small business to a large one. The bigger the page is, the harder it becomes to keep up engagement rates and content that appeals to everyone… leading to an eventual slips in rank with posts becoming less and less seen by those who opted to follow.

The problem small businesses face is acting and acting now. While all companies are still trying to sort out what social can do, who should do it, and what the real return is, dedicating a social resource when you have only a handful of marketing employees (or perhaps one or none) is not viable. However the door is open wide and not an option, it is the future for business, and especially any business without the benefit of million dollar media campaigns. Small businesses have an opportunity to lead and to build their community off of passionate customers before bigger competitors figure out how to pull their ground level ‘troops’ in.

In all honesty, it’s a struggle to find local businesses really using social beyond a few logos and reviews, but it’s the only place where small businesses have a level field, maybe even an upper hand if they act soon.

Every small business should be thinking about how they build their army, how they get followed, get reviewed and use their customer comments to drive their business to be better, more appealing and therefore more talked about. So where to start? Here are 5 channels that can be setup, monitored and responded too in just a few hours a week.

Ratings & Reviews. User Reviews drive purchases so encouraging them with in-store signage, customer welcome kits and at any other place is essential to standing out. Is the business on Yelp or other relevant local services? Is the information correct?  

Social Networks, Forums. The buzz words, the trends, these tools represent access to thousands of local consumers and huge spread with just a single “LIKE” or post. Is there a Facebook page? Twitter? Relevant forums in the industry? Does the page send out updates on new services, programs and relevant information? Photos of events? Fan comments? 

Location Check-ins. As people get more comfortable telling their network where they are, there’s an opportunity to expand viral branding. Is there an accurate destination created on foursquare? Facebook places? A description or photo? A special to draw in fans? A program, even a smile and handshake, for the mayor? 

Local Deals. GroupOn, Living Social, they’re all about deals people can use locally. But they only really work when the business has a plan to use a discounted user to build a long term customer.  Is there a deal out there? Does it lend well to continued business? Are new signups getting brought into the other social features to follow and be en-engaged with? 

Support & Engagement. Nothing in social matters unless it’s followed with a response, a dialogue… and seen as actually being used by the business. Are comments from all the other channels being used to update the business model and are those changes being relayed back? Is someone from the staff checking the social channels a few times a week to build and foster

Of course anyone working in ecommerce, or any corporation, could have told you there would be problems. Tens of millions of flower orders , dozens of companies, and just 18 or so hours  to get them all there on time (but not too early), it’s only logical that some orders would fail within the process… Some complaints were inevitable.

And some level of complaints are inevitable for almost all b2c companies. No matter how perfect the process is, something will fail at some point and whether it’s the fault of the company or something entirely out of their hands, like the weather, it’s all going to come back on them, and these days back to social media. So knowing that something bad will happen, it’s up to us as marketers/ social strategists to insure that when problems come up we have the right plans to respond, but also that they don’t dominate the conversation or become the purpose of our page. We need to be more than just support channels .

Going back to my Teleflora example (and to be clear and not just pick out one company, the same issue is happening with ProFlowers and others that I checked), something is missing – balance. On the pages of most flower brands I visited just about everything was negative and support related. If these companies had happy customers (and I know they do because I am one) they were nowhere to be found and likely for good reason, no one had asked them to join up and share.

My suggestion to flower business earlier in the week was to provide an insert with orders for people to evangelize their great orders (or their bad ones, a review is what it is). All it takes is a simple note to remind people to comment, to tell them where you are, and out of the millions, thousands or even of just hundreds of customers you touch, you’ll get some balance… You’ll get light advocates.

Take this a step further, build a social program that encourages fan participation before the issue and you’ll be far more prepared when one does strike. This is where best practices really kick in – buying fans in masse with discounts, coupons and giveaways is easy and gets numbers, but successfully cultivating them takes a great deal more than good offers, it takes useful content, engaging directly around posts other than support, even how the business goes to market, the policies and programs that you have and how your fans react to them. But if you can build a dialogue and a regular flow (and yes, this is possible for even seemingly mundane brands) then you have moderate advocates on and around to help when there are negatives, to explain that there is a good to the bad, and to be talking about things other than support and trouble. And of course if you really go all the way, develop that full advocacy program and engage customers to become brand evangelists, community leaders, and the like, well now you have a whole force of people to balance and even better, aid.

Now don’t get me wrong, the issue customers are having with their flower orders are certainly very real and need a response, not to be buried or hidden by a flood of off topic discussions. Transparency is good, real responses are what matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have both – it is again a balance of what your social media channels do for you and your customers.

As for the support side, we all know it isn’t easy, or cheap, but it is something which companies tend to get… and here, the flower companies are doing a good job of responding 1:1, giving direct email addresses, and all of the other support processes you’d hope for when customers are upset and support lines are backed up with callers… they may not be perfect but they’re on it for this part. But while the support side is going well, when all people see is bad, they get more upset, the assume nothing is going right, and they lose the benefit of peer to peer support or comments to turn too.

And that’s why you need your fans to know, connect and be involved with your social media presence now, when things are good. Social media is not just about offers and sales generation, not just a support system, but when used right, it can be a dialogue platform to get insights, have the right discussions that curtail or stop issues early on, and yes, be a place where people share all the great things your product / service / brand are doing that may them advocates and repeat customers.

The reason for this is not however bad apartments (though there certainly are some). The culprit is in fact something much simpler to remedy – a lack of information. It goes without saying that if you don’t know to do something, you won’t and apartment ratings are one thing few people know about until they chose to review a new home. What if instead of waiting for people to find their way to reviews apartment companies put a sheet in with their lease renewal and termination packages that offered a $25 gift card or rent discount for leaving a comment on their site, apartment ratings or another platform? What if rather than doing door tags every month about referring friends they directed people to a facebook-connect powered page asking to talk about where they live.

And you don’t need a lease to get people writing reviews. Product inserts, thank you notes for loyal customers, links on your email footers, website or any other communication piece is an opportunity to tell people that you’d like them to leave a review and give them a reason too.

Most customers but good experience and good experiences are not what people think about sharing. We’ve all heard adages like 10 bad comments for every 1 good and whether or not this is the exact number the sentiment is true. People gripe when there is a reason to and far fewer jump in when they don’t have something to vent.  There’s nothing bad about asking people to lead a review and if done right, nothing underhanded either.   Compensating everyone for a review is a fair statement. Positive, negative, it’s all a review and all gets the same treatment. No one can fault you for that.

And this issue isn’t limited to apartments – all sorts of niche businesses face a similar challenge from Vacation Homes to local Bakeries. If customers don’t know they can leave a review the odds are they won’t. Unless of course they have an experience so bad they can’t stop themselves from talking about it.

If you run a big, or even just an older brand’s online presence you’ve probably had the “viral” conversation at least once and are downright sick of executives asking you how the company can get more “social”. While a lot of companies have put a great foot forward in building their own communities, this is a difficult proposition and even if it succeeds, it’s only going to reach a small slice of the viral world. The truth is, most user’s live on big networks (social networking sites) and niche sites (the independent forums, blogs, etc…) so let’s talk about some ways to reach out in someone else’s field.

Before I start with specific tactics I’ll begin with a single rule which I consider to be the guiding principle of involving your brand in a community. At all times the community and the user will be in control, not you and not your brand. This goes for external communities and generally for your own as well. Not willing to swallow that reality? Don’t bother trying to get into the space… it will end bad (either a wasted effort or a very bad PR outcome). Why do I say this? Because many, many, many good companies have gone in foolishly thinking they can control the consumer. I don’t care if the consumer is using “your” site or a third party site… if you come in and crash their parade in a way they see offensive (censoring, deleting, spamming, etc…) you’ll have more bad posts going out there than you’ll have time to read and even if there was something erroneously said about you, you’ll have given the poster enough ammo to drive a nail into your name overnight. There’s too many ways for consumers to talk today for you to control them, so don’t bother.

If you’re willing to accept the potential bashing and have a good air conditioner in your building (plus a few sleeping pills), there’s a ton of opportunity to be had to bring people into your customer for the first time, for a repeat purchase, to keep them engaged and simply to grow the reach and awareness of your overall offering.

User Reviews: These days most sites have user reviews if they offer products, so let’s forget on-site reviews for a second and talk about reviews that live off site. Getting involved here is tricky to say the least. You should never be in the business of “seeding” or “faking” reviews but that doesn’t mean you can’t throw some weight in. Got a new product offering?

• Why not having some of your past customer or early adopters get a free sample in exchange for a review. This is an old PR tactic but it works wonders online and even translates out into the blog and forum worlds. Most people never expect a company will notice them and just talking to them can give you a huge response and build a very loyal following.

• Another popular interaction with reviews is to post responses. Some sites clearly allow this (i.e. BizRate) and others may not do so yet, but if there’s a lot of discussion about your offering, now may be the time to ask and/or suggest they do it. When you’re responding to reviews you gain the chance to show that your organization does deliver service and is there for the consumer in the event of a bad review but good reviews are where you can really shine. Use good reviews as a place to respond thanking the consumer, offering ideas and involving them in the brand. When someone reads a good review it’s a positive tick for your business versus the competitors but what if they see you encouraging and supporting that user proactively… what if you suggest more ways for them to use your products that resonate with the reader? Boom. You’ve increased the power of the review.

• Harvest reviews (with permission of course) from sites and include them in your own materials. This works with all types of reviews and is really amazing when taken offline as Walmart has recently done. Harvesting reviews can also be very helpful in building up your own review library initially or just as a means of showing your consumer feedback on truly “independent sites”. You don’t even have to take the reviews to accomplish this… if you have a 5 star product on Amazon say so. They’re independent enough to the consumer and hold great brand weight so why not use that to your advantage?

User submitted video: Again I want to start this tactic with a rule. Video is not applicable to every company, period. Let me clarify that because it’s not accurate perhaps, user generated video is not acceptable in every context but it may be overall. If you’re Boeing airlines, video could be a great way to attract potential employees but that would likely need to come from verified employees, trying to use YouTube to get videos about working at Boeing from the public – not as smart a move.

• Open the doors to video submissions that will make it somewhere. The weight loss industry has used real clients for decades as a means of proving efficiency; online video has made this applicable to everyone. If you have a strong tv brand using video to recruit talent can be an amazing way to build a campaign and save a few bucks on casting. Just think about it, you get the chance to have thousands of people “audition” (with exposure) and the result is that they get to become your star, or one of your stars, or just a star you push over to PR for coverage. Either way it’s the best contest I can think of.

• Not every brand can put people on tv or the front of their catalogue but you can always run a traditional contest promotion. At this year’s eTail I heard someone from Ice.com talking about a few campaigns. His comments indicated that some promotions worked better than others at driving ROI but that most had good impression rates. For a jewelry company, something about posting your love story or why you deserve the perfect ring which people can vote on. For an online dating site, user submitted stories and experiences that let you win a romantic trip. For a software vendor, an example of art or a module created. For a show or movie, reactions from fans. And so forth. There’s an endless number of options of how to get these going and get them viral but the idea is to get people posting their own thoughts and expressions which they’ll want to share through any means available (email, social profiles, blogs, everything) and then let people vote or rate things to bring more activity and more involvement into the mix from the “fans”.

• Create your own videos and post them. It goes without saying that your videos need to be interesting, unique and posted to the right site but for a lot of companies that’s not a problem. Years ago I remember a dive business I worked with had an issue where their website got turned off for using too much bandwidth – people were viewing their video too much. At the time no one thought much of video and there wasn’t even an inkling of YouTube – bandwidth was at a premium too — but man, just think about that; too many views? Too much traffic? All this company did was posted an interested video on their site and the word spread all over dive forums and inboxes. What if they took that same (or a new video of a similar nature) and threw it onto a Dive Video site or YouTube or both? Put up a little profile, a link at the end and wrap the product in a bit and suddenly you’ve got a ton of exposure from something with a very low production cost. Even if only a minute fraction were to become customers that’s still a great branding opportunity and as was the case for this business, they were already shooting video so just about any sales would have made it profitable.

  If you can’t afford to shoot new footage but shoot for other mediums, consider repurposing or creating “b roll” footage. Repurposed video doesn’t tend to get as far although I’ve seen it get a few eyeballs but “b roll” can do really well, especially if it’s slightly humorous, shows a celebrity or is just unexpected. Coming from a world of “managed” brands it’s hard to think about showing your company’s goof ups, interactions or side remarks but that’s part of your face, your voice, and can lend great credibility to showing that you’re not just about overly priced commercials.

Forum communities: Involving yourself in most forms of social media is tricky but forums often take the cake. Successful forums are generally home to deeply attached members, long standing leaders and may be founded entirely without commercial goals making them difficult to approach both from a user and owner side. That’s probably why the best results come from companies that take the time to engage the forum owners/ leaders before they step in. Some promotion tactics may not require any formal discussions as many won’t require financial contribution but it’s always a good idea to introduce yourself, to find the lines and to get ideas from the leaders… asking them lets them know that you’re not here to push your name, you’re here to participate.

• The best way to get buzz on a forum is to participate and I do mean participate. The deeper the participation, the better the relationship, but even a casual conversation is a start. Just bare in mind that if your brand has a negative reputation, even if it’s mostly positive, you may open yourself up to a lot of bashing and will want to have a response strategy in place before you jump in. This shouldn’t scare you away from participating however – people are already talking about your brand and while responding may draw a few more flames, it’s also an opportunity to set the record straight, much like issuing a press release about an issue. When you participate by name you get the chance to explain your policies and offerings, your benefits and the reality of your business.

  But when you participate in a forum don’t limit yourself to just talking about your brand (unless requested by the site owners of course). Most companies have experts who know their fields and if you’re on a forum it’s because people are talking about the topics your brand knows about, so help others, respond and show your expertise. It’s amazing how positive this sort of interaction can be and chances are you don’t even have to mention your own url to get a benefit out of it. Just by having a username and signature that refers to your company gets you noticed but when you show that you’re an expert and valued resource willing to interact with customers, you’re showing them that you relate to their needs and aren’t just about keeping to the old-world relationship of customer and store. Chances are not everything you do is perfect but when you open up your brand to communicate with your customers, they tend to be grateful for it, and even if there’s some negativity, there’s generally a lot more positive reactions going on, even if they aren’t all stated.

  If you’ve got the resources, kick this up a notch and see if you can get your own forum, moderators or other means of being a fixture of the community if not a pillar. This ultimately means tying your brand to the community (you don’t have to be exclusive but if they go down in flames, you’ll have an issue) and it also means you have to get into the promotion side of things to get people using your area… luckily that generally means being active and useful rather than doing anything considered typical promotion.

• Supporting a forum in a visible way is a great way to get recognized and be seen as a positive influence rather than a negative one. Of course this can mean traditional banners but those are far less interesting than a deeper dive… say sponsoring contest by providing a trip or one of your products or building/ sponsoring a tool with your branded logo that powers it as opposed to just having a banner on the top of the page. This opens the door to you being seen as a part of the community rather than a logo on the top and extends your participation, if you are indeed participating.

• Many communities have a lot of photos, videos and other posted going on and if you’re working with these for other purposes, social or brand, they can be wonderful to repurpose on a forum. Pushing out photos of new product offerings, b-roll video from a shoot or extra shots of a item at a tradeshow or around the office is all great stuff to do on any viral site but when you do it on a forum, there’s a lot of chance for consumers to respond, to throw in their feedback and to start getting hyped up about the offering. You can tie in these postings with initial notification lists, find beta testers and get the word out quickly and easily.

• No matter what you do, even if it’s running banners, relate them to the forum and its needs from the message & creative to the landing page and the offer. Your forum campaign is likely going to be a whole lot different than the banners you may be running on portals or your AdWords campaign so don’t kill the experience when the user clicks off to your site. Instead build out messages that extend the experience and keep it obvious that you’re specifically working with this community so they feel like there’s a shared relationship when they hit your site. And that helps push them to convert.

On a final note about forums, while it is important to be willing to take some criticism and negative backlash, you also need to be careful about the community you chose to stick your neck out in. By their nature some communities are more apt to bash than others and some end up creating cultures that almost encourage ripping on companies. Unless there’s a serious shift that you want to get across, spending your time in a community that hates your company, or just likes to rip on all commercial entities isn’t the best use of time so do some evaluations before you reach out.

Social networking sites: They’re hot, super popular and according to the media, somewhere your company has to be. While the first two are definitely true, the third is something that really depends. To be crystal clear, I say this as an avid user of FaceBook, formerly of MySpace and a few other smaller social networks. While most of these sites have done a good job of branding into older demographics they still are not for every company and for many companies, getting into other social sites that fit a specified niche just makes more sense, even if the consumer base is larger on the top networks. However, if your brand is applicable, wow… the reach potential is amazing. The difficulty is finding ways to get people to you.

• Applications and widgets have become the hottest part of the social networking world in recent time but again, proceed with caution. This isn’t field of dreams… build it and they may come, or they may not, it needs to be interesting and that often means very little in the way of commercial. If you look at the top applications on FaceBook this is perfectly evident – there are no retail brands running top 10 apps. Sure these apps are almost all commercially developed but they’re developed for use and engagement which drive ad revenue, not brand recognition or sales.

  If you do decide to build your own application, be sure to do your homework first. There’s a lot of tools out there so it’s fairly rare to see something truly unique and if there’s already an app in your space that’s failing, ask yourself why (is it a bad app, poorly marketed or something great but there just isn’t interest). If you’re developing something new, get some feelers out there to see if there’s truly a marketplace and look at similar apps to help gauge how big it is. When it comes down to actually developing remember that apps do well when they’re subject to sharing and have a lot of collaborative elements. Building the coolest game in the world is great, if it centers around your value proposition that’s even better but if there’s no way for people to tell each other about it, it’s a lot less useful to you.

• If you can’t find the IT resources or don’t have a good pitch to create your own application, renting space or advertising in an existing application can be a great way to get exposure and unlike with your own app, you don’t have to attract the users. With so many applications out there, you want to be sure your partnership is actually beneficial so be sure to look at the number of people using a program as well as the pageview and unique visitor metrics. Unfortunately for advertisers, many of the apps on the market do very well at driving in revenue and may want CPMs that just can’t be justified but there are gems out there and with the right type of promotion, you can get some nice traffic out of the partnership. After all, who wouldn’t use a Victoria’s Secret sponsored superpoke or gift for Valentines?

• Applications aside, there’s a lot of content posting and information being exchanged on social networking sites. Be it questions on LinkedIn, Videos on MySpace & FaceBook, news articles, or whatever, if you have something that people want to share, you can drum up a lot of branded response. Video is especially good for this and if it’s popular, people will push it within their own networks. Of course the trick is to extend engagement to having your video link into your own micro-community (preferably on a social site) can help keep the conversation going.

• Applications, video, it’s all good for sharing but doesn’t tend to sell the brand enough. To really get people engaged, build your own profile/ micro-community and use your other social and viral techniques to drive people to it. Whether its friends on MySpace or Fans on FaceBook, when people join up you gain access to talk to them through updates to your page and messaging. You can also build out lists of key influencers who are willing to promote your page and brand and often come in as early adopters. Your page doesn’t have to be sponsored or amazingly fancy, although that may help if you can add the right tools, but it does need to fit the nature of the community. Provide information and elements people like as well as a reason for them to come back. This means updating your page with new content, photos, videos and other items that make your site useful… just like a personal profile and people will be more likely to come back or even better, to link up.

Whatever you do bare in mind that on most social networks, the new news feeds reigns supreme and is somewhere you have to be to get noticed. The great thing about news feeds is that you get in front of a second level of users and not just those who participate in your applications or feeds. Often times we forget to include enough updates in the news feed when releasing tools… not that you want every event to trigger a posting as that will drive your users and their networks nuts… but it’s a good idea to have major events show up.

Finally keep in mind that a lot of social networks and users on them have a strong emphasis on being more cooperative and helpful. If your brand is going green, volunteering or doing anything else to help the world, be involved in political issues or the community you really want to share that on your social networking presence. This isn’t about exploiting your good actions but rather about sharing them so people understand your brand’s true identity and possibly dive in themselves. If you can tap in to the pay it forward mentality you and your good cause will benefit.

The Infamous Blogs: When blogs first hit the market and I’d refer to blog communities I got a lot of puzzled looks, now it makes more sense. Blogs are not only an amazing force to be respected but they’ve developed a very strong community of their own. Some of this community is tied to a specific site and some of it to the blogging world as a whole. The more webmaster focused blogs take this even further and really have evolved into a world where people know each other across blogs and into other online communities so while getting into a blog may seem like just getting onto another content site, there’s really a lot more two it.

• Much like a pr campaign, what you really want out of blogs is people talking about you (preferably in a positive way). This can mean talking about your new products, your special campaign or your corporation. You could be on blogs about your niche, about new products, about the stock market, or even about how you treat your customers and their experience (you could even be included here). All if these blog topics have different, although often overlapping, audiences and communities to reach into, it’s just a matter of finding as many relevant ones as possible and making sure that information on you. Much like with a classic press campaign, this can mean courting bloggers, sending out product samples or just giving people the heads up so they can do their own research. You can meet bloggers at shows, invite them to the office for a tour or just let them know how to reach you if they have questions. Often times the best and most visible posts will come from people you didn’t talk to and may never have followed, that’s just the nature of being in the public, but these posts aren’t something you can count on so keeping up a relationship is key to maintaining a stream of information. Just don’t push to be blogged about too often… the blog writer isn’t likely to be happy about being harassed and even if they don’t mention it, you don’t want a third party blog turning into your defacto media source.

• If you can’t get enough free postings about you, there’s always the option of paying people to post in cold hard cash. While there are a lot of commercial blogs, there’s also a big reaction to paid posts so don’t try and mask your efforts, that’s been done and blown up in the face of many companies. Instead if you want to pay people to blog about you, pay them to review your products, pay them for their honesty. Being paid makes it difficult to be truly honest but if you create a policy (and let it become public) that limits your editorial rights and influence, people tend to be much more apt to trust the postings.

• Running your own blog is a great way to get into other blogs as well. Why? Because much of blogging is about reading other sites and talking about them, sharing items from them, even linking to them if they make sense. Writing a corporate blog takes a couple of jumps through legal and you have to be willing to act quickly as you can’t spend weeks formulating every post but if you’re willing to get good information out there and talk about what’s going on, the new, the good, and sometimes the ugly, it has a great way of finding its way onto other sites, into blog comments and even picked up on by the media.

A lot more (a whole lot more) could be said about blogs but this post is already way too long so I’ll leave that for another day.

I opened with a rule so it’s fitting that I close with a rule as well. When you go viral you really need to think about how the internet world perceives your brand. I don’t know the exact details but I remember hearing about a Chevy or GM campaign (it may have been another American car company) that let people compile a video using clips from one of its commercials. The problem – the video was for a big truck and many of the users were, well, to put it in a “pc” way, environmentally friendly. This may seem like a no-brainer in 2008 with $4++++ gas prices but a few years ago trucks were still selling hard. The problem was they also had a strong resentment from a base that is very well connected online and found a great opportunity to voice it’s opinion… right on the car’s front page as I recall. The lesion here, know how people will respond before you let them go out and do as they please otherwise you may be really embarrassed.

As a final note I’m sure you noticed a few missing types of communities/ social sites but rest assured, I’ll address them soon enough.