May 7th, 2008 - Stuart Lisonbee, Content Director
In case you haven’t heard, in the UK it will soon be illegal to talk about your own product or service under the guise of somebody else. The new UK law, which goes into effect May 26, requires companies that use fake word-of-mouth advertising to clearly identify who they are. The law even extends to bloggers who are paid to write reviews.
Because word-of-mouth advertising is so effective — consumers tend to trust other consumers the most — many advertisers have latched on to the idea of faking word-of-mouth advertising (known as “astroturfing” in the US) by pretending to be a consumer and giving themselves good reviews or dissing the competition.
At the most basic level, companies will use an alias to give themselves positive reviews on discussion boards, forums, and ratings sites such as ResellerRatings.com, PriceGrabber.com, and others. Many larger companies have started to get pretty elaborate though, as shown by Sony’s All I Want for Xmas is a PSP viral effort in 2006.
Wal-Mart also started a flog (fake blog) called Walmarting Across America, supposedly maintained by a couple of Wal-Mart junkies as they visited various stores across the nation. Turns out that the supposed Wal-Mart enthusiasts were actually getting paid by the retail giant.
Although Sony and Wal-Mart both got busted by the public, companies continue pushing the ethics boundaries. Because it’s so effective (and the new law difficult to enforce), you can expect to continue seeing fake postings from fake people on fake fansites. But you probably won’t even know that all the astroturfing and flogging is going on as advertisers get better at covering their tracks.
While the say-or-do-anything-to-make-the-sale attitude has long been the standard in marketing, it has caused considerable damage. Today’s consumers are more weary of company claims than ever before, choosing instead to place more trust in complete strangers they meet on the Internet.
With astroturfing, flogging, and other similar questionable tactics growing in use, even consumer-to-consumer trust is dying.
Get In On Astroturfing While You Can?
So the question arises, should you get into astroturfing while there is still something to be had from it? Personally, I say no. If you want to gain the trust of consumers, then be as transparent in your marketing as you possibly can. Being that it is in such short supply these days, consumers appreciate honesty in a company.
Both Sony and Wal-Mart’s flogs could still have been just as popular and effective had both companies simply told people up front that they were faking it.
Posted in Content Creation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »
December 4th, 2007 - Jay Bean, CEO
As the world moves toward a Web 2.0 experience, thereby allowing users more and more control over what content gets put up on the World Wide Web, it has marketers everywhere throwing fits as they try to figure out how to control it.
Experts in reputation management have started to appear out of the woodwork offering companies a false sense of security by claiming to be able to control user-generated content, promising to squelch anybody who posts negative comments about your company anywhere on the Internet.
While it is important to protect your reputation from those who would slander you, one of the best ways to do so is by bringing the fight home.
Keep the Fighting In House
An acquaintance of mine once worked for a business-to-business company’s marketing department. He proposed that the company implement a discussion board on the site. However, he met large opposition to his proposal, especially from the manager of technology who argued that it would simply encourage members to openly talk negatively about the company, which did not have a particularly glowing reputation.
The marketer argued that this would be just fine. To begin with, they had plenty of evangelists that would come to their defense. Second of all, the griping and negative talk would be in a forum where they could quickly and easily respond (and probably learn things from their customers they might not ever hear otherwise). Third, it would generate free content, even if it does have a negative slant towards the company.
In essence, my acquaintance saw any company bashing as an opportunity for the company to actually improve its reputation.
How Does Allowing Trash Talk Help My Company?
A little over a year ago, General Motors held a contest. They invited consumers to create homemade TV ads for the Chevy Tahoe and post them on Chevrolet’s website. While the expected flow of incoming videos including some good and positive commercials, there was also an influx of Tahoe-bashing videos, especially from people who viewed the SUV as an unnecessary gas-guzzling monstrosity that only served to destroy the environment.
Chevrolet’s response? They left the videos up.
Know Who You’re Talking To
In Chevrolet’s case, it’s well known that environmentalists don’t like SUV’s. Anybody looking to purchase an SUV already knows that they get bad gas mileage. They don’t need an angry consumer video to tell them that. However, the angry consumer videos, thanks to all the talk they created, might get someone considering a competitor’s SUV to visit Chevrolet’s website instead, at least to see what all the fuss is about.
Adjust, or Die
Old-school marketers can’t handle not having complete control over everything. Fifty years ago, company mascots such as the Jolly Green Giant, Michelin Man, Tony the Tiger, and so forth were invented from marketers that wrote down everything the mascot could say and not say, do and not do.
Today, consumer generated comments are considered among the most reliable sources for legitimate information about a product or company. Consumers trust the word of people they don’t know far more than anything a marketer can cook up.
To adjust, you first have to accept that users are now in control of what is being said. Next, you have to allow visitors to your website to communicate with each other. And finally, let go. Don’t edit what you don’t like, don’t attack those who say things against you.
This is your opportunity to listen to what your customers are saying, to take steps to improve your company, and in that way control what is being said about you.
If 9 out of 10 people that speak about your company are speaking ill of it, it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself. You’ll never be able to please all the people all of the time, but at least you’ll be able to please most of the people most of the time.
In Closing…
So what should you do when user-generated content on your site doesn’t go the way you want it to? The answer is: do nothing! Thrive by accepting that users control the Internet, or die trying to control the masses.
Posted in Online Marketing, Content Creation | No Comments »
November 21st, 2007 - Chris Finken, Chief Information Officer
As you get ready for the holidays and a nice four-day weekend, here’s a little something for you to digest, uh, while you’re digesting.
From the beginning of time (well, the beginning of the World Wide Web anyway), content has been declared king by SEO’s everywhere.
In the beginning of the “Content is King” movement, content development was rather crude. Throw in lots and lots of keywords whether related to your site or not, make sure you repeat every possible keyword more than everybody else, and you got ranking in the search engines.
For those that remember the dark days of search, you’ll remember that adult sites excelled at this. Search for any popular term, whether it be “cool music”, “pet adoptions”, or “shoes that make me jump higher and run faster than the other guys on my basketball team”, and about half of the top 10 results seemed to always be adult sites.
Good content becomes king
Fortunately for all of us, search engines have improved since those days. But more than the search engines changed. Webmasters began to realize that there’s more to making a sale than getting a good ranking in the search engines. So the smart ones switched strategy from writing a page of keywords crammed together to create a nonsensical webpage to writing “good” content.
Webmasters that were out to actually make money with their websites realized that their content needed to cater to their target visitor. Have a site that sells camping equipment? Maybe it would be a good idea to write about tents, hiking boots, and great places to go camping.
Sure you might not get as many visitors, but funny things start to happen when your site visitors are actually interested in what’s on your site. Your bounce rate (the number of people who leave immediately after visiting) will go way down and your conversion rate will go up. And if you do things just right, your overall sales go up as well.
Content is king?
So content is king, right? Well… no.
Content is a vitally important part of your online marketing. However, I submit that it is not king. Music is vitally important to the functioning of a dance club, but I wouldn’t say it’s the king. What is king in a dance club? How about the dancers who come for the experience?
Just like it’s the people that make the dance club worth going to, community on the Web has quickly been taking over as the king of online marketing.
Online communities have been around a long time, since pre-World Wide Web days. But there has been a huge boom over the last few years with the increasing establishment of social networking sites. This pattern confirms that people online want to spend time together. It is becoming increasingly important as each day passes for you to bring together the community of visitors that visit your site, thereby giving them a reason to continue returning to your site.
Building your very own community
So what can you do to bring together a community? To get started quickly and easily, give these a shot:
- Start a blog — Blog-o’-philes have been preaching this since the turn of the century. Two big things happen with a blog. First, you create fresh new content on a regular basis. Second, the community that comes together and meets at your blog also creates content. Content might not be king, but it is just as vital as the music at a dance club. A community is formed because of the content, but they stay because of the community.
- Implement a discussion board — Perhaps the oldest online get-together. Discussion boards have been around since long before the World Wide Web came to be. However, the WWW has allowed for major improvements on the classic discussion board. Set one up and let your community talk to each other.
- Allow user reviews of products — Studies show that consumers trust other consumers more than anything a retailer or manufacturer can say. Reviews from consumers will be the most powerful marketing content you will ever be able to put on your website.
These three items are about letting people interact with you and with each other. It makes your site a place where people can come together, talk about common interests, exchange stories, and discuss their experiences with camping equipment — or whatever it is you sell.
The content will bring the community, which will create more content, which will build your community.
Posted in SEO Marketing, Content Creation | 1 Comment »