Word-of-Mouth of course. If you disagree, please, I’d love to hear why in the comments below. Word-of-mouth is the most authentic and effective because for it to occur successfully, there must be more than a minimum level of trust established. Let me explain.
If I don’t trust you I will never take your advice on anything, let alone a product I will be purchasing. On the contrary, if I trust you a lot (an influencer in my life) I will take your word on what I should buy over any marketing message no matter how clever it is.
Trust = influence.
As fast as we can share our opinions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc. I can’t fathom why more businesses haven’t created incentives for customers to share their delightful experiences online for others to see. EXAMPLE: Foursquare is becoming a very useful tool for me, now that people are sharing their opinions openly when checking in.
Your brand isn’t your website, store, logo or your OWN perception of your company. Your brand is what other people say about you and the internet makes it much easier to say anything about your company, positive or negative.
This is your warning, it’s only going to increase, how are you encouraging positive word-of-mouth?
On September 16th the Executing Social Media conference will be held in Regina at the Queensbury Convention Centre. Now I may be a bit biased but I think they have a great lineup of speakers. Some locals and some from abroad all taking about our favorite topic, online media.
Besides myself the list of speakers includes:
Kip Simon – President, 22 Fresh
Mike Klein Senior Online Communications Strategy at University of Saskatchewan
Philippe Leclerc, Interactive Communications Manager at the City of Regina
Adam Herstein - Partner, Pitblado LLP
Doug Walker - President, WebWalker
Ryan Lejbak – CEO & Co-Founder, ZU
To see all the speakers and presentation outlines click here. Let me know if you are attending as we may organize a small Tweet up the night of the conference.
Photo Credit: Hubspot.com
BEXDM5AZVCKN
You know what really grinds my gears? When people try to sell something on Twitter. A growing culprit of this? Real Estate Agents. No, they’re not the only ones but why do they insist to put their listings on Twitter? Does anyone else tweet about their products including the price? Have you ever sold a house via Twitter? It just seems ineffective and lazy.
There are many different things you can do on Twitter I just don’t think selling or bragging about the thousands of houses you sold last week are giving the best impression to your followers.
So what could you be doing on Twitter? Offer me something no other Real Estate Agent can. How about you tweet your favorite Real Estate blog post each day. Offer me housing tips that will help me save money or time. Offer me your expert advice on buying a house, get into detail and really create a digital asset that can help many other people in the Regina market. Forget selling houses for a day and help others with whatever it may be they are tweeting about. There are many options of what you can do on Twitter, just don’t try to sell me a house.
Finally, here is an example of a Real Estate agent who got creative with a video camera and offered something different to his followers (click the picture to watch the video):
Twitter is not a one way communication medium, it’s a conversation medium, use it wisely.
- Instead of “news” build your own RSS reader
- Begin following local bloggers in your RSS reader and keep searching for new ones
- Challenge a local blogger, disagree, leave a comment
- Offer to write a guest post for a local blogger
- Offer to write a guest post for an industry specific blog
- Hold a local specific contest (Treasure hunt via Facebook?)
- Start a local restaurant review site, make it fun
- Ask for feedback of your product/service via Twitter
- Offer to take pictures at an event and start a Flickr account for them
- Host a picture contest
- Host a picture caption contest for other businesses
- Encourage patrons to take a picture of their meal and share it online for 25% off the meal
- Tell stories about your product on a blog
- Host a community blog with many different contributers
- Start selling your product on Facebook
- Encourage employees to offer reviews of the company via LinkedIn
- Start a local trivia blog (written, video, picture)
- Offer free products/services to people with lots of friends on Facebook
- Put your website on all printed material
- Put your Twitter name in places where no one would expect to see it (get creative with this one)
- Put your blog and Twitter name on the inside of a box of donuts and deliver them to potential readers
- Put your blog, vlog, landing page or video in your e-mail signature
- Start a collection of local website on Delicious, sort them in a meaningful way
- Host an online garage sale
- Host an actual garage sale via Ustream
- Add you company to Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and any other geo-location service
- Offer different deals on Foursquare, see what works
- Host a city wide treasure hunt via Foursquare
- Host a 24 hour Foursquare challenge
- Leave an unbelievable “deal” on Yelp and see who takes you up on it
- Document the entire Foursquare challenge on YouTube
- Do a video production of your safety manual
- Record the “Monday morning announcements” on YouTube, make them fun
- Set up Google alerts to monitor your company’s name being mentioned
- Add you business to Google maps (seems simple but many people overlook this one)
- Give me a reason to go to your website daily
- Host a local “Tweet-up”
- Offer to begin a Twitter account for a large local event
- Setup an your automatic e-mail the next time you’re on holidays to say “you’re only responding to requests on Twitter”
- Have a video contest, offer a large cash prize
- Make a video explaining everything about your organization
- Make a video about a different employee every day until you run out of employees
- Start a YouTube channel for your company and post a video per week about industry specific topics
- UStream your Friday at the office
- UStream a different place/person in your office weekly
- Have a “submit question” box on your homepage, answer every question that comes in
- Submit a fascinating story to Digg and Stumble Upon once a week
- Sell T-shirts on your home page for charity, let people vote on the charity
- Start a Foodbank challenge with one of your competitors, document everything on a picture blog
- Create an interactive fundraising tool on your website
- Encourage all of your staff to fill out their entire profile on LinkedIn, make it a company wide activity
- Host an appreciation BBQ for the employee of the month, video tape it and post all the pleasant things said on your company blog
- Start an e-mail newsletter and fill it with the most helpful information/links in your industry
- Recognize employees who go above and beyond on your company blog
- Put your Twitter name on a billboard by a busy street
- Give free coffee to everyone downtown who becomes a fan of yours on Facebook
This is just the beginning of what you could do, the possibilities are endless. Have anymore you want to share? Please do!
