What if Web 2.0 was not defined by how much money companies invest, but by their ability to build strong networks and long-term online relationships ? According to web marketing consultant Tara Hunt, author of the best-seller « The Whuffie Factor », online success mainly depends on a company's efforts to raise its « social capital ». And therefore its ability to reach out and listen to its customers and partners, and engage fully in social media. According to Tara Hunt, no need to spend time devising complex master plans. As collecting « Whuffies », and raising its popularity rating among its contacts is key to business success in the long run.
Kioskea - What are the different steps that led you to formalize the idea of social capital attached to the web 2.0 wave and eventually write the Whuffie Factor ?
Tara Hunt - When I arrived in San Francisco in 2005, the term Web 2.0 was just coined by the people at O'Reilly Media (the people behind the conference of the same name). The social web had been bubbling up for a couple of years with blogs, wikis, social networks (like Flickr, Friendster and Myspace) and the like, but nobody had really recognized how this phenomenon was growing until O'Reilly put a stamp on it. I had been blogging for a year or two, but was struggling myself with connecting it to how this was going to change everything going forward. It wasn't until the launch of the first startup I was part of, Riya.com (now Like.com and bought by Google), that I felt the impact personally. Without any traditional marketing, we raised an unprecedented amount of interest through the blogosphere and launched to 20,000 people and over 1 milllion photos within 24 hours. It was all done through connecting individually. Many people were asking how I did it and, to tell you the truth, I couldn't tell them exactly.
I left Riya.com in the spring of 2006 and started working with a bunch of other startups and started really thinking about how this worked. It wasn't until early 2007 that I realized what it was. I was explaining it to someone outside of the tech world and it just came out of my mouth: "we don't care about money in this 'world', we care about social capital." And bingo, I had my answer. I started to explore all of the literature and philosophy around how social capital works and also came across Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom that talked about Whuffie - this ephemeral currency of the future that relied on being nice, networked and notable. It became more and more clear to me that those companies who gained positive attention and traction in social networks were those building social capital instead of selling. The rest flowed from there.
Companies which engage with their customers through social media platforms often find fault with one thing : it's hard for them to measure their « social capital ». How can they be sure they sufficiently and effecienlty reach out to their on-line community ?
Ah. The ROI (Return on Investment) question. It is still a hotly debated topic, even after all of these years of watching success stories unfold. The big difference between traditional ROI and social capital ROI is that success is less about quantity (how many, traffic, direct sales, etc) and more about quality (who, what people are saying, individual stories, meaning, etc). Sentiment is something that many social media analytics companies are trying to chase these days, but because, much like social capital, it is based on human emotion, I don't know if any machine can accurately determine it. That's why I teach listening and participating first in the Whuffie Factor. Your own sentiment analysis is way better than a computer program's. Of course, this is difficult to 'prove' to the boss, but that's because we have a long, ingrained backwards way of valuing numbers over emotional returns.
Do you think it would be possible to create a real measurent tool for reputation (with a unit, a scale, etc.) based on the concept of Whuffie ?
As I answered above, I don't think automated measurement tools are the answer. If you are already trying to capture it with a machine, you've missed the fundamental steps of raising social capital: connections, relationships, listening, participating, understanding, empathy, love, giving, etc. The measurement tools are invented for those who have a mixed up sense of value in this new world.
The economic crisis left many companies struggling for survival. Understandably enough, they are unable to think too much ahead of time. Is it wise for them to invest time engaging with their customers through social media, while they are seeking immediate profit ?
Short term thinking never made strong, long term companies. Look at any overnight success and you'll see many years of relationship building behind them. I heard a great story recently about a wonderful company called Evernote - a tool to help you gather notes, bookmarks, media, etc on multiple platforms. They've been around since 2005, I think, but spent many years slowly building a rabid fanbase. Sure, they struggled quite a bit through ups and downs, but they kept focusing on their core users and making a tool that they couldn't live without. Today, they have 5 million users. And not just in numbers. Their users are their biggest sales team. Everyone I speak to that uses Evernote starts in on a love rant that blows me away. I had one person send me an email that could have been printed into 10 pages of a love note to Evernote after mentioning their CEO on my blog. That is a company that will succeed in the long run. Their competitors that focused on getting a quick user-grab early on? Dead.
Some companies' line of business expose them to bad buzz : like online retailers for example. The stream of complaints on social media platforms is hard for them to channel. How can they build their Whuffie capital in that case ?
Well, for one, they can learn from the negative feedback and then stop acting douche-y. If you run a business, every contact with a customer is a chance to raise or lose your Whuffie with them. Problems happen. Orders get lost. Shipments go awry. Products don't quite fit or live up to their promise. So, instead of looking at this as a business loss, think of it as an opportunity to wow your customers. If you lose an order, apologize and make up for it. Throw in a gift certificate or deliver the product personally with a song. If a shipment gets lost in transit, make up for it by expediting a replacement with an apology and a small gift (maybe a tshirt or stickers from your company). Call people personally and explain how sorry you are and let them know what went wrong and that they matter to you. For the small amounts of times this happens, you will win huge points with the customers who will tell many other people to buy from you. If screw ups happen too much, you can learn how to fix them by listening. It's not a problem, it's an opportunity to improve and gain loads of Whuffie.
There is an old idea in advertising according to which bad buzz around a brand's name is still better than no buzz at all. We can mention the former Benetton advertising campaigns as an example of that. Does bad buzz necessarily harm companies' social capital ?
Well, it depends on the 'bad buzz'. Benetton pushed the envelope culturally. It raised a debate more than anything. But there is plenty of bad buzz that does NOT benefit a companies' social capital. Buzz about poor service, screwing over customers, bad products, etc. Just recently, there was a story in the New York Times about an awful retailer who sold knock-off eyeglasses online (passing them as real) and harassed his customers when they complained. He used the bad buzz to his advantage and drove up his Google results from it. In the story, he appeared smug because he thought the press would make his Google ranking even stronger. He was proud of the fact that he used bad buzz to his financial advantage. But he was wrong. Because of this, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Google all shut him down. He can't get credit and his site has been de-listed from Google results. It worked for a short while, but bad buzz came back to bite him. It's karmic.
Let's say I want to create a small on-line business today. Do I have to come up with a product that has a potentiality to go viral, because it's social-media friendly (ex : Threadless). Or can i « make » it viral by applying various marketing and networking techniques ?
I've never been fond of the term 'make it viral'. The lovely part of human beings is that we are pretty empathic. Without even knowing it, people are good at sniffing out fakes. Threadless didn't succeed because they set out to make a viral site. They succeeded because they were serving a need that they had and they are committed to continuing to do so. They didn't study viral campaigns and formulate a master plan.
The founders were artists themselves and wanted to help other artists make a bit of money and get their work distributed easily. T-shirts seemed like a great idea (an idea they borrowed from a campaign they won). I once heard Jeffrey Kalmikoff (CEO) say that their strategy is this, whenever someone says, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." they give the idea that follows a whirl. Some work, some don't, but it's coming from a place of making the world a cooler place rather than "I know how we can capture eyeballs or make a bazillion dollars...".
They come from a really genuine point and build from there. They just want to make stuff that people can enjoy. Make your online business about that: build stuff that people enjoy, that creates meaning, that helps people's lives or that solves a real problem. Period. Viral is something that happens when you nail that.
Buy the Whuffy Factor on Amazon
User's advices |
Add comment |
