Tom Lindmeier’s Blog @ MarketPlanB

With recent news of French president Zarkozy pecking away at his Blackberry during a visit with the pope, I can’t resist the urge to rant on the subject of social behavior and technology.

Back a number of years ago (OK more than a few). I recall an annoying problem with people answering the phone while I’m in their office or even at their homes while we’re engaging social discourse, It always bothered me so I made to never do the same. Whomever was calling could wait until I picked up the message.

Then cell phones came along and exacerbated the problem. Now it could happen anywhere at anytime. As we all know, this resulted in a social backlash and created in an awareness of social etiquette. Now you can even be ticketed for driving while talking the cell.

Then text messaging came along and created a whole new set of problems. It seems that some people thought that non-verbal interruption in person-to-person settings was OK. there is a perception that if you turn your back or place the device under the table while pecking away with your digits no one will mind…

Now cells are wired to the web and you can surf, email, instant message and twitter away. So we now have another new set of problems and new learning on social interaction is in order. Digital prowess does not impress. The Blackberry does not contain the codes for an emergency nuclear missile response. It can wait; believe me, almost nobody that important.

I love being wired and would not have it any other way. But there is a good deal of social behavior that needs to be refined as technology changes.

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ExpoTV is a site that aggregates user-generated product review videos. Its’ a great concept that moves beyond the traditional text-based product reviews. Judging by by the funding they have recently received, investors believe it is very promising.
I recently encountered ExpoTV videos posted on YouTube that caused me to pause and sniff. Although these are genuine user-generated reviews, my impression is that they are somewhat disingenuous. So I investigated further and found ExpoTV has chosen to directly pay for reviews. Users can earn cash for every review that is accepted. ExpoTV states that “Our consumer reporters work from home and earn up to $10.00 for each approved review they submit. That’s enough to cover their time and effort but not enough to give you anything other than the straight scoop. The real deal. Your consumer guide.” This seems like a reasonable assertion but it’s my impression that users are putting up reviews to earn money. Though this is a very modest amount, I believe that it still amounts to a bribe and affects the nature of the reviews.
The presenters appear to be stay-at-home moms and good number of others from the now swelling ranks of the unemployed. Some presentations are “so bad that they’re good”; like the review for Kingsford Charcoal. But most are very milquetoast and uninspired with generous user ratings. Users know that they need to pass a screening process and it appears to affect the nature of the reviews. Take a look for yourself and let me know if it raises your BS meter.
The biggest hurdle for any business in the product reviews arena is to create a critical mass of content in order to establish credibility. This is many times accomplished through incentives such as contests and give-aways and seems to be accepted. But I question the strategy of directly paying for reviews. Time and time again the public has rejected content that does not serve them. This may be the undoing of ExpoTV.

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There haven’t been very many books published on ecommerce and social media for a very good reason. The landscape is changing so quickly that whatever is published is quickly out of date. (Blogs are the best source for emerging information and I’ll list a few at the bottom of this article). None-the-less, social media appears to be moving from bleeding edge to fast-follower territory. The risks of not entering the fray may be higher than standing on the sidelines.
As a former director for an e-commerce business, I am well aware of responsibilities that come with prioritizing the ROI for marketing programs. Social marketing may not make it to the top of the list because the outcome is so unpredictable and the prospects for failure are acute. Although social media tools are free, the process of developing quality content can be resource intensive. If you have not yet maximized your conventional marketing channels, I recommend that you get your ducks lined up before you pursue large-scale social marketing strategies because right now there are programs with a more predicable ROI that cannot be bypassed.

None-the-less, the buzz surrounding Web 2.0 is creating a drumbeat that is unavoidable for a very good reason. Social media is the ultimate PR and SEO strategy when it actually works. The results can be spectacular. However, the success of your social media venture is in the hands of your audience and you cannot ultimately control the impact.
How do you begin? You simply need to ask the question: how can my business respond to the social needs of my customers and prospects? Of course, you need a basic understanding of your customers to answer the question. See my previous article Web 2.0 Madness. You really don’t need to undertake a new research study to get this done. Just dig up all of your research and correspondence and view it with the objective of answering the question.

There are a number of e-commerce sites that have done a great of successfully integrating Web 2.0 strategies. I suggest visiting Bodybuilder.com, Karmaloop.com, 1800Flowers.com and Zappos. Recommended blogs on social media are Socialmedia.biz, Marketingvox.com, Socialnewswatch.com and Marketing Hipster.

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Marketers have understood that it was only a matter of time before Facebook would make its user profiles available for data mining with the express purpose of behavioral targeting. But it also appears that they have will have difficulty with the implications of breaking their implied confidentiality contract with the millions of users.

The mainstream press has picked up on this issue and there is an effort to define the implications. But I believe that most users will not understand the nuances of how data is shared and the protection afforded by data mining in aggregate. Perception is reality and Facebook users are starting to revolt because they feel betrayed.

This post on the Dewayne-Net Technology blog titled The Facebook Bait and Switch sums up the sentiment better than I can:

Facebook is supposed to be an community where you can express who you are, and friends freely communicate. But it’s being transformed into a zone where advertisers with the biggest budgets can harvest your data, take advantage of your network of friends, and deliver targeted marketing and branding commercials. Facebook’s new approach combines behavioral targeting with viral marketing. That system threatens everyone’s privacy. Facebook’s users are viewed as merely grist for a big data mining mill designed to sell targeted ads. This is a real violation of trust. No one is saying Facebook can’t make money. But it needs to be done in a way that respects the privacy and values of its members. The time to express displeasure is now.

I believe that Facebook has broken a covenant with its community by not offering a permission-based solution and will pay a price. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

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With the explosion of widgets (mini-apps, gadgets, etc.), the need for a wish list function that allows the incorporation of all ecommerce sites has become obvious. This gaping void is a great business opportunity that will be filled in the near future. The efforts I currently see are not sufficiently seamless or too limited in scale. But developments are moving very quickly towards true universal wish list functionality.

The opening of third party apps for Facebook and the Microsoft partnership has given them a bit of a head start. Google’s recent announcement of OpenSocial and the alliance with MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle has a lot of marketers ready to jump in. It appears that OpenSocial is positioned to eventually dominate.

I think e-commerce marketers can wait until this all shakes out. That is, unless you take pleasure in pursuing dead end technologies and starting all over again.

Here are few examples of bleeding edge efforts that are likely to fail because of the changing landscape:

Blue Nile is one of the first to take advantage of Facebook applications and they have done a very nice job of syncing their wish list to your Facebook profile. See the Linda Bustos article at GetElastic for a summary of how it works. But the model for this concept is doomed to failure because you can’t have different Facebook application for each e-commerce business. The clutter would eventually become unmanagable.

My It Things (another social network) has a new widget call Share it! When items are added to a wish list, you can visit your widgets page on your profile, then Embed or Export to any blog or Social Network so your friends and family can see it (supports Blogger, Facebook, Eons, TypePad, Friendster and MySpace). The problem is that you need upload images and input copy to create that wish list.

Wishlist.com is a comparison shopping site that is building its identity as wish list portal. This idea makes sense to me and could be successful if they can build a more seamless method for building the wish lists for items outside of their site. They ask users to bookmark pages from websites to add to the wish list. This method is better but still not seamless enough. You can also automatically add items from within their comparison shopping engine or you can upload images and copy from other websites.

When the technology for building a single profile that can be imported into social networking sites becomes available and a single app can be planted on the product pages and wish lists of any website, the true power of wish lists will be realized. The examples I see now are nothing but noble attempts to work within existing technologies.

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Once you make the decision to redesign your website, it seems that everybody in your organization wants to get involved and join the committee because this is fun stuff. This is both good and bad. Good because there is value to insights from different points of view, bad because the process of collaboration can muddy the waters and bring implementation to a grinding halt. It’s too easy to plan a redesign that goes far beyond the intended scale and consequently results in a blown budget and time line. Worse yet, poorly managed collaboration will prevent great results.
So how we do we collaborate, create a great website and not miss our deadline by 6 months?

1. Add 6 months to the schedule (just kidding). But if you’ve never gone through a redesign and you’re constructing a time line, build as much wiggle room as you can get away with. You need to plan for a fluid process that allows changes in direction.
2. Objectives are king. If tactical proposals interfere with the objectives, they are not considered unless an agreement is reached to change the objectives.
Here’s a sample list of objectives:

• Improve the depth of user experience while maintaining speed and ease of use
• Streamline the checkout process
• Enhance the user profile process for behavioral targeting
• Allow more comprehensive merchandising opportunities in the navigation and site search
• Improve the branding experience while maintaining speed and ease of use
• Build a more comprehensive administrative tool that frees the programmers from updating the site
• Complete on time and within budget

This is a simple concept that most managers understand, but there is a good deal of subjective decision-making that makes it all the more important to cite the “objectives are king” mantra and follow through. A good way to deal with tactics that fall outside of the objectives is to list them as enhancements to be considered at a later date so participants don’t feel inclined to sabotage the process.
3. Keep a core group of no more than 3 individuals to engage in the day-to-day decision-making and limit access to the remainder of the group while keeping them informed of progress on a week-to week-basis. The process of building wire-frames and design of the look-and-feel needs to remain within this small group. If the President and VP’s are part of your committee, you may want them to examine the design before it’s forwarded to the engineers to avoid blowing your budget. Seth Godin also addressed this issue with a different bent in his article How to Create a Great Website.
4. Go ahead and invite the committee, key vendors and experts outside your organization to participate. Just make sure they’re in the front-end of the process. Then they need to go away until the user testing phase.

5. Expect that user testing will expose an enormous list of problems and additional demands for more features. If you don’t have a thick skin, you’ll need to get one. The ability to manage criticism at this point will make or break you. Prioritize the list into 3 categories: 1) Must fix now, 2) Enhancements for later, 3) Sorry, we’re not going there. Do the must fix now and get on with implementation. You can come back always come back and tweak after you go live.

I invite you to share stories on site designs.

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Yahoo has invested in new study that highlights what we already know. Recently released and titled Empowered “Passionistas” Influence can be Harnessed, it maintains that tapping into consumers passions gives advertisers powerful advocates.

Excuse me, I don’t believe that the term “passionistas” is any more concise that the term “enthusiasts”, that has been bantered around for a number of years. Or am I missing something? Is this a new demographic that is even more rabid than the enthusiasts? Andy Sernovitz and his Word of Mouth Marketing book is one of the more recent that define this concept and highlight how companies get enthusiasts to spread the word and his is not the first. I have no problem with the Yahoo study and applaud them for it. They should however, reference ideas that drive the study. I’m surprised the term hasn’t made its way into Wikepedia yet.

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I have always marveled at the world-wide penchant to buy logotype merchandise and pay a premium price for it. This type of marketing is perhaps the best direct measure of the value of a brand. If you have to give away your logo merchandise, you have not achieved a truly powerful brand.

This causes me to fondly recall the Internet World Conference of 1998 in NYC. The pre-bust atmosphere was electric. Hundreds of companies were awash millions and putting on great shows on big stages. Dancing girls were flinging logotype merchandise left and right. I returned to my hotel room with bags full of goods and spread it out across my bed like a child returning from a night of trick-or-treating. I admit that I really wanted the free stuff but ended up leaving most of it in my hotel room and giving the rest to my kid when I got home. I forget who the companies were. I doesn’t matter though because they are mostly out of business now.

I created a prototype of a shirt for my MarketPlanB consulting business and made it a part of the header for the new design of this blog. It will be used for a video that I am currently producing that’s a spoof on link baiting. Note that I also tapped into other major brands by adding their logos so I can ride their coattails (though you barely see them). I’m not going to give the shirt away for free, but you might get one if you send me fifty bucks.

Please comment on the new design of this blog. This design will stay unless I get blasted.

Ever try to buy a baseball cap without a logo? They’re almost impossible to find.

Here’s an entertaining article on schwag bags.

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There was an interesting discussion on Ron Shevlin’s blog on the Anti-Web. 2.0 Movement. It’s a ludicrous concept to rally against an unfortunate buzzword, but they do bring up some interesting arguments by identifying the irrational exuberance and engage in a sobering discussion of the potential impact of Web 2.0.

We do need to step back and evaluate where this is headed and analyze if the attempts of marketers to monetize it will ever succeed. A recurring theme I do see is the businesses that deliver the technology are making a bundle of money and the businesses that are attempting to use it to m