The Buzz
Knowing a Person's Character

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of referral marketing. It is the main reason my business has grown as well as it has over the last five years. The more I study and practice the science behind profitable referral marketing, I realize what works in the "word of mouth" world stays true in branding and advertising.

I recently ran across a survey Dr. Ivan Misner, a New York Times bestselling author, did with 12,000 business people from around the world. One of the questions he asked was "Which of the following is most important to you when referring business to others?" The choices were:
 
 
 
 

Surprisingly to me, "knowing a person's character" ranked first in the survey. "Using the product or service myself" ranked third out of the four choices and "Knowing a person's success" was least important"

Dr. Misner goes on to say, "This means you need to build your credibility with people who know you (whether they've used your business or not).  If people trust your character and competency, they are likely to refer you regardless of whether they've actually used your products or services."

So if people who are referring you business care more about your personality than your service or product, what does that say about what people will respond to in your marketing and branding efforts. I have said it before and I will continue to say it. "People do business with people they know and trust." Make sure your marketing efforts convey character and competency.

 
We originally thought we would be able to cram all eight mistakes into two issues, but I have made a promise to keep our installments to bite sized chunks. So let us continue this , now three part, series of the eight mistakes to avoid when dealing with social media as a part of your marketing strategy. As we mentioned last month, the information used for this series is paraphrased from a white paper written by MediaPost Publications, social media insider, Catharine P. Taylor.

If you missed the first installment, the first three mistakes  were: Pretend you can do without it, Play down the costs, and act like you own the conversation. Please e-mail me if you would like a copy of last month's issue.

Mistake 4: Fear empowering your employees
"A client once told me they were nervous about letting customer-service employees speak to the public through Twitter," says David Griner, social-media strategist for Birmingham, Alabama-based ad agency Luckie & Co. "I asked, 'Would you trust these people to talk to customers on the phone or face to face?' Of course they would. The key is to think of social media more like a call center than a press release."

The online shoe store Zappos, now part of Amazon, has a reputation for personalized customer service and communication - and social media played a big role. Dozens of employees maintain blogs on the company Web site; hundreds have Twitter accounts. It's not just Web-only companies that offer such empowerment, Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Southwest Airlines do as well. The common thread: All have corporate cultures that value transparent relationships with customers.

Mistake 5: Assume you have little to learn
Dell, however, joined the social media revolution the hard way. When Jeff Jarvis, a prominent media blogger, did a series of 2005 posts on his horrible customer-service experience with Dell - posts that came to be known as "Dell Hell" - the company suddenly realized how powerful, and damaging, the voice of the consumer could be. Spurred by the public relations disaster, CEO Michael Dell blessed an effort to work his company into its customers' conversations. According to a case study on Dell in the book "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," the listening effort helped Dell figure out, for instance, that it needed to better coordinate technical support and customer service to quickly resolve customer problems.