Authors@Google: Eric Qualman

>>
So I actually met Erik about six months ago. He works with someone that I know pretty well
at EF Tours. We actually have three things in common.
One is, I sent all my kids to EF Tours to go abroad, and so I believe very deeply in
the company he's working for. Second thing is, the biggest chunk of the
Berlin wall (that's in the United States) is actually in front of his building, and
it's really cool. It's a big piece of the wall.
It was raining so I didn't check the graffiti. Third thing is, he and I played on the basketball
team together at Notre Dame. I was the starting center; and he, the short
forward, so. We have a lot of history together, so.
When I heard about -- Erik came over a couple of months ago, and we talked about kind of
social media in general. And it was just really interesting that someone
in his position at EF Tours is doing this. And I just thought, "Hey, I want to come over
and hear what the book's about." So I invited him out, and he took us up on
it. And so, it's my pleasure to introduce him.
Erik Qualman: Well, thanks for having me.
>> [Clapping]
Erik Qualman: I really appreciate, I get to hear all these fun facts.
The duck boat tour goes right by our office. And so, there's always some new tidbit that
I pick up, either about the Berlin wall or that 70 percent of the people that work at
our company are female or something that's true or not true from the duck boat tour
-- however they're feeling for the day. Anyways, today I'm just going to talk a little
bit about the book, which you guys have, and why I think that social media is one of the
greatest shifts since the Industrial Revolution. It's a real honor for me to be at Google.
This is probably the savviest tech audience I've been in front of.
So it'll be real nice to get into Q and A to hear what you guys are doing and kind of
have a two-way learning here. Want to open up a couple slides here, and
we'll walk through the presentation. [pause] All right.
The third reason that I come here today is that social media is changing behavior.
Obviously, it changes your online behavior. But -- what a big thing has changed is your
offline behavior. And we'll talk a little bit about that today.
Businesses must adapt to recognize the behavior. And also, What are successful people and also
companies doing in this phase? As you saw in the video, it takes liberty
with James Carville's quote: "It's really about a people-driven economy stupid."
That it is really dissected down to where anyone can get on and transfer information
quickly. The cost of entry is so low.
Some of you guys chuckled at this. This is from Hitwise, but it's really overtaken
pornography as the top activity on the web. This is intriguing.
This is '07 vs '09 -- the most visited websites out there.
'07 is showing Yahoo. I think I'd argue that -- this was from comScore
-- that this would have been Google, even in '07.
But here you can see, obviously, it goes from five that are in the top 20 to nine social
media sites that are in the top 20. And three of the top five are now social media
sites. And you could even argue that -- like Google
with search wiki that's come up, and also stuff like on Google maps where you could
actually go in and change some of the direction stuff -- that there's huge social components
of Google as well. Also, on CNN, half their content is now provided
by Twitter it seems, if you ever watched CNN these days.
I don't know -- did any of you guys see the John Daly spoof?
Not spoof, but one of -- I think, it was Rick Sanchez was reading Twitter, and he thought
I was going to say something that supported Palin.
And it was something opposite of what he thought it was.
And so, Jon Stewart was making fun of him going, "Rick Sanchez, you need to pull your
head out of your ass." You know, while you're reading Twitter, you've
got to read this before you see it. Craigslist, you could argue, is also social.
So there's a fine line between what's social and what's the general level.
I could sit here with stats all day, but I think a picture tells a thousand words.
This is just showing the popes on all these activities.
And as it's shown, wiki -- you guys know -- means a Hawaiian term for 'quick'.
A lot of companies are using wiki's in different ways.
Facebook, to translate their site into Spanish, they've just put a wiki up for their users.
And they're able to do it within four weeks. So their user base is translated.
So there's companies that are being smart about it out there and how do they crowd source
stuff effectively. Social -- does anyone know who this is?
Nice. Ben Roethlisberger is the quarterback of the champion Pittsburgh Steelers.
So there's two major forms of behavior in social media: there's preventative and also
braggadocio. Preventative is "No, no. That is not me."
So try not to get fired, and also, trying to get hired.
And so, that's really affecting your offline behavior.
You almost have to live as if your mother's watching you, just because of the transparency.
The second form of behavior is more fun -- is the braggadocio.
It's "Me, me, me. That was me. That is what I'm doing."
What this is having is that, if you're updating your status and your tweets all the time,
you have a realtime feedback on your life. So you're not going to look back ten years
from now and realize, "What did I do with my life?"
You're going to see realtime that, "Okay, I'm putting that I'm watching reruns of Saved
by the Bell. That's not quite as cool as my friend that
just posted that I'm whitewater rafting." And so, that's really showing the offline
effect that's being driven by social media. So there's a lot of companies that are trying
to wrestle with, What are they supposed to do in the social media space?
How do they leverage it? They know there's a lot of power out there,
but how do they properly leverage it? Preventative behavior from businesses is that
some of them can't get a handle on it. So they decided they're really not going to
do anything. And that's really analogous to an ostrich
sticking their head in the sand and really not being part of the conversation.
The difference is, big companies -- for them -- they've always been in a position of being
able to say, "Okay, we're going to do this." Or "We're not going to do this."
But, with social media, it's going to happen without them, whether they like it or not.
So it's more important for them to actually be part of the conversation.
It's similar to maybe some of your friends haven't gotten a Facebook account, because
they don't want to be tagged in the photos or they don't want to have this stuff that's
out there about them. The thing is, those photos are still going
to be out there. It's whether you want to be aware of it or
not. So it's better to be a part of that conversation
so that, if there is a photo or something egregiously said about your company, then
you can actually proactively do something about it.
This is the John Deere example. Eight months ago, they didn't have a Facebook
fan page. And these are all groups and fan pages that
are being formed around their product. And so, it ranges from, "Country girls who
ain't afraid to dip a drive with John Deere. I love John Deere, because nothing runs like
a John Deere." Then, obviously, this one's doing something
to a logo that most companies don't prefer to have done to their logo.
So, what they've done is, they're now back in the space.
They've got 88,000 fans. So, they've entered into the space.
And it's not the sexiest product. They sell lawn mowers, and also, they sell
heavy machinery -- more of a B to B company. That's one of the top questions I get too
is, "Is it just a B to C play?" And really, on the B to B side, it's actually
more important. Because, in B to B plays, there's usually
a smaller set of relationships that you need to maintain.
So it's important for you to have a stronger relationship.
And what it does is, it augments that interpersonal communication that you have with your company.
The other piece that's easier for B to B is that, for B to C, they almost have to have
some of the engagements in a digital format. They almost have to take their customer service
in a Twitterlike format, because it's just the mass scale.
They can't have that personal relationship. Whereas B to B, they have that strong relationship.
It's even easier for them to maintain it and leverage social media, because they have less
of a scale. This other thing is second.
A lot of companies are afraid, because they might have negative feedback.
But, great companies actually accept and love negative feedback, because they can actually
fix their product and fix their service. They can do something about it.
So the great companies say, "Negative feedback's good."
The worst kind of feedback is 'no feedback' -- is that your customer just starts to leave,
and you don't know why they've left you. This third one is that, if you aggregate all
of your customers -- especially, let's say, if you aggregate all your customers in one
area, that people are afraid that they'll come in and poach them.
That they'll be easier to come in and say, "Oh, these are the customers of said product.
Let's go in and grab those guys." That's not a problem with your social media
strategy. That's a problem with your product.
If your clients are that easy to pick off, then, there's something inherently wrong with
what you're supplying to your customers. [pause] So this is what's going to be really,
really interesting for me to talk with you guys today and see -- I'm sure you guys have
stuff that you guys are producing that I don't even know about.
But where this thing is going -- at least, the way I see it, and what a lot of the book's
about is that, in the future really, your search could still happen on Google.
So you do your search on Google, but it's going to pull in different items, whether
those are coming in from Google's repository, or really, it's going to be coming in from
all the other places on the web. So if you're searching for a hotel, it'll
pull in information from TripAdvisor that pulls it in, and also, it says -- instead
of being opaque, like it is today on TripAdvisor, it'll actually say, "This person is from your
social graft. Here's what they think about said hotel."
And so, that's where it eliminates some of the multiple, individual redundancies that
we have today. Whether it's involved with, How do I find
the correct product for my specific need? And a good example is finding a baby seat.
So if you just had a baby, that's a pretty important task if your wife says, "Okay, you're
in charge. You go buy the child seat for the car."
That's a pretty important purchase. You want to make sure you don't screw that
one up. And so, we have some great tools today.
Obviously, with Google, that's where they're going to start and go in and search and try
to find out, "What is the best product?" They'll try to find some review sites around
child seats to figure out and vet through what that is.
They'll also probably, hopefully, run into some folks that they know that also have a
kid and see what kind of seats that they have. That becomes much simpler in the future from
a standpoint of, The search still happens on Google, but now what comes in is that,
"Of your 150 friends that you have on your social network, 30 of them have purchased
a seat in the last year or two years. Of those 30, 20 have purchased this exact
seat. And then, here is what the reviews are on
that seat." So that helps eliminate a lot of what I call,
"multiple, individual redundancies." If there's 20 people that wanted to buy a
child seat out of your group of friends, and five have already vetted through that and
done all the homework and the due diligence and have actually used the product, then the
rest of the 15 can kind of have a good comfort level knowing that, "Okay, these five people
have done all this stuff. I don't have to redo all this work.
So, I can go out and get this seat. Feel pretty comfortable about purchasing it."
So this is on Twitter. How many of you guys are using Twitter? All
right. How many of you guys use it for personal reasons?
All right. How many use it for business?
How many use it for both? [pause] So, this is just getting back to -- this is
a great customer service tool. A lot of companies, like a Jet Blue, Comcast,
Zappos, anybody -- when I sell those -- for me, when I get on the train tonight, I'm going
to go on and go to search.twitter.com -- and they can look and see everything that's
being said about their brand. And it varies all across the board from this
first one, "Free movies on New York to see Jet Blue play, because the blank was broken
and they delayed an hour to fix it." So, the second thing is, "Jet Blue smoking
sign's on. Two Jet Blue flights made emergency landings
at Kennedy airport." Those both aren't fairly good.
This one though, "On Jet Blue right now -- red eye, in fact.
The Big Apple. Had a blast in Orlando." So it varies from positive and negative.
But it's important for them to stay on top of it.
So a lot of companies are just using this as a customer service tool.
A little misnomer in the news is that they think Twitter is this amazing, great thing
for customer service. Definitely it helps, but one of the reasons
the customer service is so good is because they've taken their best and brightest customer
service reps and put them on Twitter. So obviously, if you called in, and they only
funneled you to their best reps, it's going to be a little better experience.
But, it's one of the huge powers of Twitter is the search functionality to be able to
get in and see what those conversations are. For B to B companies, it's huge, because they
have their clients. But obviously, their clients have their clients.
And historically, it was tough for them to see what the paying points were of that downstream
client. But today, they can go on -- if you're in
Intel, and you're supplying chips to Apple and the Dells of the world, you can go on
and see what those paying points are of your customers by going into the tools, like Twitter,
that you know ahead of time. So you can work with Apple and Dell if you're
Intel and say, "Hey, we know they're having problems when they're in x, y, and z.
Here's what our solution is." So they can see ahead of the time what the
issues are. Now, for marketers, how do their jobs change?
When they go into these tools -- major mistakes that companies do when they get into Twitter
and Facebook -- they immediately get in there and do the old-school messaging, which is
more blasting. More the 30-second type commercial -- that
kind of strategy. And what they do is, they come in, and they're
basically shouting once they get in there. So they'll go into Twitter, and they'll say,
"Hey, we've got this new product that just came out.
We've got 30 percent off." And you'll see all their streams right away.
It's just all about them. And that's the worst thing you can do.
The best thing you can do is -- there's Dale Carnegie and David Ogilvy, two of the best
marketeers of the last century. Both took a little different tactics.
Dale Carnegie is the one that wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
And David Ogilvy was more the messenger: Great 30-second commercials.
Great marketeer. Both super-successful. But in the here and now, the more successful
folks are going to act more like Dale Carnegie. They're going to listen first.
They're going to know what the conversation -- How is it transpiring?
What's going on? What are the needs? -- before they sell.
So it's "Listen first, sell second." And the beauty of all this is that, Products
that deliver the best value will win. Well, historically, you think that's always
the case, but it's not. Because, historically, the bigger companies
controlled the distribution systems and the marketing mechanisms.
So they can make up for bad product by having control over this piece.
But all of a sudden, this piece goes away, because the information is everywhere.
And the transparency is realtime and it's fast and they can figure out.
In the video, you see how the 'word of mouth' now becomes 'world of mouth', because it just
happens so quick. And in the end, that means the customer wins.
And in the end, the great companies win. [pause] So this is an interesting example of just
different tactics on how companies go about using social media.
So this is about, I guess, a year and a half ago now.
Is that, applications came out on Facebook. And so, there's a company that thought, "Wow,
it'd be great idea -- all those people just put pins on their wall, of their map, showing
how cool they are of where they've traveled to.
Why don't we make that more of a digital version?" And so, the first company set off and started
off. They had a head start, because they knew someone
at Facebook. And they launched it.
And they got 50,000 users today. So they think that things are going great.
They get an e-mail from Craig Ulliott, who says he's a 23-year-old kid that says, "Hey,
have you thought about not making it mandatory for us to give our e-mail address?
I think we should just get this tool for free. And also, could you make it a little flashier
and better?" And the company goes, "Well, we're getting
50,000 downloads a day." You know, "It's working.
Why fix something that's broken?" So Craig sets off, and he decides to write
his own thing. So he sets off, and not only writes his own
thing, he starts a whole company called "Where I've Been".
So he launches Where I've Been. That thing all of a sudden shoots through
the roof. Gets 600-, 700,000 monthly subscribers.
And it's one of the better successes of the applications.
At the same time, there's companies like Travels You and TripAdvisor -- they're trying to figure
out, "Okay, this thing's huge. Do we write it ourselves, or do we reach out
to Craig and try to purchase it from Craig?" So they try to reach out to Craig.
And they think he's like this kid that's in his garage.
But it turns out, he's got a partner that worked at Priceline for several years.
So anyways, TripAdvisor comes close to purchasing this for $3 million.
Actually, press release goes out -- not from them -- but a report goes out that they did
purchase it for $3 million, but they didn't. What they decided to do is, the CEO at TripAdvisor
is very sharp. He goes down to his team and goes, "How long
is it going to take us to build something similar to this?"
And the team says, "It'll probably take about 40 days."
And Steve Kaufer, the CEO of TripAdvisor's got a sign outside his door that says, "Speed
Wins." And he goes, "Can we do it in four days?"
[laughter] And they say, "Sure."
So, but I'm sure it was like, "Sure, we could do that.
We'll be working all night for the next four days."
But they spent a weekend and obviously, two more days, working around the clock, to get
this thing out there. They utilized Google maps, because they go,
"Why wouldn't we use this? This is what people were used to using.
It's the best tool out there." So then, they just decide to go and do their
own thing and launch this. And now, they have hosted -- it varies --
but it's usually around 3 million monthly users that use this tool.
And "Where I've Been" still has a fair amount. They still have about 400-, 600,000 monthly
users. The original company doesn't really have any
active users, because the original company was using old constructs.
They thought they had to get that person into their database.
That's how they've always marketed. "They need to be in my database.
My boss is only going to reward me if I add people to my database."
But it's a whole new world. It doesn't matter.
As long as you message to them, it doesn't matter if it's coming from your database,
or whether you're utilizing a platform like, Facebook. You're still [inaudible]
The other thing is, the second piece is really "Beg, borrow, and make better."
You don't have to have the original thought and the 'first to market' to have this stuff
work. It's really just looking out there to see
what's out there. See if it's meeting everyone's need, and,
if it's not, then adjust it accordingly and make it better.
And then, three -- as I said -- speed wins. The difference in speed here is, it doesn't
have to be 'first to market'. Just when you decide to do something, you
need to get it out there and put it in beta. And I'm kind of -- can take this back, because
you guys understand all this stuff. A lot of the audiences that I speak to, do
not. But it's just getting this stuff out there.
Because you're going to get out, fail, then fail better, and then win.
Because, in social media, the first time you're going to launch this stuff, usually it's not
going to be that successful, so you're going to have to adjust it after you get it out
there. Then the fourth piece is just, you can have
multiple winners in this. "Where I've Been" still has 400,000/600,000
users. So it doesn't have to be 'the original', only
idea out there. This is another interesting example of what
companies are doing. ESPN. How many people are big ESPN fans? All
right. So they have historically covered the NFL.
They have a couple of reporters like John Clayton and Ed Werder to go out and couple
more that they travel around the country, and they try to become experts on the team.
But what they found out -- through a lot of their podcasts and also online -- is that,
there's actually a better model out there. And so, they've started to solicit bloggers
that are local to each team and also just superfans.
And what happens is that these folks have grown up with this team.
They know everything about this team. It also saves ESPN a ton of money, because
they're not flying people all around the country. The listener enjoys it more, because these
are real experts, and it's not someone that's trying to learn up on this stuff and know
what all 15 teams are doing. And so, I call it the "Tom Sawyer approach".
They're really convincing these folks to work for them for free.
They're painting the fence for free, and they're loving it.
They're an ESPN blogger; they're an ESPN superfan. The huge difference is that, with technology
enabling it, that your customer today can be your competition tomorrow.
If I'm listening to a fantasy podcast, and these guys cover both baseball and football,
and they're not really up to speed on all the players.
They're asking, "Oh, what's that guy's name?" And the listener is sitting there going, "This
is crazy. I know more about this.
I live, eat, and breathe fantasy football." So, the next day, they might start their own
podcast. And so, it's another proactive way of ESPN
-- the old cliche is, you know, "If you can't beat them, join them."
Well, they're joining them before they can beat them.
So they're realizing, these people could be their competitors.
Let's reach out to these bloggers. Make them part of our team before they become
our competitors. So this is from Tech Crunch.
This is from a big, music executive. They didn't list his name -- him or her name
out -- but it's all part of a masterplan. The spreadsheets and financial models dictate
the swing customers and partners. This makes too much sense.
So the reason I put this in there is, a lot of companies -- they have fear of this technology
-- false evidence appearing real. Because, if you're a music industry person,
you should have just embraced that change. You no longer have those distribution costs
that you once did. You no longer have these production costs.
It's actually a lot higher margin. Instead of suing your customer base, you should
have embraced this technology and changed from the getgo.
If they thought about it -- it's similar to when they used to hand out records to deejays
in the 50's to get the word out. They give that stuff away for free.
And obviously, there's a lot of case studies like Radio Head.
They gave out their stuff for free, and they actually had record sales.
Monty Python launched their stuff on YouTube. They were having issues where everyone was
posting their stuff on YouTube, and they fought it for several years.
And they said, "Screw this. Let's reverse it.
We'll just go in and do our own channel." So that they had record sales selling DVD
once they made that change on YouTube. But this still continues to occur today from
a standpoint of, You're seeing it play out a lot, and you'll see it play out more in
the cable industry. Because, obviously, the Comcasts of the world
-- they control your Internet pipe and also your TV pipe.
But a lot of folks are going out there, just like I don't have -- I don't pay $150 for
cable. I watch everything online.
Stream it through the Mac, through my TV. Just like when people gave up their landline
telephones and just went to wireless. You're seeing that more and more.
And Comcast is struggling with it, because they don't -- they're losing money.
So they're trying to figure out ways. Do they charge by bandwidth usage?
And the difference here -- the way that's going to play out is going to be intriguing,
because they control a lot of the pipe, right? So hopefully, WiMAX comes into play, but you're
going to see that kind of wrestle with itself the next couple years.
The other industry that's really wrestling with it as well is the publishing industry.
Now they have these feed readers. You saw that stat up there that 35 percent
of sales go to the Kindle. Where that stat breaks down is, if you're
selling on Amazon a hardcover book in a Kindle version, that the Kindle will get 35 percent
of the sales. And actually, Dan Brown's new book -- I can't
remember the name of it -- but there's actually more sales for the Kindle right now for that
book on Amazon. Not total, but just when you compare it on
Amazon. But again, for them, they have an opportunity
-- the publishing industry has a huge opportunity if they embrace the change, because books
are inherently social. You pass on a lot of your paperbacks when
you're done reading them. You go, "This is a good book. Here, pass it
on." They've never gotten any revenue off that.
With the Kindle, they've got to figure out what that revenue stream is for that pass-along.
Is it 99 cents? You know, what is that pass-along stream?
Also, there's a ton more data at their disposal. Think about libraries.
They don't know how many times the books run in the library.
But now, they'll be able to tell, if there's a license agreement for these feed readers.
So each library, do they have five licenses that go out or is it infinite? [pause]
This is another just -- juxtaposition on two different treatments on getting into the cable
thing I just discussed. There's NBC vs. ABC.
NBC -- during the Olympics -- they streamed a lot of stuff from Beijing live, but they
didn't stream the stuff that we wanted to see.
They didn't stream Michael Phelps live. They were streaming ping-pong live. [laughter]
Are you the rating champion here?
>> [inaudible]
Erik Qualman: Yeah. [laughter] But at the end of the day, it's eyeballs or
eyeballs. If there's an advertiser that's paying to
sponsor the Olympics, isn't it inherently better to show that to as many people as possible?
There's people at work that don't have their TV at work, but they can watch it online.
The problem is -- they wrestle with is that some of the metrics haven't caught up.
They can't show to that advertiser that, "Hey, you know, we've got these Nielsen ratings
that are offline ratings. We haven't really been able to figure out
the Nielsen online ratings to compile them together to give it to you and show you that
you paid x, y, z, but we gave you this many more eyeballs."
And so, what they do is, they let the metrics kind of lead them instead of best business
practices, which would be, "Of course, we'll show the Olympics to as many people as possible,
and they'll show the ad to as many people as possible.
So that, in the end, more people buy our sponsor's products."
So the PGA realized that, "Hey, that's probably a good idea."
So what they did this year and also last year -- so Tiger was in the final hunt both this
year and last year. Last year, he won in a playoff match against
Rocco Mediate on a Monday. So, it was a Monday, and they decided to let
it go online. And it shut down many companies' servers,
as people were watching this tournament play out.
Then this year, they took it one step further. And they go, "Let's really embrace this stuff."
And so, again, it came down to Tiger against Yang, from South Korea.
And what they did was enabled on their site -- on the PGA.com -- they enabled it so that
MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter -- you could see these feeds coming realtime.
So you have Facebook; there's MySpace, and there's Twitter, all in one area.
And obviously, this stuff is blasting out on those properties as well.
So a lot of people that were on Facebook or on Twitter could see, "Oh, my gosh.
I totally forgot that this is going on. It looks like Yang and Tiger on the 14th hole.
I'm going to watch the last four holes of the tournament and get on there and check
it out." The other thing they did is, they had an iPhone
app. So you could watch this live also on your
iPhone. So they really, fully, embraced it.
So it's just a different -- you could see the different tacks that people are taking.
And I'll leave it to you guys to decide who you think is taking the better approach.
I mean, I would argue strongly that it's ABC with what they're doing, because it's all
about the user. And you guys embrace that every day.
It's all about, What are the users?
>> [inaudible]
Erik Qualman: Right. Yep. Yeah, exactly. That's a good point too is that, in the future,
everything's going to be served through an IP, just because of the tracking capability.
So it's funny, I think we're going to look back in just a couple of years and laugh and
say, "I can't believe they're so resistant to serving this stuff over an IP."
This is just a quick example of, All the companies make mistakes.
And so, Apple -- who some people think never make mistakes -- this actually ties in with
you guys. Because what they did was, there was an app
that was written -- and a lot of you guys are probably familiar with this -- but they
wrote an application that was pulling into the Gutenberg project, that you guys were
very helpful into putting books for free online. And so, this application did that.
But, one of the books was the kamasutra. And so, Apple decided, "Woa, we need to shut
the whole application down." And after about three hours of just getting
pummeled with every comment you can imagine, they reversed their decision.
So, it just shows that if you're a company -- if you make a mistake, just own up to
it and adjust it accordingly. And for the guy that wrote that app -- I forgot
his name -- but, they say that it's the best thing to happen to your app is get banned
by Apple. [laughter] So then, this is just sums up a lot of what
the book's about. It's, "Act more like Dale Carnegie and less
like Dave Ogilvy. Listen first, sell second."
What I didn't talk a lot about is this: One essence.
Be true to that essence. It eliminates what I call 'social schizophrenia',
is that -- historically, you've been able to kind of have your two personas if you wanted
to. If you were an accountant during the week
-- if you're "Al, the accountant," and you've got everything down to the T during the week.
Well on the weekend, you can be "Avalanche Al".
You can go out and party your brains out. But the problem is, with the transparency
and the tiny phones and everything being distributed with the Ben Roethlisberger photo that I showed.
That unfortunately -- good or bad or indifferent -- that's really not the case anymore.
The world has changed. And you have to adjust your behavior accordingly.
A lot of CEOs ask, "Should I get on a Facebook account?" Or "Can I have two accounts?"
I always recommend, "95 percent of the time, it's a terrible idea to have more than one
account." You're going to have to be who you are, and
that's it. I mean, and if you don't want to get on it
-- that's not what you enjoy doing -- if you don't enjoy going to a cocktail party
and networking with everybody, then I'm not going to send you that cocktail party and
do that. So make sure that you really are comfortable
with doing this stuff before you get into it.
And then, just be yourself once you're on it.
Products and services. We find that 70 to 80 percent trust pure recommendations.
Social media will help eliminate the multiple, individual redundancy.
That should be good for society -- less waste -- of people that will find exactly what
they need realtime, quickly. And then, for marketeers, What does this mean?
You're going to be less of an advertiser. You're less writing these great, award-winning
commercials. And more about providing content that folks
need and desire. If you go back to the opening video, is that,
what I did -- a tool -- it's ironic. I have to use social media tools to sell the
book. And so, before launching that video -- it's
really hard to get things viral, as you guys know.
But I was listening to the space of what the main need was.
And the main need was, "I can't convince my boss that social media is a big thing.
Can anyone help?" And so, that's why I try to put a little stats
there and put it together and get it out there and launch it.
So that's what being a content provider is all about.
Party planners more -- if you think about mash role -- they have these tweet ups.
And so, they'll host these tweet ups where they'll take in all these folks that have
met on Twitter and just having a face-to-face conversation at certain hotels around the
country. So that's another thing is just being able
to aggregate people. A lot of people put on conferences now.
So that's the way that the world changes. One thing that I'd argue that I think might
happen is that, it's going to be so important for people to review your product or service.
Is that the money then flows from over here -- which is mainly brand-awareness -- to,
"Okay, this person bought my product." And this is a new concept.
You've already gotten those surveys when you go to a hotel.
It's like, "Hey, you might be able to win 25 bucks or a trip around the world if you
fill out this survey." It's taking that money that's over here on
branding and really saying, "Good, better, indifferent, if you fill out a review on our
product, you'll get x, y, and z." And so, the real debate on that -- that's
going to happen -- the real debate on that though is, Does it influence what that review
is? Hopefully not. Hopefully, it's just a pure
review. Talked a little bit about B to B.
It's just as important, if not more important, than for B to C.
And then, marketing mistakes. Making a mistake in social media is better
than not doing anything at all. Because, at least, you're learning something.
And then, this last one: It's more outside-in than inward-out thinking.
Historically, companies have always gotten in their meeting rooms, figured out, What
do we think is best for the marketplace? And take several months.
And then they go out with it. But now, it's really, What is that user doing
out there? A lot of these companies -- when they jump
into social media space -- there's already groups developed like John Deere so they can
see what's the main consensus on their need. So when they go in the space, they can meet
that need a lot better. That's it. I'd like to thank you guys.
And open it up for Q and A and dialog.