Transparency is officially in, whether we like it or not.  This is only good news if you provide a great product and customer experience.  The bad news is that if you don’t, Yelp will let you, and a massive amount of your current and potential customers know.

Check out this excerpt from the article on Inc. below:

For two days, Goodman was transfixed by the discussion — and she started to get paranoid. “I couldn’t tell if the people coming into the store were real customers or just people who were going to say something about me on Yelp,” she says. A customer would ask an innocuous question — for instance, “How long have you been open?” — and Goodman would panic, fearing that her response might become fodder for yet another Yelp comment. “I was saying to myself, ‘Come on; that’s crazy,’ ” she says.  ” ‘Don’t think this way.’ ”

At the end of the second day, she decided to end the crisis by apologizing. She figured out Sean’s last name — Clare — with a Google search and found his address in the white pages. His house was just two blocks from her store. She walked up the stairs to his front porch and, at 6 o’clock on a Sunday evening, knocked on his door.

Accounts differ as to what happened next, but a struggle ensued. Goodman says she started to explain that she had come to apologize for her e-mails and was attacked; Clare says Goodman began yelling, forced her way into his house, and refused to leave. In any case, the two became entangled, grappling until Goodman fell down the steps. When she hit the ground, Clare ran back inside and slammed the door. The police arrived a few minutes later.

Business owners strike

Defining Your Purpose is at the core of breeding word of mouth:

• People vote for candidates that share the same values, they want to buy from companies that do as well
• Companies who establish a purpose outperform other companies by 5 to 1.
• A purpose is not a cliche, empty “mission statement”. It is a defined reason for a business to exist other than profits.
• A purpose can also be defined as a definitive statement of the difference you want to make in the world.
• But… your purpose must be relevant to your audience.
• Advertising is not a differentiator. A purpose is.
• Purpose fosters meaningful innovation… Do not innovate just for the sake of innovation.
• Look at every opportunity and ask: “Does it help fulfill the purpose?”

A story is essential in delivering your message through word of mouth.

• Stories are packets that you give to customers that help word of mouth spread.
• You must provide your customers with a story and make it easy to tell yours to others.
• The story must interest, amuse, instruct, and inspire.
• A story is an account of events…with vivid, specific details.
• A story must have a “neat” element that makes it worth telling.
• 4 Elements of a story: Character, Setting, Problem, Resolution.
• The “theme” of your story aligns with the defined “purpose” of your business.

Using social media to spur word of mouth is more about process than technology.

• Select customers to become “customer evangelists.”
• Make them the face of your business, reward them, champion them.
• Listen to the online conversation.
• Join the online conversation and tell your story.
• Start small, don’t wait, fly under the radar if you must.
• Effective marketing through social media and WOM is 10% technology and 90% process and execution.

Bust-A-Name: This is my favorite place to search for an available domain… because the results are instantaneous. I use the “quick domain check” tool on the top right. The availability of the typed name is updated on every keystroke. This is much faster than waiting for a page to load every time. Plus it saves you the 5 seconds of anticipation before the big let-down: “HOMES4U.COM” is already taken! You can also add words to a list and let Bust-A-Name find all of the available combinations. This is great for finding descriptive domains.

Dislexicon: This tool will help you nail that brilliant name by fusing a root word you enter with popular prefix’s and suffix’s. For example: Type “HOME” and it will return words like: Homeium, Homability, Endohome, and Homeize. This may not give you exactly what you need, but it is fun for inspiration.

DomainsBot: This tool will take a string of words and search for available domains that are similar to that query. It will take each word, and use related words to offer suggestion. So if you type HOME FINDER, it draws similar words to HOME (house, pad, residence) and FINDER (seeker, explorer, digger) and display a long list of available and for sale domains.

JustDropped: This is a great free tool that will search for names by keyword that have recently been dropped from the ICANN registered index. Many domains are dropped daily. You may find a great name that contains your chosen words that somebody else let expire. If you have some time, check back daily for the prime pick’ns.

Afternic & Sedo: Two popular places to bid for pre-registered domain names. If you are willing to spend a few hundred bucks, you may be able to find a prime domain that someone is trying to sell. Some of the domains seem ridiculously over-priced, but if you look into the recently sold domains area you can see what some of the domains are actually selling for. The ultra-high-priced domains are usually set by the seller, and you will rarely see bids on these.

For an easy and risk-free way to get the best domain possible, consider outsourcing your search with PickyDomains.com. For a fifty dollar deposit, you give them the criteria, and they mail you lists of possible names. If you don’t like any of the names offered, you get a refund. See the left sidebar on their site for a list of some of the best domains they have come up with.

This book is the follow-up to a collection of essays published in 2007 by a group of writers advocating the new age of marketing, where the message is centered around conversations. The second edition challenges companies to let go of their old ways to embrace and adopt a new perspective on marketing.

It encourages business leaders to face the reality that they cannot control the perception of their brand in a marketplace that has been armed with open, archived communication channels. They must view the Internet not as another medium, but as a 2-way conversational tool. They can use it to refine and evolve products and services with valuable customer feedback. They have to let go of the fear and join in on the conversation in order to use it effectively.

People often champion the use of social media to reach customers and enhance marketing efforts…but what about using these tools to innovate from within? In this video, Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson describes how they have used social networks, Wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools to harness the expertise of it’s 175,000 employees and spur collaboration among them.

Peter Hirshberg, co-founder of The Conversation Group, interviews Anderson about several of their internal social media initiatives. As they grow, the scope of their business is evolving from “product distribution company” to a “service and solutions company”… and to address this challenge they have to reverse the roles of leadership and turn the structure upside-down.

Best Buy realized that the employees interacting with customers on a daily basis were the ones who could provide the best feedback. They gave them the tools to collaborate and gave management the power and resources to nurture and execute grassroots ideas. This has created a culture of innovation and creativity in the organization. They are experimenting more and utilizing employees in order to reverse the sluggishness and lack of innovation that is often the side effect of becoming an incredibly large company.

I can’t help but think of the leadership style of Sam Walton, who often interviewed his own employees to get serious feedback about processes. He knew that they were where the rubber truly met the road. The Best Buy social media initiatives take this philosophy to a new level.

As traditional media advertising loses it’s audiences slowly but surely, and customers are increasingly unenchanted by advertising in general, the real communication has come full circle and back to the individual level. New media is based on conversation.

Not only is word of mouth one of the most influential forms of marketing (always has been), it is now spreading rapidly through new social media channels. One could argue that creating the perfect ad copy isn’t really what should be at the top of your priority list. People do not use tag-lines in normal conversation. They do not recite your ad word-for-word when making recommendations.

They will tell their story (experience with your company) or your story (something interesting worth telling about you). Either way, you must give your customers, clients, and prospects something to work with if you expect them to spread your message and/or converse positively about your company, online or off.

This is where being authentic and genuine always carries you through. Compare your product or service to the message you are delivering (or would like to). Would a reasonable person conclude that the two are consistent? Does your brand message convey your company personality or spirit accurately? Most importantly, is it even compelling or interesting enough to get someone talking about it? How remarkable is your story or product?

If your message and product/service to not line up properly, or you have an uninspiring story, you have two choices: Find a better message, or change your product/service. If your product/service is not up to par with the desired message, try to add something (new feature, unique design, model, service offering) that will make the statement and story authentic. Identify company values and purpose (something beyond profits and growth). Highlight the people, values, heritage, missions, origins. The goal is to create a compelling story or message that is worth telling while remaining rock-solid and reliable. The culture of your brand must be built into the processes and practiced inside and out to gain true authenticity.

Michael Hogans’ manifesto, We Need a New Word for Brand, calls for authenticity and stresses the importance of having that “cultural base” that you can rally around:

So authentic brands are not about marketing. They are not products. They live inside the company. And they are held and enacted of the people, by the people and for the people! Just like the Declaration of Independence created the foundation of a nation, so does your brand act as the foundation of your company. Its principles are the framework for thought and action by everyone in the company. Without it there is no consistency, no alignment between what you say and what you do, no synchronicity between who you are inside and the way you present yourself outside.

You may ask—“well isn’t that the same as culture?” The answer is yes and no. Authentic brands are in many ways the identity of the company culture. They help that culture become visible. They also embody the values and purpose of the company, giving all these things a face and a voice that can be seen and heard by everyone the company touches. But especially your employees. As the people who most keenly impact the day-to-day beliefs and actions of the company it is constantly amazing how little they are considered when brand is discussed. It is employees who show the brand to be true or not.

Authentic brands live or die with the people in the organization. If they don’t believe the brand, if they don’t feel it is their cause, no campaign or change program on earth will help it succeed. Authentic brands feel natural. There is no need to “educate” the employees—they feel it immediately. There is no need to launch the “new” brand on your unsuspecting customers—they have known it for years. When you are doing it day in and day out, saying it becomes almost superfluous.

People will notice, and soon the company will be establishing a firm foundation with true brand authenticity. The excercise may not be easy, but it will pay off in the long run with credibility, recommendations, and ultimately, more sales. It will get you much further than generic or grandiose claims or crude humor found around every corner. Your customer will recognize a genuine company when they see it. Honesty with more sales, how refreshing!

Photo by Jeff Poskanzer

Life used to be simple. Easy brand choices, clear USP’s, mass media dominance, overall advertising acceptance, very few media channels, and you could apparently reach 80% of people with three spots on prime-time television.

This animation dramatizes rise of new media, convergence, mobility, individualism, consumer attitudes, and the impact of technology on marketing. It was created by German filmmaker and ad-man Michael Reissinger of Deli Pictures.

Michelle Miller of Wonder Branding, a blog focusing on marketing to women, examines how time influences the female purchasing process:

Where she gets her energy, combined with her outlook on life, gives you the underlying framework you need in order to build an effective, profitable marketing strategy. It will affect every part of your business, from planning to copywriting to customer service.

Michele Miller is a partner in the Wizard of Ads marketing firm, with a client roster that has included businesses of all sizes across North America, including Best Buy, Timberland, Sirius Satellite Radio, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Michele is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Consumer – Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys, a 2008 release that found itself on the “Top Twenty List” of Amazon.com’s marketing business book sales.

The Machine is Us/ing Us, produced by Dr. Michael Wesch of the Digital Ethnography Working Group at Kansas State University, elegantly explains the idea behind Web 2.0 and it’s impact on us. If you haven’t checked out some of the other fascinating projects by this group of undergraduates, it’s worth a look.

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on human interaction (and the impact of human interaction on new media). After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society.  His videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology.  He is also a multiple award-winning teacher whose teaching projects are frequently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other major media outlets worldwide. Wesch is currently serving on the Editorial Board of Advisors for Encyclopaedia Britannica.