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.

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.

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.