I’ve been exploring conversational marketing lately, both for some of the talks I give and to advise clients on appropriate and effective ways to not just engage our audiences in conversation, but also persuade them. If we, as social media marketers, are not using the engagement opportunity to motivate those audiences to do something, then there’s little business purpose in having the conversations in the first place.

At Social Media Plus last week, I talked about conversational marketing and came away from the presentation thinking a lot about trust. My theory around conversational marketing is that success occurs when our genuine participation (that without marketing as motivation) earns enough trust from our audience to share information that is driven by our business. But trust is earned in a variety of ways.

Public relations professionals can take months to earn the trust of a media member. You don’t immediately trust a child care professional with your children. Search engines don’t trust a brand new blog with the top search result if it hasn’t garnered some links and traffic.

But trust is also something we randomly give away in certain circumstances. You trust strangers on the street to give you directions. You trust random people to watch your bag while you throw something away at the airport. You may even trust a product recommendation made in a conversation near you that you only overheard.

Why? Or more importantly, what is it that makes people trust us?

Without a great deal of discussion (that’s what the comments are for), here’s a list of 25 different ways you can earn trust, both on- and off-line:

25 Simple Ways To Earn Trust

1. Be polite
2. Dress neatly
3. Smile
4. Shake hands firmly
5. Hug if appropriate
6. Illustrate your knowledge
7. Make eye contact
8. Speak clearly
9. Share ideas, content and praise
10. Be positive
11. Ask how they are doing
12. Know when to shut up
13. Use a clear and distinctive avatar
14. Talk about everything but you most of the time
15. Be confident your product or service is valuable
16. Make it easy for people to buy, but also to return
17. Say “please” “thank you” and “excuse me”
18. Admit when you’re wrong
19. Don’t gloat when you’re right
20. Hold the door or elevator for someone else
21. Pay attention to those talking to you
22. Don’t gossip
23. Be open minded
24. Respect their right to not answer or agree
25. Do all of that consistently

What more can you think of? The comments are yours.

IMAGE: By EDHAR on Shutterstock.com

Yesterday, I had the honor of giving a quick update about my employer’s social media strategy to several hundred attendees at the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors Association’s annual conference in Columbus.

My employer, the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services in Cincinnati, has embraced social media as a way to improve accessibility and transparency. The department sees social media as an avenue for taking pressure off of crowded waiting rooms and busy phone lines. It’s a powerful way to build mutually beneficial relationships with key audiences.

We need to innovate and break the mold because we’re seeing record caseloads at the same time that we’ve encountered severe budget cuts. Half of our employees have been laid off or retired in the past two years.

Douglas Lumpkin, the state JFS director, gave an inspirational talk to start the morning. He urged directors of the state’s 88 county JFS departments to “think crazy” — to innovate, to try new things. He talked about some big changes counties have implemented to speed health coverage and food assistance to those in need… at a time when they’ve got reduced resources to deliver those services.

And, with the state facing an $8-billion gap in the two-year budget that begins in July 2011, the need for creative solutions grows even more imperative.

As he left the stage, Director Lumpkin whispered in my ear about helping the audience understand how to use social media to serve its clients. In his remarks, he spoke about the growing power of social networks such as Facebook.

It’s a scary, yet exciting, time. Budget restraints and the slow-but-gradual economic recovery bring on lots of fear. But the rapid growth of new technologies — and open-mindedness toward using them — add a rush of excitement.

It’s time to “think crazy.”

Side note: With innovation comes a need for guidelines. In that vein, here is a link to our recently developed social media policy. Also, here’s the PowerPoint presentation that I shared with the directors.

Also: Just a reminder that the views shared on this blog are mine and not necessarily those of my employer. I do this blog in my spare time as a way to share what I’ve learned and gain more hands-on experience with social media.

Last week I ran a corporate training program for a large ad agency in New York and we had a lot of discussion about search and social media.

We know that people search for things.  A lot.  Especially when making a purchase.  This isn’t a surprise (or new).  This is why companies have websites.

Social Integration is New

What is new is social integration in search results.  Social media is ranking higher and becoming more closely integrated into search results than ever before.  Things like videos, photos, wikis, blogs, discussion forums and now even twitter are showing up with top results on search engines.

The screen shot below shows search results for “gulf oil”.  You can see that social media sources accounted for 4 of the top search results.  A blog listing from the Huffington Post ranked 4th, user generated images were 6th, twitter results were shown 7th and user generated wiki results from wikipedia came up 9th.  40% of the top 10 search results were user generated.  This means that when people are searching for information about your product, category or brand they are more likely to find content generated by other people vs.  your carefully crafted brand message.

Key Implications of Search Results and Social Media

There are a number of implications for marketers:

1. You have even less control – The integration and high ranking of social media means that you have even less control over how your brand in perceived in the social space.  User content and opinions will continue to dominate on the web.
2. Twitter May Be Uninformed – During the swine flu outbreak the NYTimes ran an article pointing out that twitter was a source of mis-information about the outbreak.  Of course it was.  Average people usually are a source of misinformation.  My mom is a source of misinformation (sorry mom if you read this).  Social Media search results may not have the right information, but people are eager to trust what they hear from friends, family and people like them.
3. Listening is More Important than Ever – Given the prominence of user generated and social media results in search engines it is important that brands at least understand what people are saying about them and what may show up in search engine results.  Knowing is half the battle.  Know where there is misinformation or perception issues.
4. Inform the Conversation – If there is misinformation about your product you need to develop an action plan to share the right information and help inform the conversation.  Building relationships in advance is key to this (as you’ll need friends and advocates to help share information).
5. Create Your Own Content – Since video, wikipedia, photos, blog posts and social networks are all showing up in search results, why not participate in them?  Create your own branded assets and syndicate on social sites to increase your visibility both on those sites and in search engine results.

Any Other Thoughts?  What Else Can Companies Do?

Courtesy of Jon Radoff.  Click image for full-size.

The books for me to review has piled up yet again, and it’s a good time to talk about some summer reading, so I put together a little video review of five offerings worth paying for. A couple of them have been out for a month or so, but I’m a notoriously slow reader when it comes to books and two of them were more than 200 pages, so forgive me. I did read them all, even took some notes and dog-eared some pages.

Here’s what I thought about The Power of Pull by Hagel, Brown and Davison; The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Hyder Kabani, Engage! by Brian Solis, Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah; and The Referral Engine by John Jantsch. All the links in this paragraph are direct links to the book’s purchase page on Amazon. If you don’t mind purchasing and having me benefit, please click on the book covers below and use my Amazon affiliate links. Thanks for the cheeseburgers.

Summer Reading: Book Reviews from Social Media Explorer from Jason Falls on Vimeo.

Click below to order your copies of any or all of the five books reviewed. And enjoy your summer reading. When you’re finished with them, come back and jump in the comments. Tell us if you agree or not with my review and tell us what you thought of the books.

The first 459 times I suffered through product demos and webinars for market research and social media measurement solutions the companies all wound up with the same promise: We’ll give you a 50+ page PowerPoint deck each quarter that has 150 full-color charts and graphs you don’t understand or care about with a cover page of “actionable insights” that we spend about an hour coming up with all for the low, low price of $150,000 per year. Ever since, I’ve been in search of something that A) Produces more meaningful information and B) Is priced somewhere other than the “are you effin’ kidding me” range.

I think I found it.

ConsumerBase, a new, limited offering from NetBase, takes that company’s six-year track record of experience in linguistic analysis of scientific documents for the research and development segment of large corporations, combines it with the input of an advisory council that includes market research leads from five of the top 10 consumer product goods companies in the world, and turns it into a do-it-yourself market research engine.

Let me sum this up for you. If I were a brand manager for, say, Wii, I would want to know things like, what do people like and dislike about my brand. With ConsumerBase, I log in, put the word “Wii” into their search and in a matter of seconds (not three months and focus groups and survey analysis later), I get this:

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All of a sudden, I see people like that my product helps people get into shape, improves their balance and helps people recovering from traumatic brain injury? Holy crap! I didn’t know that before. I can also see that they don’t like it because they might sustain injuries from it and … oh my goodness … the Wii has some connection to persistent sexual arousal syndrome and sex addiction? Uh … can someone please explain that? (Wait, I can click through and see what the posts are. I don’t have to call the research firm and wait six weeks for them to go back and read something.)

When I saw ConsumerBase in action last Thursday, I was immediately blown away, but also skeptical. So, instead of CEO Jonathan Spier using his pre-programmed Wii profile, I asked him to enter my preferred search term into the tool. He obliged and did a scan of Kentucky Fried Chicken. This came back:

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Again, without training the search term or algorithm, ConsumerBase told me, in a matter of seconds, people dig the fact KFC offered a rain check to Oprah fans who weren’t able to get grilled chicken dinners before the stores ran out, but that there are people out there who think the restaurant’s chickens are horrible mutant freaks. Everybody’s got an opinion, I guess.

The point is that without a lengthy set-up process, the ConsumerBase tool turned around information a brand manager can use right now to make decisions. And it’s much more than just likes and dislikes. This view shows a filter by emotions and behavior for Wal-Mart. Lots of people express love, like, need and prefer, but more express hate, dislike, detest and even loathe. Click on the word and you drill down to the references. More importantly, you can find out that people depend on or stay away from your brand and instantly click to see why.

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To use a different example, here’s a view of a search for Prius. The only reason I really wanted to show it is for the headline of the second post in the listing of “Sound Bytes.” (Sorry. Just thought it was funny.)

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But let’s say you want to know what percentage of people like your brand and for what reasons. Jump over to the Insights and Themes analysis reports and you can see that, for Listerine, 51 percent of the online conversations around it (38,097 of them) show that people like the mouthwash because it kills germs. But 28 percent of people dig it because it kills toenail fungus. WHAT? And it’s apparently got some traction as a mosquito repellent.

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Frankly, I’d be some women would say it’s a female repellant, too, but that’s not based on research … per se.

Not convinced? Filter the reports by preference and see that for the iPad, of people who prefer some other type of computing device, 28 percent would rather have a Kindle, 25 percent an iPhone, 23 percent a laptop and 16 percent a “netbook.”

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You can also see what you are preferred to.

The big selling point here is that all this data is organized and easy to find in a matter of seconds after your search. Yes, it is prepared using automated scoring and computer analysis of human language, which I’ve complained about before. But Spier’s claims that six year of analyzing scientific research and development topics, academic and corporate reports and documents and so on have helped his team develop a more sophisticated, semantically driven and advanced analysis mechanism. They claim to have colloquialisms, slang, abbreviated spellings and misspellings down to a science. While I’m not skilled enough at analyzing computer code or applications to be able to assess the validity of the claims, when I saw the tool in action, I was convinced he was right.

And then there’s the kicker: Price.

A seat license is $250 per month and a five-pack of keywords costs $1,000 per month. The entry point for this tool, which is by far the most useful web-based market research tool I’ve seen to date, is just $1,250 per month. Keep in mind that one keyword is your brand, a single competitor is another, etc. But to monitor one brand, three competitors and a general one for your industry, you don’t have to break the bank.

Some observations:

• ConsumerBase is being offered as a “limited release.” To my knowledge, this means that the full scale of its functionality is not quite yet available to everyone, but what I described above is in the current offering, so it’s solid. The five consumer product goods companies that are using it are probably getting the full Alpha or Beta version of the software. If you sign up, you’re getting a good tool, but it will probably get a lot better soon.
• Because ConsumerBase was built with direct input and feedback from market research professionals at CPG companies, it gives brand managers, market researchers, R&D groups and the like more of what they need out of market intelligence than companies who built tools assuming they know what marketers want. This means the aforementioned people are going to like it better, the reports are more meaningful and the usefulness of the data is more apparent
• While the tool is the closest thing you can get to easy-to-navigate and understand, full-scale market research in real time I’ve seen, you shouldn’t replace true, in-depth market research with it. But perhaps you can adjust the types of questions and information you search for in your annual research because this tool can answer a lot of the top-level questions you need answers to
• The less unique your company or brand name, the more time you will need to set up your searches. A search for “Bloomberg” is going to return information about the news organization, the Mayor of New York and so on. So if you share a name, spelling, etc., you’ll need some front-end time setting it up like any monitoring solution, but ConsumerBase is as easy to set up as any I’ve seen.
• When you talk to Consumer Base about their solution, they’re going to throw out a term called “Netnography.” I’m sure that will impress some people, but it’s just a scientific-sounding way to say, “we watch what consumers do online and report back.” It’s like online ethnography … they follow you around, watch you drink out of the milk carton, scratch your butt and so-on, then say, “This person is not a germaphobe.” It’s useful information, regardless of what they name the process.
• ConsumerBase is not meant to be used as a social media monitoring solution. It’s not a “find conversations now and interact with people in the tool” answer like a Radian6, Scout Labs, Sysomos or Alterian. For the on-the-ground monitoring and interaction, you’ll need a monitoring solution and process in addition to this.
• At some point, the pricing is going to have to change. This tool is far too valuable to stay that cheap. Spier and CMO Lisa Rosner even admitted as much and said the focus right now is to get people to use it, see what kind of value it can deliver and make the tool better. Expect some price adjustments down the road, but know that if it smells like a bait and switch, at least they’re being open with the premise that they may adjust prices down the road. Get in now and you might benefit from being an early adopter.

Give ConsumerBase a look-see. If you’re a medium-to-large marketer, market researcher or someone who needs good insights from your audiences regularly, this tool takes those expensive, quarterly reports and makes them cheaper with real-time access.

And for those of you out there at social media measurement/monitoring or market research firms, or those of you who always place a skeptical eye on overwhelmingly positive reviews, I’m anxious for your feedback. But just know that I was skeptical too, until I saw the tool in action. It’s solid.

The comments are yours.

Doug Greenfield of the Banana Slug String Band in one of many costumes that delight children and parents alike.

Every spring, I get to see a good example of targeted marketing and public relations up close and personal.

My brother-in-law, Doug Greenfield, and his Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Banana Slug String Band perform here in Ohio for hundreds of school children, teachers, outdoor educators and parents. They’ve made the Ohio stop for 14 consecutive years, thanks to a “brand evangelist” named Cinda who lines up a week’s worth of shows at schools. The week culminates with an outdoor festival featuring the Slugs.

This year, the band also performed in a small Michigan town near Toledo. The community heard about the Slugs through a national library association.

And they did shows in Cincinnati for a private school — arranged by my wife and a friend who teaches there — and to a group of disadvantaged youth at an event at a local nature center.

Doug, an Ohio University graduate who moved to Santa Cruz after graduating from college, has made his living through the Slugs for more than two decades. (By the way, Banana Slugs are slimy creatures found in the Redwood forest.) He serves as co-business manager.

The band teaches kids about the environment and earth science. It plays rocking music that delights kids and parents alike. Band members dress in costumes. They use puppets, squirt bottles…. They get kids involved in songs. Lyrics teach the youngsters about earth science in a fun way.

The Slugs have CDs, DVDs, a book, a curriculum for teachers… They rely heavily on word-of-mouth marketing from satisfied customers. They get the word out through conferences for outdoor educators.  They’ve got a website.

Even with the economic slowdown, they’re as busy as ever. They’ve got a CD in the works with a possible appearance by a nationally known musician who believes in their cause.

As I write this, they’re boarding a flight for a trip back to California. But they’ll be back in the Midwest next month, performing at a YMCA camp’s 100th anniversary.

The Banana Slugs marketing machine keeps on rollin’, or — I guess — slithering along.

Recently I have been seeing a lot of news about the splendor and spectacle that is the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai, China. This event is expected to attract between 70 and 100 million visitors, as countries, businesses, and entrepreneurs from around the world seek to gain access to the rapidly growing Chinese markets.

Well economics aside, all this World’s Fair talk takes me back to a sweltering day in the summer of 1982 when my parents loaded up the Ford Fairmont wagon and headed off to Knoxville, Tennessee for The World’s Fair.  Here are some of my fond memories of that excursion.

• Being the youngest of 3, I was lucky enough to ride in the back of the station wagon by myself with the luggage and the endlessly squeaking Styrofoam cooler.

• We actually made the trip to Knoxville from the mountains of Western North Carolina, where we were staying with family.  While this was a shorter drive than going there from Springfield, Ohio, it was also a considerably more adventurous ride.  My dad, who grew up driving in the mountains, was more than comfortable pulling a few g’s racing around curvy, narrow, gravel, mountain roads at high speeds.  Meanwhile, the rest of the “Draggin Wagon” passengers were passing around a bed pan so that we could vomit without having to stop the car and jeopardize our chances of “making good time.”  This made the way back, devoid of windows that opened,  smell wonderful.  Nothing like being packed in with luggage, staring off into the abyss of a mountain valley, wondering if this would be the last time you ever got to hold a plastic pan of vomit.

• We played slug-bug, which is much more fun if you are the older, taller, stronger, more well seated siblings who can actually see outside of the car.
• The Fair was very hot.  My older brother and sister left to go ride rides, have fun, probably meet famous people like Kenny Rogers and do awesome stuff (at least that is what this 9 year old imagined).  Mom, dad, and I walked toward a building that contained an exhibit for Mexico.  We stood in a very long line.  We went into the building, which was very dark inside.  We read about Mexico on poorly designed displays.  We went back outside.  It was hot.  We found another county.  We stood in a very long line… you get the idea.
• I was such a pain in the ass that my mom and dad made me sit on the lawn outside of the amphitheater where they were watching some sort of country jamboree play.  I was not really down with this form of entertainment, and apparently must have just bothered them for so long that I got a World’s Fair time out.  I don’t fully remember the details of that part, but I know that I was told to go sit in the spot on the lawn where they could see me and not to move until they got done watching the show.
• There was a big gold disco ball on an iron tower.   It was called the Sun Sphere.  Apparently it was symbolic of our solar energy future.  How fitting.  You could even eat dinner inside of it.  However, we… did not choose to go up into it, because the line for the cool disco ball restaurant that I really wanted to see was too long.  Instead I think we went to see the Canada exhibit, where we stood in line.
• I scored an awesome trucker hat, which our cat later peed on.  It got thrown away. (the hat, not the cat)

My parents picked up a 1982 World’s Fair coffee mug which is now my all time favorite mug to drink my morning coffee from.  It is pictured here in the post.  I applaud my parents for having the bravery to drag the family to the 1982 World’s Fair.  I am sure that between tickets, parking, food, and other expenses it was not a cheap day.  I am also sure that they were doing their best to provide us with cultural exposure and give us a fun family day to remember for the rest of our lives.  In spite of the fact that the day was not ideal for this 9 year old, looking back I am glad that they regularly did this kind of stuff.  Sorry it took me decades of time and actually becoming a parent to understand.

Now, as my kids complain about breakfast, or getting dressed, or not wanting to do something, I can take a sip of coffee from my 1982 World’s Fair mug and have a laugh at myself before completely losing it.  As a parent, it is about trying to make it work – trying to build memories.  If that day had been perfect, chances are I would not remember it at all.  It is the looking back on the perfect day gone awry that makes us chuckle.

To Knoxville, I thank you for your hospitality.  To Shanghai, I wish all of the 100 million visitors who attend your World’s Fair enjoy it as much, and not a bit more, than I enjoyed my World’s Fair experience.

In typical fashion, Nike gets all of us pumped up for the 2010 World Cup with their latest video.  It features some of the world’s best players including Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, and Wayne Rooney, as well as guest cameos by Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and even Homer Simpson.

Write The Future from Nalden on Vimeo.

I’ve been asked to provide a webinar on social media policy for the good folks at Ragan Communications next week and wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to join us. And yes, I’ve negotiated a bit of a discount for you, so big props to the Ragan folks for knowing the SME readers might want to join in.

The webinar is called, “It’s Our Policy: Social Media Guidelines We Can All Live With.” It will take place Thursday, May 27 from 3-4:15 p.m. ET/12-1:15 p.m. PT. We’ll cover some best practices in writing policies, the various types of policies you should consider when drafting those for your company, special items to consider for regulated industries, privacy, safety and security and more. There will also be a live question and answer period where you can pose your specific issues and I’ll try to be helpful.

The standard price of the webinar is $229 but if you use the links provided on this page you’ll get $20 off. You can also purchase a CD of the webinar if you can’t attend it live.

I do hope you’ll join us. If you are writing or need to write social media-specific policies for your company, you’ll get something out of this you can use.

And thanks to Ragan Communications for hosting and inviting me to be a part of the event.