All posts by Evan Hamilton

Dry Erase Girl is Going to Re-convince Executives That There is a “Viral Button”

Marketing

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into marketing – Dry Erase Girl attacks.

If you’re not familiar, follow the link. I won’t claim any superiority here: I absolutely and completely thought this was real, and spread the story. It was clever and well-done, and the creators deserve credit. However, this is a terrible thing for people in the social media space.

Cheapo executives are now going to re-focus on the notion that if you hire the right people and post on Twitter enough, something is guaranteed to be viral.

I’ve been in this position before: “create something viral, Evan, and keep it cheap”. The problem is that you can’t fully predict what will become viral. Sure, there’s more and more science around virality that can increase your chances, but at the end of the day there is still too much chaos to be able to really predict what will go viral (one article states “Mind-opening and emotionally rich articles are more likely to make the most emailed list, as are more practically useful, surprising, and positive articles.” Wait, so you mean GOOD articles?). You can post at 11am, include pretty girls, make sure to make it lo-fi, etc…but you can’t guarantee a hit. Much like a musical hit, it’s part talent and part randomness (or part huge-amounts-of-money, at which point you can’t really call it viral).

Don’t point out Old Spice Guy – I think (thankfully) that most executives saw that there was both a great deal of effort put into this campaign as well as a staggering of the different parts – they were ready for the character not to catch on and to nix the YouTube campaign.

But White-board Girl is the epitome of cheap & viral: written on napkins, shot with a cheap camera, not promoted by celebrities. I wouldn’t be surprised if within minutes of the announcement that she was fake that executives were emailing their underlings saying “do this”.

Am I suggesting that viral content isn’t something we should strive for? Absolutely not. But viral content is fire, fire, fail, fail, aim, aim, fire, fire, fail, MAYBE win. Don’t bet on anything more than that.

Buzz VS Advocacy

Community

bees on honeycombI got into an interesting debate with a coworker about using an iPad (or physical goods/money in general) as a contest prize. I posited that it’s a bad idea as it brings in people from outside your community who don’t care about your product. He pointed out that it doesn’t matter if they’re outsiders – you can generate a lot of buzz with money/prizes. Neither of us is wrong, but this illustrates a common disconnect between creating advocacy and creating buzz through a contest (or any initiative, really).

Buzz is people talking about you.

Buzz can be positive or negative. Buzz is momentum. Buzz is what it sounds like – a bunch of voices talking about your product.

Buzz can definitely be good – people want to be in the loop, and if everyone is talking about something, they want to know about it too.

Buzz can be bad – people can be saying bad things about your product, or buzzing about the buzz-creating campaign itself, not your product. Buzz guarantees conversation, but not what kind.

Advocacy is people who like you talking about you.

Advocacy is people who care about your product talking about it to other people. Actively, without a campaign urging them to.

Advocacy is always good (but not always easy to get). Advocacy may not be as loud as Buzz (though it can be), but it’s far more effective.

Ways to get Buzz:

  • Do something outrageous
  • Do something controversial
  • Give away a lot of money/prizes
  • Get someone well-known to talk about your product

Ways to get Advocacy:

  • Build a fantastic product
  • Show your customers the same respect and support you’d like them to show you
  • Establish relationships: between you and your customers and between customers (people desire validation from others when they like something)
  • Give away something of only of value to your community (so only those that actually like you already get involved)
  • Do something generous for your community

There’s a great slide in this ESSENTIAL deck that says “whether someone can be influenced is as important as the strength of the influencer.” In other words, for all the talk of influencers on the web, it depends on whether the people they’re exerting influence on can actually be influenced. And as the research in the aforementioned deck (and a million other places online) says, people are most influenced by their closest friends. Advocacy (one-to-one, personal) vs Buzz (many-to-many, impersonal).

So the question is not whether prizes are bad or not – the question is whether you’re trying to create Buzz or Advocacy. They seem similar, but they are in fact very different beasts.

Do you agree? What are your examples of successfully getting Buzz or Advocacy?

Photo courtesty of David Blaikie.

Community Managers Should Be Working Towards Unemployment – Community Leadership Summit 2010 Thoughts

Community, Tech

This weekend I attended the Community Leadership Summit in Portland, OR. I got to know Portland a bit, had donuts that I sort of regretted, but most of all I learned a lot. Because of the “un” nature of an unconference, there isn’t a thesis built in from the start. But while the sessions this weekend bloomed out of topics proposed by attendees on the day of, I got the sense of a common thread throughout the discussions.

As Community Managers, we should be working ourselves out of a job.

Thomas Knoll and Miz GinevraFrom Thomas Knoll and Miz Ginevra‘s session suggesting that we’re killing our communities by over-managing them, to the revelation in my session on support vs community that everyone feels like they should and will become one organization, to Andrea Murphy‘s reputation system session generally deciding that they can’t be entirely based on numbers – everyone seemed focus less on how to handle the next tweet that came in than on how to build a community that was sustainable, self-policing, self-motivating and perhaps even (dare I say it?) beyond anyone’s “management”.

It makes sense. Community Manager as a profession is new – it’s not something born out of the tech industry. There have always been community managers, in some shape or form. As I mentioned in my post about the inauguration, Obama is a community manager (he just has a larger community than most of us). The guy who owns Woody’s Cafe in Oakland curates a community of passionate locals who just happen to also drink his coffee. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, embodies community management and makes it the key focus of the company.

The problem is that as a culture we’ve collectively forgotten how to have an honest relationship with our communities, and instead begun to focus on controlling and automating communities.

donut assembly line

The marketing and business innovations that began in the fast food revolution of the fifties have turned our communities from real people into commodities that are pushed through an assembly-line system of targeting, advertising, harassment and gouging. If the customer is requesting support of some sort that is too costly, they’re ignored or dropped from the service. But with the power of the internet as their communication device, people are rebelling.

The answer to this shift isn’t a group of people at your company monitoring a Twitter feed, or some guy handing out stickers at a conference. It’s about bringing real community back into company culture. Even if it means we can’t find a job as a “community manager” anymore.

I’m not writing this post from a place of arrogance. I’m not writing this post from a viewpoint of “I’m right, you’re wrong”. I’m writing this post because this weekend I realized that I am failing horribly at this. I keep getting mired in the details of getting through the tweets of the day or writing a good blog post – instead of focusing on creating a vibrant community. So I’m sharing my confession and realization with you all in the hope that we can all help each other get there. Let’s do this, yeah?

Photo of Miz Ginerva and Thomas Knoll by Ginevra herself.
Donut photo courtesy of Marc Buehler.

Bottom Line: Steve Jobs Shouldn’t Have Lied

Marketing, Tech

I’m pretty Apple-neutral. I adore my iPod (though I specifically bought a 5th generation because I like it better), I use Windows, I own an Android phone but I absolutely appreciate the genius of Apple design.

iphone 4But this time, Apple really screwed up.

Not in building or designing the phone, mind you. I get it – lots of phones have this issue, it’s only affecting a small percentage of people, the media has clearly blown it out of proportion because it’s a juicy story.

But Apple finally got bit in the ass by their “we make the news” policy. And they’re crying about it.

In the press conference this morning, Steve Jobs admitted that they knew about the iPhone4 reception issue before releasing the phone. Again, I understand – all products have flaws, and I don’t really think there is anything wrong about not highlighting them. People can make their own decision based on reviews.

But Steve Jobs specifically told us that this wasn’t an issue. He told us that we were holding the phone wrong. He lied so he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences. That’s just wrong.

My #1 rule for fostering a loyal community: be honest with them as much as you possibly can.

People value honesty incredibly highly – I’ve had to deliver devastating news to customers before, and taking the time to tell them the whole truth of the issue often results in a surprising response: gratefulness. Yes, people often respond to bad news positively if you’re actually honest. There’s so much dishonesty in the world (especially the corporate world) that people are just relieved to know what’s going on. Ever had a mysterious ailment? If you’re anything like me, what’s worse than being sick or hurt is not knowing what it is or how bad it is. We, as humans, want the truth.

Apple could have saved money and face by being honest, at least once the initial reports came out.

Had they noticed the buzz in the first week they could have simply announced (hell, via Twitter if they had an account): “Yes, we’re aware of this. Yes, it’s a problem. Most phones have it, it should only affect a small percentage of calls and people.” You know what? Most people probably would have been fine with that. And if they weren’t? Offer free bumper cases to people who came in and requested them. It’d still save a lot more money than shipping them out to people (many of whom probably haven’t experienced this issue, but will ask for a case because of all the hoopla).

In short: even Apple’s might can be damaged by dishonesty. I’m impressed that Apple is actually admitting the truth and listening for once. I hope they keep it up (and their stockholders should too).

Photo courtesy of mkuma443.

Comparing Developer Blogs

Community, Tech

I’ve been meaning to write about my new position as Community Manager at UserVoice, but there’s simply been so many exciting projects to do I haven’t had a chance.

One of those projects has been evaluating the possibility of starting a UserVoice developer blog to supplement the existing UserVoice blog. Not being a developer, I decided to do a little comparison of some developer blogs to see if there were any trends. As I asked folks for suggestions on Twitter, I figured I’d pay it forward and post the results here.

FacebookMozillaWordPressSkypeFlickrAndroidShopifyGitHub
Feature and Technology ReleaseYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Beta Release and/or PreviewsNoYesYesNoYesYesYesYes
Related External NewsNoYesNoNoNoNoNoNo
Tips & TricksNoNoNoYesNoYesYesNo
Wiki or Knowledge BaseYesYesYesYesYesYesNoNo
Change LogYesNoNoNoNoNoYesYes
StatusNoNoNoYesNoNoNoYes
Video DemosNoYesYesYesNoYesYesNo
Community Participation and/or EventsNoYesYesNoNoYesYesYes
Public RelationsYesYesYesYesNoYesNoNo
PolicyYesNoNoNoNoNoNoNo
InterviewsNoNoNoNoYesNoYesNo

Hope this is somehow useful for others out there.

Disclaimer: This is by no means exhaustive, accurate, or up to date. This is simply my interpretation on a specific date of a selection of sites provided to me by folks. Try not to read into it too much, really.