Newegg, my favorite online store for electronics (well, if eBay doesn’t have what I’m looking for), runs informal online polls. The current one [note: this link will be wrong whenever Newegg posts its next poll]:

What kind of Product information is most important to you when making a purchasing decision?

* Images
* Product Specifications
* Manufacturer Content: manuals, installation guides
* Product Overview & Highlights
* Buying Guide
* Other Customer Reviews
* Additional Content Regarding the Product
* I love your current product page

Of the 4,100 people who voted, 40% say the product specs are the most important info, followed by 30% who say customer reviews are. The rest of the results are in single digits, except for the 15% who responded that they love the current page.

Granted this is an unmonitored, game-able online poll. In fact, I gamed it a bit by voting for customer reviews, even though the product specs are usually my first criterion: If I need a male-male USB cable, I don’t care how good the reviews are for a female-female USB cable. On the other hand, if the specs say that one monitor has a lower refresh rate than another, but customer reviews say that the lower refresh rate isn’t apparent when playing games, the customer reviews will be the decisive factor for me. And I do love Newegg’s current product page. So, faced with having to pick just one, I decided to encourage Newegg to continue featuring customer reviews.

(By the way, did I ever mention that the Tenth Anniversary edition of Cluetrain came out a couple of weeks ago, with new chapters by each of the authors and with comments from some Highly Respected Individuals?

[Tags: marketing cluetrain ]

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As Cluetrain’s 10th Anniversary Edition launches, it seems appropriate to note that today I received a notice that the Australian Central Credit Union is now using Consona customer relationship management solutions to overcome its fear of intimacy:

Today, member intimacy is now a core component of ACCU’s competitive advantage, and the Consona CRM solution allows ACCU to:

• View members’ holdings and interactions across all channels of the organization at a glance;

• Easily locate or compose customized documents and correspondence in order to respond to an enquiry or provide customer guidance;

• Reduce and streamline manual and semi-manual work processes, enhancing productivity and providing a more effective audit trail functionality; and

• Expand its business strategy to adopt an integrated advice model and link members to personalized products and services.

By the way, tonight Doc and I are going to be interviewed by Jonathan Zittrain about Cluetrain. You’re invited: 6pm, Austin Hall. [Tags: cluetrain markting crm vrm ]

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The Berkman Center is putting on a little book launch for the tenth anniversary edition of Cluetrain. Doc and I will be interviewed by the estimable Jonathan Zittrain on the topic “Cluetrain at 10: So How’s Utopia Working Out for Ya?” at 6pm, Tuesday, June 16, at Austin East at Harvard Law [map.

If you can’t make it, or if you’ll only show up if there’s pizza (there isn’t), it’s being webcast.

BTW, the tenth anniversary edition has the complete original text (available here for free), as well as new chapters by each of the four authors, plus an intro to the intro by me, plus articles by Dan Gillmor, Jake McGee, and J.P. Rangaswami.

[Tags: cluetrain ]

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Q: How do you define social media at Whirlpool?
Brian Synder: It has to be defined separately for each area, and we tie it back to business objectives. We track share of voice and favorability. On customer service, we do interesting text mining.
Lee Aase (Mayo Clinic): We use the free tools that are available. “The need for measurement varies inversely with the amount of money you spend on it.” We use the measurement tools to prove the value of what we’re doing.

Q: Your biggest challenge?
Marcel Lebrun (Radian6): We only measure if there’s a practical purpose. Social media are now multi-purpose. We use social media for every possible purpose. So, it’s disrupting everything in the enterprise that has to do with reaching out to customers. But those different practices have different business goals and thus different needs for measurement.

Q: Where it’s going?
Marcel: In the past six months, we’ve gone from explaining what social media is, to businesses understanding that their brand is the sum of all the conversations about it.

[Missed some. Sorry]

Q: How do you measure influencers for a brand?
Marcel: We integrate a bunch of digital breadcrumbs and social metrics. We measure things like how often a person talks about a subject, how much comments, how many unique comments, inbound links, which ones of those are also talking about that topic. Influence is very topic-centric. You sometimes want to see total reach, and sometimes you just want to find the topic geeks.

Q: How do you determine sentiment?
Brian: Synergy1 has humans reading the posts. The Tensity program automates this.
Lee: We eyeball it. And we’re looking for the really positive ones so we can spread the word and engage.
Brian: We look to engage by actually talking about product issues. E.g., an unhappy customer was tweeting about a product arriving damaged three times. We talked with him and redesigned the packaging based on his suggestions. We’ve taught some of our customer care phone folks how to engage via social media.
Marcel: The bulk of brands are at the listen stage. But Dell has a full blogger outreach team, focused on different kinds of users. The measure quantitatively and qualitatively (e.g., stories).

Marcel: The fastest way to get a new feature into a product is to tweet it. The developers get excited. They like being in touch.

[Tags: nms09 marketing twitter pr social_media cluetrain ]

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Marc Monseau (Johnson & Johnson): 50% of people change their behavior based on the medical advice they read on line. And most people are looking for info from other people like themselves. But that info isn’t always accurate. That means that the healthcare industry has an obligation to get out into the online world to present accurate info. We have lots of information, and we are companies of relationships: We have close relations with physician groups, patient groups, advocacy groups, gov’t organizations. We can tap into those resources of information and relations. E.g., we have an ADD product. The best info patients receive often come from other parents. at ADHD Moms at Facebook, there’s info, but also the possibility of linking to other patients. We set it up, but it’s unbranded.

Virginia Cox (Consumer Healthcare Products Association) gives an example: Teens getting high on cough medicine. There were 200 videos on YouTube about how to get high that way. So, we used social media to build awareness among mothers. We were completely transparent about who we are. Another example: We recruited five moms because people want to hear from other people like them. We put it on Gather and then on Facebook. We wanted to have them talking. It meant giving up control over what they’re saying.

Earl Whipple (AstraZeneca) says that while you want to provide accurate information, you don’t want to encroach on the physician-client relationship. You also have to be mindful of gov’t regulations, of course. He also notes that the search results are more often coming from bloggers than from sites of credentialed providers. The most controversial posts get pulled up first, frequently, and many people assume that those are the most reliable. Therefore, the question isn’t what’s the risk of engaging in the new social media space; the question is what’s the risk of not engaging.

Q: How are things changing? How authentic can you be?
Earl: The concept of spokespeople is now laughable. People want to hear directly from the content area expert.
Marc: You can be authentic while talking about highly regulated products by being transparent about what you can talk about and what you can’t. People understand we’re under limitations. And we can at least direct the traffic to the right place.

Q: Info across a global world?
Earl: When we put out information, we include who the information is intended for. It’s an unbounded environment.

Q: What is it that you can’t tell people because of regs?
Marc: The FDA limits what pharmas can say about approved products. If people notice a new use for a product, you have to go back to the script and say what’s on the product label. It doesn’t prevent you from engaging. But you can’t get into a detailed conversation about unapproved uses. And if you come across someone who’s had a problem with the product, you have to report that back.
Virginia: There are strict regulations around advertising. Companies have to be careful about what counts as advertising.
Earl: There are many unanswered issues. E.g., if you’re in a genuine dialog and someone brings up an unapproved use, what exactly is your responsibility?

Q: How do you monitor the Five Moms site, for example?
Virginia: We don’t have to monitor it for content. The Moms respond on their own. But we are required to monitor it for adverse reports, etc.

Q: What should all students know about social media and health if their in the communications field?
Virginia:

From the Five Moms Site:

Tips to monitor your kids online.

* Make sure that your children are never online without your permission.
* Be clear with your kids about your rules on Internet use at home and outside of the home.
* Place your computer in an area of the house where you can easily supervise their Internet activity.
* Ask your children about who they talk to and what activities they do online.
* Use parental filters to block access to questionable sites.
* Build an open and trusting relationship with your kids about their online use.

The last point is an unintentional punchline. [Tags: nms09 pr marketing health_care pharmaceuticals social_media social_netowrking cluetrain ]

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Jeneane’s got a great post for businesses that think they’re playing well in the social media sandbox. She asks: You’re playing, but are you playing jazz?

[Tags: social_media marketing cluetrain business web_2.0 ]

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There’s a really interesting discussion going on at BoingBoing gadgets about the relationship between Wired Magazine and Wired.com. Chris Anderson, the editor of the mag, who turned it off its path of Rich Nerd Fetishism, and has made it interesting and important again, is diving in. It’s great to see this sort of discussion done in public.

[Tags: wired media ]

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Dell has launched Della, an attempt to market to women that is an unconscious exhibit of what Dell thinks about women.

I’m looking foward to Delltoids, its site for manly men.

[Tags: cluetrain marketing ]

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To me, the coolest thing about WhiteHouse.gov going all social media on us is not that it shows that the White House knows about this stuff, or even that it understands that we now want the news to come to us. It’s that at the White House Facebook page, the comments are turned on.

I do understand why the WhiteHouse.gov site has been reluctant to allow us to leave comments on the official site. Oh, sure, you can fill out a form and submit it, but this knowingly commits the Fallacy of Scale, i.e., believing that anyone is going to read your message. We want at least to be able to read one another’s messages. But, I assume the staff is afraid that open commenting on White House blog posts will enable situations that are sticky beyond escape. What do you do when people get racist, anti-Muslim, and all around stupid? There are answers, but none are as good (from the White House media point of view) as not enabling the problem in the first place.

So, now WhiteHouse.gov is cross posting to its Facebook page. If you want to comment, go there. Because it’s not the White House’s site, trashy comments don’t littering the White House lawn. Facebook allows WhiteHouse.gov to distance itself sufficiently from the commenters to enable commenting. It’s a great step forward.

The next step: WhiteHouse.gov should respond to some of the comments, either in the comments area or in blog posts themselves.

Meanwhile: Well done, WhiteHouse.gov! Well done.

[Tags: white_house whitehouse.gov egov e-gov cluetrain e-government blogging facebook ]

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Chris Locke reflects on Cluetrain then and now. Except “reflects” is way too sober a word. Funny and heartfelt.

[Tags: cluetrain christopher_locke marketing business ]

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