Collective Thoughts

Social Media is Not Dead. It’s Run by Cats.

Humans think they’re such hot stuff.  Them and their opposable thumbs.  I’ll have you know that us felines are really the strength behind Twitter.  Don’t believe me? Apparently the San Diego News Network does:

Brians_cat and PETCO haz a conversation

That’s right folks.  PETCO pays Natalie Davis, Director of E-commerce to talk to pets.  We even convinced her to get her cat Leo to start getting up and running on Twitter.

We cats are better equipped than you humans for taking over the social media sphere anyway.  Here’s just a few signs of our prowess:

1. The expression is LOLCats.  Ever see a LOLhuman? Pssh.
2. Cats sleep 18 hours a day, so we’re better rested.  Besides, humans are always too busy “working” to mess with Twitter as we cat professionals are.
3. We outrank you.  @Sockington has 3/4 of a million users following him on Twitter.  Ashton Kutcher and CNN are clearly fronts for the feline empire.
4. Twitter is a bird.  Cats catch birds.  We’ve caught you.

Image credit: Twitkitteh

This has been an informal update by Brian’s Cat – if you want more informal thoughts, follow me on Twitter.

Posted in Rants | 9 Comments »

Is Being Social Online Enough?

Although I have had these thoughts about this many times before, I never placed pen to paper to convey my thoughts. I began this version of this post while sitting outside of Laidoffcamp/Freelancecamp in Miami. I was watching the afternoon monsoons about to come down on me. I was sitting alone in a garden of hedges and walkways watching the passersby. Everyone seemed to be busy buzzing by. The cool breeze just washed in from the approaching rain. I can feel the electricity in the air. The energy created by everyone that attends social gathering of large magnitude is incredible. The energy feels like the change in the air as a storm rolls in. I also have a sad disturbing feeling of what is about to happen.

photo credit miamisunpost.com

Unfortunately in the past once the excitement of the event dissipated the attendees often fall back into their daily grind and lose their zeal. The positive drive is taken away by the dream stealers and opposing elements. The mega builders in the MLM industry have spoke of this for as long as I can remember. They were always looking for a paradigm shift. Looking forward from where I am at, has technology brought this downward spiral to an end? Can the mix of an online presence keep the energy going?

Let’s look at online social networking; we have so many places to congregate. Every day I am approached by someone new with an idea or thought on how to make communication online one step easier. Although most of the concepts are spun over and over, often there is a spark of true imagination that pops into view. The main downfall of so many ideas is the lack of true open communication. It is difficult to pass the same feelings over phone, let alone a keyboard. If you lack communicative skills you may feel that your voice may never be heard. Video and webcams do help to transfer the visual imagery to a point. If there was a way to capture the intimate relation of one on one conversation like that of being in person, online long distance communications would also see a parabolic leap in growth.

I am one of the biggest supporters of both online and offline congregative tools. Conferences and Barcamps are great for connecting with your online social graph, but only occur over large periods of time. Refresh Miami and Social Media Club of South Florida hold monthly meetings that I have attended for close to a year now. (Both organizations are opening events, some may be near you.) Before that I was also very active in the local Meetups that are held here in South Florida. Now there has been a great surge in Tweetups popping up all around me. Some are even specializing these Tweetup events. Craig of Worst Pizza has taken this idea even further with starting Pizza Tweetups. These events are great sources of support for your online endeavors. They help you to cement your online bonds with the brick and mortar world that many of us are quickly leaving behind. Plus they are a great source to build your social graph with users that would ordinarily not friend you till a physical connection has been made.

I wrote this post to quite some thoughts on what needs to be addressed about online and offline social networking. Do we really need that physical connection to build our networks or is a virtual world something that we are all going to embrace in the future? Tell me, do we really need to attend offline events to grow? Are these events something that will advance the online world? Are these offline events dragging back the innovations that we need to make the next leap forward to a truly virtual world?

What is your view?

Posted in Rants | 9 Comments »

Gender Differences In Social Media Participation

“I think women put more emphasis, focus and time into their social media browsing than men. Men seem to be very ADHD with social media, jumping from news story to story, whereas I’ve noticed women take slow time and incorporate what they read more into their daily life and lifestyle planning.”

Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal

A great thing about social media marketing is that you literally get a first-rate, hands-on education in human anthropology. You learn what moves people. You learn what people want. You learn how to tug at heartstrings and drive emotions to their limit. You learn how different groups of people respond to different types of content. It’s simultaneously liberating and disillusioning to discover how predictable groups of people behave.

[Note: for the rest of this article, I err on the side of gross generalization. This is necessary to make a general point. There are definitely exceptions to the rules and it's your duty to identify them;-)]

One of the more interesting observations I’ve made over the years as a participant in social media is how differently males and females participate. It is easy to see a strong analogy between the playing field of social media and the playground from elementary school. On the one hand, you have the males who are driven by aggressive competition, accomplishment and the highs of “victory” (football at recess/24 hour digg voting marathon). Sure, there are some females who join in, but for the most part, the aggressive side of social media is dominated by men. Just like how dodgeball games during gym class were usually dominated by the boys. Females, on the other hand, tend towards activities that are cooperative, non-aggressive and friendship building. As I recall, during recess in elementary school, the girls would teach other things like hand-clapping rhymes or sit around in a circle making bracelets (or each others hair). Not all the girls, but most of them. I think the same holds true in social media. Women are looking for like minded people to learn from, to share with, and to build lasting friendships.

Men use social media as a means to some other end. Men want success. Men want traffic. Men want money. Men want to be the best. Men compete to be the best at social media like athletes compete to be the best at their sport. Just like there are superstars in sports, social media sites like Digg and Reddit also have clearly identifiable superstars (and their fanboys).

Now, it would be silly to say that women don’t want things like traffic, money, success, etc. But the point is just that most men are using social media for something other than the social interaction. Women seem to actually use social media as an end in itself: they use it for socializing.

So whereas men use social media to accomplish things and gain status, women seem to use it for “deeper” stuff like building genuine relationships, solidarity and discussions about life (which men might call gossip;-) In my experience, women are much less likely to hit you with a dozen social media vote requests in a single day. I have half a dozen guys bombard me everyday via AIM with non-stop vote requests without even stopping to say hi. Women, in my experience, like to drive real conversation. They actually take the time to read stories and then tell me what they thought rather than just skimming headlines and voting blindly. Women are energized by compliments and pats on the back and affirmation. In other words, women are more social with their social media because in reality, women are more fundamentally social beings.

Women also tend to be more principled in their social media voting. This can be good and bad. The good is that if I send a story to a woman and ask for a thumbs up on StumbleUpon, if she actually likes the story she is more inclined to take the initiative and submit it to other social media sites she is active on (Twitter, Kirsty, etc.) The bad is that women are much, much, much more likely to secretly downvote a request if they don’t like the story (or the person who wrote it). As an example, I’ve stopped sending any “Hot Women” articles to my female social media friends because I have strong empirical evidence that the majority of them end up downvoting. This is not surprising at all and I should have figured it out much earlier given what I know about my wife;-)

Observations

So before getting to a list of some observations and a handful of insightful quotes from my social media friends, let’s draw a conclusion. I believe that the social media professional will be much more successful at his or her craft when taking gender differences seriously. The key, really, is to understand the needs of each person you interact with. Offer them something in return. But don’t assume that everyone wants the same thing. Take the time to understand what motivates each of your social media friends and go above and beyond the call of duty to interact with them so that when it comes time that you need something, they are eager to help. And remember that it’s very easy to wear out a social relationship of any kind (marriage, friendship, business) if one party is not having his or her needs met or if one person is carrying too much of the burden.

Before ending this article I’ve included a few more general observations that come from various social media friends who chose to be anonymous. We’d love for you to add your thoughts in the comments.

• Men often make accounts that look like attractive females for pragmatic purposes (to motivate more action by other social media participants)
• Women tend to use Twitter more for chatting and real conversations
• Men tend to use Twitter more for marketing
• Women are more likely to forward chain emails
• Men are more comfortable with manipulative behavior so long as it helps them acheive their goals
• Women like sites that facilitate discussions about life and offer a peek into others’ lives
• With men, social cooperation comes down to swapping favors
• With women, you have to earn social cooperation through relationship

Quotes from Social Media Users

More men are using it for networking and establishing authority/credibility. More women are using it to share their lives and to connect with other women who share the same values or similar experiences. Women are using it more for solidarity. They’re social beings, and social media has given them the amazing capability to find like-minded women instead of feeling judged and misunderstood by the women in their immediate families/geographic regions.

- Daniel Dessinger

Social media is a lot like relationships in real life – men tend to want information and to give out info if it will help them get ahead or achieve a goal. Women tend to take it a step further and are more willing to connect on a deeper level.

- Charlene Polanosky, Essential Keystrokes

Men seem to promote more, it’s more “about me,” whereas women are natural networkers and seek cooperation and participation. Don’t throw tomatoes at me, I’m just making a generalization in what I’ve obserrved.

- Brian Wallace, NowSourcing

I think women socialize more, but they both use it too boost careers and brands.

- Deb Ng, Freelance Writing Jobs

Women want to be popular or communicate, men want to make money or be considered cool.

- David Peralty, BrandingDavid.com

The biggest difference is that women are actually more naturally atuned to the whole social aspect, and tend to spend more time interacting and consuming the content, whereas men tend to be more fly by visitors and less interactive.

- Elise from Cell Phones .org

I’d say women are more drawn to social services like facebook and twitter, where communication is the feature as opposed to something like digg where there’s a competition like atmosphere.

- JD Arney

I think men want success from their participation on the social media. I think women mostly want to be social and have fun.

- HART, http://twitter.com/PetLvr

Posted in Social Media | 16 Comments »

Social Media Housekeeping for 2009

You may have noticed a few small social changes that we’ve instituted for 2009:

Twitter.  We’ve been quiet on this front for far too long.

While it won’t be all of us running the account, expect some solid updates from @nowsourcing and @thegypsy.  Why follow? Well, we have some interesting things to say and will also be sharing great links collectively.

Google Friend Connect. You might call us Collective Forgetfulness if we didn’t have the latest and greatest blog widget from our friends at Google.  So we’ve added Google Friend Connect.  It’s an interesting concept, and will be fun to see what people make of it beyond the simple “here are the friends that like my site.”

MyBlogLog.  You might say that this is old news, but we updated the MBL widget to the more sleek, iPhone looking UI.  What’s really interesting about MBL is the community/site itself beyond the widget.  Personally, I’ve liked the service for a long time because it allows you to visually see who your recent visitors are – a different crack at the data vs. a more 1’s and 0’s Google Analytics approach.

What about you – what have you done to make your blog more social for 2009?

Posted in Social Media | 5 Comments »

Using Social Media as a Support Group

Image by gem fountain

It seems that now-a-days we can do most things online… clothes shopping, looking for Colleges, buying Holiday gifts, doing our banking… pretty much anything.

But there is something else we can do online….. something much more personal and sacred. We can even work on mending our inside pain and turmoil.

Before I get deeper into this topic I want to show why finding support groups online can make a lot of sense.

The Definition of a Support Group

Support Group – A support Group is a group of people who support each other over a problem they all share.

The Definition of an Online Community

Online Community – A group of people online who share a common interest.

Wow, both of those definitions sound very similar, don’t they?

An online community and support group are on the same type of idea. They have a common ground…. a common interest. And, the group builds from there. Because of this it makes sense that support groups would work online…. that they not only work, but they thrive.

A support group is usually a group centered around a very specific issue. This group of people usually come together to give and receive both emotional and practical support. When people come to a support group it is because they need to be with people…. to surround themselves with people that understand, have been through or are going through the same thing and can offer help, suggestions or just a shoulder to cry on. Most people aren’t looking for anything to be solved, but just to be with others in a similar situation can offer a sense of belonging and get them through the difficult time they are going through. Knowing that everyone who is part of this support group share the same problem and that they are not alone can be extremely helpful.

Social Media and online communities can be so helpful when it comes to support. I have shared issues of mine on my blog and the community has lent their support. I have on many occasions mentioned an issue I was having while communicating on Twitter and my friends their didn’t let me down.

But, what if you needed more? What if you need more specific help?

I love that my friends and colleagues want to lend their support. They want me to know that they care. But, what if i wanted to communicate with someone with my same problem…. a non-judgmental person that I can freely say what’s on my mind about our shared problem? Could that happen?

Sure, that’s where online support groups come in. Your friends and family are wonderful support, but when you need more specific help such as support on a specific topic…. support groups offer a safe environment for mutual support and encouragement. In order for a support group to work, online or in reality, you must feel safe.

What to look for in an Online Support Group / Community

• Needs to be User Friendly
• Easy Navigation – No confusion
• Clean and bright

  This Online Support Group / Community is The Virtual Wellness Community. It is a great website that provides free support,
  education and hope to people with cancer and their loved ones. It is beautiful, easy to navigate, completely user-friendly even for the casual computer users. Their Online Community has plenty of articles to educate yourself on Cancer as well as inspiration and hope. It is a great place to meet other people with Cancer as well as loved ones who are dealing with the pain of someone they love having Cancer. People coming to this community are looking for support, friendship and strength. It truly looks like a safe place to be….. exactly how a support group / community should.
  
  
  

• Clear Guidelines on how to use the support group.
• Easy to follow as well as easy to find online support group rules.

  This Online Lupus Support Group is a perfect example of how to make sure make sure the online support group guidelines are right out in the open so that there is no question as to what the rules are. This way all support group community members are following the rules and not making any members feel unwelcome or unsafe.
  
  

• Message Boards / Forums and Chats – This is a very important part of support groups. Forums and message boards are where community members can ask questions, get advice and others can offer suggestions and help. Even though the conversation is not real time, forums and message boards can be extremely beneficial. And, for many Online Communities the only conversation that can happen on the website are via message boards and forums. Chats are real time and also a great benefit. Make sure there is some kind of moderator in the chat…. sometimes sensitive and difficult conversations can get out of hand. It is helpful (and safer) to have a non-judgmental third-party moderator on hand.

  
  
  Look for a message board that have plenty of activity….. like this Eating Disorder Forum above. The more activity there is then you know it is an established forum and that the community enjoys it.

• Links to important information and Websites. Forums and discussions are wonderful. But, you also need to understand the issues you are having…. why you are having them, what are the symptoms, when will they go away, etc. Good Support Groups and Communities should have plenty of information for you at your fingertips. Or, at least point you in the right direction.
• Find a Doctor - These online support groups should also offer you the resources you need to help you find a Support Group in your area and a Doctor if need be. Online Support Groups are great, but sometimes you need a real person, real hug, real conversation…. reality.

  

These are just three examples of great Online Support Groups. But, there are so many more. And, most that I have found are doing an awesome job at combining Social Media and Community Support.

Twitter as a Support Group

Twitter has yet to add a group function to their Microblogging site. It’s coming…. at least that is what we are promised. But, as of yet…. nothing. There are an amazing amount of people on Twitter….. many with issues. This would be a great place to have groups. And, with Twitter the groups can have conversations real-time. As close to reality conversation with many people as it gets.

People use 3rd-party Twitter tools to create groups…. such as TwittGroups, GroupTweet, Hashtags (Hashtags website wasn’t working during the time of this post), TweetParty, Twitter Groups, TwittBot . Nothing that looked like it would be worthy of a support group….. except TwittGroups. Not spectacular, but it is as close as it gets as far as Support Group worthy on Twitter.

Searching for support groups on Twitter was not easy. I assume it will get much easier once Twitter finally adds group capability to the Twitter website. But, until then it is going to continue to be a struggle. I understand that these 3rd party Twitter Groups that I mentioned above have the ability to create Twitter groups, but why can’t I search the groups to find one that will match with my needs? Maybe I was doing something wrong or it wasn’t clearly visible on their sites, but I couldn’t find it. However, TwittGroups was the only place I could search the Twitter Groups easily. You can choose to either look through all their Twitter Groups , look through all the popular Twitter Groups, or do a search of Twitter Groups to see what is a good fit.

Once you find a group that you find interesting…. click on the link. You will find something that looks like this:

This is the Homeschool Twitter Group. They have a nice group going on, I must say. If you scroll down on this page you will see all the members. I’m not going to put an image of that here….. they have a lot of members. But, if you click on the link that says, "Show Members" it shows you all the members of this Homeschool Twitter Group.

Now go back to the main page again that looks like the above screen…. the main page of the Twitter Group you picked. Click on "TweetGrid"
and you will get the tweets having to do with your support group. Here is what the TweetGrid of what the homeschool support group looks like….

This is where you can see all the conversations having to do with your support group and the tweets done by the members of the support group.

Now, go back to the home Support Group page again and click on "Post Tweet" This is where you will post a tweet to the group. Doing it this way will label your tweet perfectly so that it appears in the TweetGrid.

Well, there ya go. Support groups can be a wonderful and helpful thing. I’ve used them several times to help with issues…. I totally agree with support groups. With Social Media it opens up the mediums that you can get support from… take advantage of that. It can be a wonderful thing.

Note: Please keep in mind that online support should not take the place of medical attention that you should receive from a doctor or professional.

Posted in Social Media | 7 Comments »

Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain: an Interview with Colonel Tribune

With us today is the Daniel Honigman, part of the social media team that’s responsible for Colonel Tribune, a persona formed for the Chicago Tribune. Thanks for joining us.

1- Give us some background about yourself.

My background is in reporting and traditional journalism. Right now, I work as a social media strategist for Tribune Interactive (Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, etc.), where I work on ways to build local and national communities around our content. I also help evangelize the use of Web 2.0 tools in the newsroom.

2 – What was the aha moment at Tribune that lead to the establishment of the Colonel? Is the team full-time dedicated to social media, or is it incorporated with other duties?

When I started with the Chicago Tribune, I looked at people’s touchpoints with the digital brand, and I saw that while there were some traditional ways people could reach the paper, including via e-mail, there was nothing to inspire the local digerati, really.

I thought about Facebook pages, YouTube pages and Twitter, and seeing that someone had already reserved @ChicagoTribune on there — it was an RSS feed — Bill Adee and I decided to create something, and we settled on Robert McCormick, an historic figure in Tribune lore. We built out a persona for the ChicagoTribune.com and, all of a sudden, we had our Colonel.

3 – Is this a fad? Surely there’s a beginning and end to things, but as web ambassadors, does social media seem like a worthy investment for the Chicago Tribune with long-term benefits?

From what we’ve seen, just from a traffic perspective, social media is worth the effort. But I believe that for local news organizations, it’s essential to create one-on-one connections with people in your market. But social media is something that all mainstream media should embrace, because it’s only going to get tougher and more cluttered out there.

4 – How does The Tribune use social media, and do you see it as a threat to your business? Many fear that blogging killed the journalist. Your thoughts?

It’s not a threat to the business. Traditional media has sold on a CPM model, but for mainstream media to survive, it has to think outside the box. As an industry, look for more aggregation.

But for newspapers to survive, they need to ratchet things down for a bit. If anything, blogging has been a shock to the journalism system. But journalists still have skills that many bloggers just don’t have: access and accuracy. They just need to embrace the 24-hour news cycle and, I believe, be format-agnostic.

5 – You’ve had some successes through social media, such as being able to report a bomb threat. Care to elaborate on the experience or share some others?

Just having a line to the social space can bring you all sorts of information that you may not have had before through traditional channels. As reporters cultivate their beats in real life, social media can help them tap into sources and audiences they never knew existed for their work.

The reason the Colonel got the tip, however, is that he has the reputation of a man who knows what’s going on. And if he doesn’t, he can try to find out. Not many people have that sort of connection with their hometown newspapers.

6 – What has the Chicago Tribune’s social media team found to be the best ROI sites for it’s efforts? What sort of strategies seem to work the best/least?

When we find them, we’ll tell you. The great thing about social media is that there’s no one right way to do it. Everyone’s feeling their way around the space right now, and it’ll probably continue to be that way for a while.

7 – Do you use any tools to monitor people submitting their articles to social media? How do you attempt to monitor your brand in social media?

Metrics are the Holy Grail of social media. Right now, I look at referrals, number of friends in different networks, number of brand mentions in different spaces, some direct feedback and the amount of conversation going on — both about the Chicago Tribune and about Colonel Tribune.

8 – Have you had any negative backlash from the self promotion? Example – when looking at the Colonel on Digg, 9 of the last 10 submissions were Chicago Tribune articles. We’ve seen in many cases that if a Digg user only submitted stories from a single source to which they are clearly connected, they would be flagged as a spammer, even if it was Techcrunch, Cracked or Ars Technica. In fact about the only person who can get away with submitting all his own content is Kevin Rose. Comments?

The thing about anything in social bookmarking sites is that if your content is good, it has a good chance get popular. Period.

But it’s not just about the content; you have to find other ways to contribute to these online communities, whether it’s submitting outside content, commenting on other stories or sharing other stories. It’s important to bring something else to the table and to show you’re willing to be a part of the group.

9  – Ok, so who would win in a fight – Colonel Tribune or Colonel Sanders?

Funny story: My girlfriend Mollie’s grandfather opened the first KFCs here in Chicago, so he and Colonel Sanders were good friends, actually. But I still think Colonel Tribune would win.  Colonel Tribune has a pretty big posse, you see.

Thanks again for speaking with us, Daniel!

Posted in Interviews | 1 Comment »

Don’t Be a Mamma Bird – Be an Inspiration!

All too often, I come across blog posts that are simply a regurgitation of some breaking news or someone else’s earlier thoughts.

Shouldn’t a blog be more? I sure think so.

Sure, sure…content is king. But shouldn’t it be original content? As we are nearing the 1 year anniversary of Collective Thoughts, I wanted to share with you a peek into very selective process in finding great bloggers to head it up.  The single most important factor was that each contributor was totally original and the real thing.  You know it when you see it.  That said, here are the aha moment that I had in when reading the work of my esteemed colleagues:

Andy Beard – For me, Andy has had more thought provoking posts than any of the contributors here, so it was really special for me that he’s part of the team. If I had to pick one post there, it would be the Wordpress Masterclass post.  An oldie but goodie, and may show many of you how little you know about Wordpress after all

Brendan Picha – Brendan is also a newcomer, and showed his stuff with a Digg submission that made it to Diggnation!

Dave Harry – While Dave is a relative newcomer to Collective Thoughts, I’ve been a fan of his writing for quite some time.  The Sphinn awards got my attention – great way to get a community buzzing!

Mark Laymon – Mark is quite a character.  For those of you that don’t know him, you probably know of him as the guy that relentlessly throws sheep and pokes you in Facebook.  This post on getting a PDF to the front page will live on forever in my memory.  I’ll bet every commenter on Digg had their jaw to the floor when it happened

Shana Albert – As we all know, everyone loves Shana.  Shana is a rare talent that has an outstanding writing ability to capture the human spirit.  She actually started writing on Collective Thoughts prior to the almost immediate debut of Social Desire.  Would have to say that my favorite post of hers has been how social media is like high school.

Tim Nash – I believe that his name will forever be associated with StumbleUpon. Who can forget the Stumbleupon Algorithm post? No doubt that this was a different thought than the crowd.

What post has been the aha moment for you? We’d love to hear from you.

Posted in Social Media | 3 Comments »

StumbleUpon gets a change of Clothes

StumbleUpon one of the collective thoughts team favourite social media sites has been getting a makeover and the features are slowly being rolled out beyond the beta group according to TechCrunch.

The new features have been slowly being coming along for beta users for a while, these include:

• Expanded use of ratings via the 5 star system
• Revamped Friends system, no more 200 user limit but limitations on friends per day
• 
  New profiling system to identify likely friends

Along with the obvious cosmetic changes, pundits expecting to see new toolbars for Safari and Google Chrome will be disappointed. Few people are suggesting see changes to the amount of stumblers coming to their site most reporting lower numbers but with no official comment it is more likely these come from a decreasing userbase.

Mutual Friends

One of the things not immediate obvious is the way friends are added has changed, you may notice your fans are now called subscribers, and when they subscribe they send a friends request (it appears in your inbox) it is unclear how StumbleUpon plans on handling the thousands of existing fan relationships but at a guess they will simply leave them as they are. However the move has put the site more in line with other social media sites.

Enough to stop Stumbles rot?

So are the new changes enough to stop the rot within StumbleUpon? Over the last six months they have been plagued with bugs in the toolbar, slow site and a significant drop in users are the cosmetic changes enough? Or will StumbleUpon slide perhaps the new “web toolbar” will be the answer? Or perhaps maybe it will take a new buyer?

Posted in Social Media | 8 Comments »

Empathy & Social Media – This Combo could be an Online Business Secret Weapon

Photo by LifeHouseDesign

Empathy is the ability to understand the depth of another person’s feelings. Empathy comes through conversation and building relationships. Empathy is something that our parents and grandparents showed us how to feel, relate, respect and love others. It is very important for any business to have Empathy, but it should not be absent from the Online Business.

Absence of Empathy in an Online Business could cause Failure. That statement might seem ridiculous to you, but it is a strong possibility. And, do you know why? Because empathy earns a potential customer’s trust. Without trust you have no customers. Without Customers…. you have no orders.

Of course, there are other reasons why a customer purchases online. Such as…

• Convenience – not having to leave the house
• Ease – Product is shipped right to your door or to someone
  else’s door if it a gift.
• Out of the ordinary products – Find products that you couldn’t
  easily find locally

But even if an Online Store has the ability to do all three of the above things…. without trust the customer will go elsewhere.

Empathy Builds Trust

Remember, Empathy is the ability to understand the depth of another person’s feelings. Our Local Businesses have been doing this for years…. with Salespeople. The really great salespeople will let you know that he or she cares about what you are going through, the problem that has brought you to their store today, and how they will make sure they make your life easier before you leave their store. If at any point you felt that the store or sales person was untrustworthy or not sincere you would leave. So, his sincerity is extremely important.

The same applies to eCommerce and Online Businesses. But, How do we add empathy into an eCommerce or Online Business? After all, unlike an actual physical place of business an eCommerce business has no face-face contact. How the heck can you hold conversations…. let alone earn their trust through Empathy? How, as an Online Business, do we get customers to realize that we understand them…. that we can relate with what they are going through?

Build a Relationship through Social Media

Social Media is basically online Conversations. These conversations might happen on different mediums, but they happen online. As an Online Business you need to start participating in Social Media activities so that you can build relationships with your potential customers….. so you can build trust.

Let me give you an example of how Social Media can aid in offering Empathy Online…

I’m going to use an example of a desperate mom looking for a colic remedy for her child. If you ever had an infant that suffers from Colic you will know that not only is the baby very uncomfortable, but the baby will express their pain in the form of screaming… screaming that lasts hours. These parents are usually super tired and extremely desperate to find safe and effective help…. quickly!!

Photo by bbaunach

Now, let’s say that this Mom checks online and finds a static website that sells Baby Colic Remedies. If you ever had a baby with colic you know the desperation parents feel to find something that will work…. something that will offer relief to the baby and peace to the parents. But, they also need to trust the vendor to provide a product that they can trust not only to work, but also be safe for their baby. This particular static eCommerce site has very nice pictures of the product, very informative descriptions of what the product does, and a “easy to use” secure online shopping cart. But, the customer still feels unsure whether this particular product is the right one for her baby. She is tired, nervous and she needs to be reassured that this is what she should purchase. She searches for testimonials and she finds them easily on the site, but how does she know these are real testimonials and not false made up ones. She wishes she could speak to a real customer or another mother who went through what she was going through right now…. Someone that could empathize with her.

She remembers that she belongs to a Parent Support Group Online and decides to touch base with them and ask them their thoughts. They point her in the direction of a blog where a “real life mom” writes about her battles with Colic herself. She explains what works and what doesn’t. The Mom blogger shows pictures of her happy baby and tells tales of how horrible it can be to have an uncomfortable and colicky baby. Even though this Mom wasn’t trying to sell anything she earned this desperate woman’s trust. Almost as if they were at a “play group” sharing colic stories and the mom told her to go out and buy “gripe water”. But, they have never met. Instead through Social Media the desperate mommy felt the blogging mommy’s empathy towards what she was going through. And, the desperate mommy went out on a mission to purchase “gripe water” for her baby.

This blogger earns her trust. How? By communicating using Empathy. By being real and with sharing she earned the readers trust.

Now since the original colic website sells “gripe water” that the blogger raved about, I suppose it is possible that the Mom will go back to the original website to make that purchase. But, because the original website couldn’t build the Mom’s trust with empathy it is extremely possible the the first site lost this Mom’s order forever.

If Only the Static Website had a Blog

But, imagine if that original website had a blog. This blog could be written by mothers…. Mothers who have a baby battling colic. Or perhaps a mom that survived the months of her baby having colic and lived to tell her heroic story online. The desperate mom might not have ever left the first website in search of trust… she could have found it right there.

The thing that got the customer was not only “The Word of Mouth” from friends online, but it was the empathy. It was the feeling in the blog post she read… she felt the mom’s desperation from another “human being”. She could relate, she blelieved… She trusted!! It was the human conversation that got her. The relationship. The blogger earned her trust.

Things you can do to add Empathy to your Business

• Add a Blog – First things first… add a blog. Make sure
  to write with Emotion. Be passionate with your writing. If your readers feel your passion, your care, your concern they might become customers and probably will pass around your blog to other people with the same concerns.
• Comment on Blogs in your Niche – Offer advice, tips and answer questions.
• Knowledge-Sharing Communities - (like Yahoo Answers) By participating in these types of communities and answering questions and giving people helpful advice you could eventually come an known expert in your field.
• Forums and Message Boards – Answer people’s questions and offer advice…. this too can lead to becoming a known expert in your field.
• Set up a Twitter Account – Microblogging is a great way to communicate with others in your niche. Again, offer advice and tips. Twitter is also a great way to notify others of new blog posts.
• Set up Instant Messaging on your Website – This way customers can contact you if needed. This is a great way to build trust with potential customers. They can ask you questions and even if they don’t have any for you it lets the customers know that they could contact you if need be.
• Images – Images are great for products, but how about using them to show emotion. Do you sell swimming pool toys? Well instead of only using product pictures…. take pictures of children using the toys…. of laughing and playing with the toys. Create a Flickr account with your business name and post your pictures on there.
• Videos – This is an awesome way to show your readers/clients/customers that you care… that you are real…. that you empathize. Make video of your products being used. Or, produce how to videos on your website. You can even make a weekly video show where you perform a 15 how-to class on your products. The things you can do with video to aid with empathy for a Online Business is almost endless.

I feel that there is no beautiful advertisement in the World that will be as trustworthy as a family member, friend or passionate person who has lived through it. In my opinion Word-of-Mouth trumps regular advertising. If someone real and trustworthy says to me, “Try this Product… It Rocks!!”. Well, then I will probably will be trying that product. However, if an advertisement says, “Try this Product…. it Rocks!!” (this being a different product than what the “word of mouth” suggested) it’s only a possibility I might try the advertised product first.

Empathy is natural…. we’ve been doing it for as long as we realized that other people had emotions just like we do. And, as a business person you need to master this skill. To aid in this ask yourself a few questions:

• If I was the customer how would I be feeling?
• If I was the person arriving at my site… what would I be hoping to see?
• What kind of proof would I want to see to prove that the product I’m selling is the one I need?

Basically, you need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How would they be feeling when they come to you. You need to understand that before being able to offer empathy to them.

Bottom line as a Business Owner you need business. You want more business?? Be empathetic…… do you want a platform to be empathetic and add conversation to your business plan?? Add Social Media. And, most importantly…

Share your experiences, be real and honest, add emotion, be empathetic….. Make a Difference!!

Empathy & Social Media together…. This Combo could be an Online Business Secret Weapon.

Posted in Social Media, Tips & Tricks | 15 Comments »

Google Chrome and a History Lesson

Ah, the great browser wars. For but a moment, we’re magically whisked away to the innocent Internet of days past.

When you could buy Netscape Navigator in a box at a store! For those of you that missed that whole era, you might consider reading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, a great tale of Netscape and Jim Clark, its co-founder. Just to catch you up – Netscape totally dominated the market, that is, until Microsoft came along and started bundling Internet Explorer with windows.

If you go back to 1996, you’ll find Netscape at over 80% domination, with IE not even with 10% of the market (remainder was mostly Mosaic, but that’s a whole other story).

Then came Internet Explorer’s rise to power. (ok, I’m skipping Mosaic, Opera and the like). We see the 90% IE / 10% Netscape mark strike in October 2001.

5 Years. 5 years for the browser war to declare its next victor.

And it sure ain’t over yet, we’ve still got 7 years of history to account for.

Along came something we all now know as Firefox – and going by statistics from TheCounter.com, it took Firefox about 2 years to capture 1% of the browswer market. And we’re talking about 2000-2002, back when there were far fewer people on the web as there are today.

Fast forward to today – Firefox is closing in on 19% of the market share. Mostly Mac (and don’t forget iPhone) based Safari is starting to grow at a nice clip too – over 6%.

Enter Google Chrome. Google is doing a lot of things right with this super secret project that’s now been blogged all over the place. Don’t believe me? Try installing it on your Mac Linux Windows XP / Vista box and going to a site you like. You’ll find that Chrome will load faster than just about anything out there. Granted, my Firefox browser would be faster without all my awesome plugins weighing it down, but Google is really pulling out all the stops.

There are plenty of issues with Chrome – flash issues, bugs, security vulnerabilities, major concerns in its EULA (that are supposedly being addressed).

But here’s the thing.

TGDaily reports that Google Chrome has captured an incredible 1% of the browser market in just nine hours. Ok, let’s consider that the number may be nonsense, non-sustainable, people use multiple browswers,and all other distractors. But remember what we just said. It took Firefox 2 years to get 1%, and that’s when the web population was much smaller in 6 years back.

And it’s got a kickass comic book telling it’s story (must read, by the way).

So what’s different this time? If you read this blog, you know what I’m going to say: social media! The forefront of tech adopters abuzz about the latest and greatest. Chrome came along and gave Opera a wedgie and stole Flock’s lunch money – all before bedtime after it’s first day of school. Not a bad Labor Day. I’m very interested to hear your thoughts about your web browser journey, and if your journey will include Chrome.

Posted in Google | 14 Comments »