For marketers looking for inspiration on what to do on Facebook I can recommend taking a look at Facebook Studio. There you can find cases on Facebook marketing from all over the world.  And I am very proud that the agency where I work, The Viral Company, occupies the top spot among Swedish agencies with most cases accepted to Facebook Studio. Take a look at The Viral Company’s Facebook cases, or check out The Viral Company’s profile on LinkedIn.

Recent events have shown, once again, the importance of good customer service. As consumers now can fight back, companies have yet another incentive to provide good customer service – to prevent viral spread of consumer rants on the Internet.

Truth is, people are pretty nice. People give companies second chances. People want to like the companies they buy products or services from. And, they usually don’t post anything negative or rant about a company without first trying to contact the company to allow them to set things right. It is a last resort. It is only when customer service fails that we really get upset.

However, sometimes it seems many companies have lost the recipe for how to treat customers. Bad customer service practice is far too common. The mojo is missing.

There are of course exceptions, like Zappos, which recently was bought by Amazon. Seth Godin comments on the deal, that a tight relationship with customers was part of what Amazon really paid for.

Zappos’ relationship with customers was built through great customer service. And I really don’t think the recipe to the secret sauce is that complicated. I’d say it’s something like this:

• 1 part Golden Rule -  “do to others what you would like to be done to you”
• Sometimes a little bit of surprise, of the positive kind.

The Golden Rule part isn’t that hard to explain. If you had a problem, you would like to get it fixed, right? Right!

The second part isn’t always necessary, but can be added to tighten the relationship from time to time. Overdelivery, going the extra mile, or just giving something to someone who has been a loyal and profitable customer. This also helps buy some leeway, through the Ethic of reciprocity, if there is a real mess-up sometime. Basically, the rule works in the opposite direction and the customer can accept a mistake, as they too understand that no one is perfect. If they made a mistake, they too would like to get a second chance. But, it requires a good relationship. And companies have learn to make their friends before they need them.

In addition, going the extra mile is what gives word of mouth, what makes people want to talk about a company, product or service.

What would you add to a great recipe for customer service?

It is interesting to see how different rules within businesses shape the way people within them behave. It is even more interesting to see how what these result in over time.

Even though they might have a short term benefit, rules and incentives can hinder a business on a longer perspective. The boundaries an employee has to keep within, the reward systems and internal goals (within customer service for example x number of calls per hour) are not in accordance with higher level goals. It is very hard to provide “world class service” if you have strict rules on what you are allowed to do and what not and can do it only within, say six minutes, if not less.

What a business measures, evaluates and rewards influences…
… how employees act, which influences…
… how clients are treated, which influences…
… how satisfied customers are, which influences…
… how positive they become towards the business, which influences…
… how likely they are to spread positive word of mouth, which influences…
… how well the business will do in the future.

So, what is measured and evaluated within a business is extremely influential on how people act. If you are not rewarded for solving problems, the business will never be able to provide world class service. If you only get x minutes per customer, independently on whether you solve the problem or not, it gets even harder to reach that goal.

The culture within the business is very important for how employees behave, and it is often created by explicit rules within the business, like evaluations and reward systems.

With social media’s leverage effect on word of mouth (both positive and negative) it is now even more important to measure, evaluate and reward the right things – the things that over time can increase word of mouth.These are tough times for many businesses. Word of mouth costs nothing in media buying. But, it still requires efforts and investments to get this “free” marketing. Are you measuring the right things?

It’s not rocket science, but it’s worth thinking about it even more when costs are in focus.

Today was a great day!

After a nice day at work, I went to Daytona Sessions, and listened to, Morris Packer, Katarina Graffman (from Inculture) and Umair Haque (also at Bubblegeneration). A very interesting afternoon, which also included the announcement of the blog awards YABA. After blogging on this blog since early October I am very proud to even have been nominated, and ended up on place 13 out of the 25 nominated in the marketing category. Thanks! =)

After that event, I went to meet the friends I work with on Animasher.com and found out that we were featured on a brazilian site which generated thousands of new visitors, both yesterday and today. Great news again!

On a roll…. =)

The way customers are treated isn’t always the way you’d wish is was.

Sometimes it’s the wrong person in the wrong place. Sometimes it is strict rules about what you can or are allowed to do as employee. And sometimes it’s just a crass focus on costs. The reasons can be many, but the results are missed golden opportunities to create ambassadors for the brand. Possibilities to get customers to talk and recommend the products or services.

All customer contacts a business have are gifts. They are chances to go the extra mile, to really excel in the small details that are exactly what makes people want to talk (what Seth Godin calls “remarkable”), but that doesn’t cost that much.

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

Yes, that Gandhi!

When a business manages to create word of mouth it enters a great positive loop, where happy customers talk about the offer, new customers arrive, and these start talking too.

With the development of new communications channels on the Internet, like email, communities, consumer forums, blogs etc, the effect of word of mouth is multiplied. Customers can spread the word much further, without limitations in time and space. So, now there is an even greater reason to work hard to get customers to talk about the company.

But, as another result of this development, it is now also extremely easy to reach out to non-customers and create the same kind of positive feeling in them as in the ones who are already customers. A business can convey an image of being personal, interested in dialogue and wanting to take care of its customers. An image of a business that is interested in the customer, and not just the bottom line.

So, every time a company interacts with a customer it is a golden opportunity to create something worth talking about. And when someone writes or talks about a company online it is an opportunity to listen, to learn as a company, to engage in conversation.

It is now possible to create word of mouth from people who aren’t even customers (yet). As a bonus, present customers are reinforced in their beliefs that the company cares and wants their best.

And, the best part of all is that it isn’t at all hard to find these opportunities online and take advantage of the incredible leverage that the Internet can give. Offline it is practically impossible to get that leverage on conversations going on… … and it doesn’t scale. Online, it is extremely easy… … and it scales!

So far, not many companies are really taking advantage of this, which makes it even more advantageous for the ones that do!

OfficeMax got a huge success with ElfYourself (not active anymore) around christmas 2008 (193 million visits).

Being an obvious spoof, the site MILFYourself.com is trying to ride that popularity.

It is clear that they have not made the first of Kodak’s two mistakes on the MakeMeSuper campaign. They have managed to keep the viral loop intact – the link you send to friends works fine and they actually do a pretty good job of encouraging the users to send it on to more people as well as providing the link itself, for posting on blogs, communities and so on.

But, they seem to make Kodak’s second mistake too – not enabling people to create satellites of content by offering people to embed the video on other sites. This site is lacking that option too.

Here is my movie. Not the hottest MILF on the block maybe, but pretty decent!

I can’t tell who’s behind the site, except that Nedia Investments seems to hold the copyrights.

Here’s an explanation of the slang term MILF.

CopyBlogger had a nice post, 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter, by Dan Zarella, which Mack on The Viral Garden followed up on, adding his own advice in How I get ReTweets on Twitter.

In short, Dans advice (some with a short comment by me):

1. Call to Action – The words “please” “check out” or “help me” seems to help.

2. Timing – between 9am and 6pm EST seems to work better.

I guess it is the same time interval in other time zones.

3. Links – about 70 % of retweets contains a link.

It feels like I am missing the comparison here. What I would like to see numbers on is how this compares to tweets in general. Retweets most probably have a higher percentage, but how much higher?

4. Social Proof – The likelihood of a tweet being retweeted increases dramatically each time it is retweeted.

This is almost exactly one of the things I wrote about in my previous post about retweets:

“…the retweet also reinforces the meme within the smaller network, as there is probably considerable overlap of connections within it. Receiving the tweet, and the following retweets, reinforces the meme through social proof. More people are paying attention to this particular idea, which makes us more likely to pay attention to it ourselves.”

5. Value – A lot of retweets are “How tos”, news, warnings, freebies and contests.

Mack’s tips are in essence these (comments by me):

1. I have a lot of followers. Which means that more people are going to see my tweets, and that obviously increases the chances of getting RTs.

2. I always link to my own blog posts while linking to other posts. This is done purposely. To me, it seems selfish to only link to my own content…

3. Topic matters. If I link to any post concerning Twitter or Social Media, odds are much higher that it will be RTed.
Context, hitting the right audience with the right message matters.

4. I often get requests from others to RT their post, and try to RT as many as I can. I’m happy to RT the posts as I can, I see it as my way of helping to ‘repay’ these people for RTing my links.
A perfect example of the rule of reciprocity in action.

5. I don’t purposely ‘try’ to get my links RTed.
It’s about valuable content, just like Dan also mentioned.

You should read both Dan’s and Mack’s posts for the fuller picture. Also take a look at Dan’s post on the ReTweetability Metric – connected to what I wrote about a lot of followers and authority.

Retweets are extremely interesting to watch, as they really are memes that have proven themselves to have viral potential.

There is still some time left, so if you want to do something extra, if you don’t have time, or if you actually end up fouling up, forgetting all about it until it’s almost too late, here is a chance to make it up for Valentine’s. It might not get you entirely out of trouble, but it will hopefully cushion your fall.

Animoto has created a little campaign where you can upload images and get your own personal Valentine’s music video greeting. See the promotional example.

This is one of those campaigns (found via TechCrunch) that take advantage of the seasonal event or a specific holiday to create a viral effect. I haven’t tried this one out all the way, so I can’t vouch for it 100%, but I think it might actually work pretty well.

And, it will probably give Animoto a little boost. =)

Ian McKee from The Power of Influence references the “Tech Decision Maker” study stating that 51 % of tech decision makers rely on word of mouth for their decisions.

Interesting to see though is that user generated media (user generated content, consumer generated media, whatever you prefer), relied upon by 28 % of respondents, in many cases also is a form of word of mouth. So, I would say word of mouth is even more important than the study concludes.

Most important in the study was personal experience, which 58 % of respondents considers before a decision.

Today I saw the Make Me Super site which is a campaign site with a funny personalisation theme. This type of campaign is the “older cousin” to the campaigns with only name personalisation I have written about more than once. Basically:

Get a video from a friend, with your own name mysteriously included in the video, and then pass the same clip on to your friends, but with their names in the video.

This one is a bit more advanced and also uses a photo and customized lyrics, as well as the persons sex. The idea for this campaign is brilliant, but Kodak has stumbled badly on the finishing line, and will not be able to reap all the potential benefits of the creative idea.

Mistake 1:
They have included a “Send to friend” possibility, but the link in the mail they send doesn’t work. The movies created don’t load as they should. I have tried with three different computers on two different Internet connections. I always get the same message – “Hmmm… something seems to be wrong with your internet connection”.

Well, it isn’t. Too bad for Kodak.
Try the link yourself (they might have fixed it)

Mistake 2:
There is no possibility to embed just the movie itself. Everybody has to go to the site, and therefore it is impossible to create “satellites of content” that can drive traffic to the site from important Internet hubs where people gather, like Facebook, MySpace, personal blogs etc.

It is a pity you can’t really pick whatever name you want, but there is a very good reason. Even the lyrics are personalised!

If they could just fix the basic requirements to make something go really viral, this would, I am sure! They managed to get the content right, but they have not at all managed to optimize for viral spread by making it as easy as possible to pass on, and embed on other sites.

Anyway, I just had to show this, so here comes the movie I created after working a bit to record it from screen, and uploading it to youtube: