Social Media Marketing Solution for Small Businesses

3 Tips to Marketing in Facebook

2011-09-13T14:34:00.000-04:00

There's a report today from Social Media Quickstarter that reveals 10 very interesting (if not staggering statistics) about consumer behavior in Facebook. The independent study, done through CMB Consumer Pulse under the sponsorship of Constant Contact, asked 1,491 respondents who are at least 18 years old their use of social media through a 15-minute online questionnaire fielded in January 2011.

What's particularly striking among the findings was not how widespread the use of Facebook is, but just how engaged people are with the site. Of adults 18+ who are online, over half (52%) spend at least an hour every week on Facebook. For the younger segment-- that is folks between 18 and 35-- this figure was significantly higher at 70%. This one may be obvious but if you're a local business, organization, or cause that is not in Facebook today, it is imperative that you create a presence for your entity right away, and start cultivating, interacting, and engaging with your community.

The other interesting finding was that among those who use Facebook, close to half (45%) spent their time reading their news feeds, and much less time searching for people (26%); sending emails (20%); playing games (17%); and visiting fan pages (14%). The news feed is clearly where the action is (no surprise there) and this may be a function of the fact that about half of users (49%) say that they spend their time creating content and posting on walls. The implication here is that if you're a local business wanting to generate more views on your page, gain additional fans, increase conversion, or drive physical traffic to your place of business, it is critical to gain as much exposure as you can on the news feeds because that's where most everybody is.

Here are three ideas on how to do that:

1. Offer remarkable products or experiences.

This is point zero where all begins. Without something remarkable to offer customers for them to experience, any business would not be referable. This is a given. Are you "wow-ing" customers? What one or two things can you change in the customer experience that's easily talked about or shared? Oftentimes, customers service represents low-hanging fruit and handling customer complaints or negative feedback better can often lead to wonderful customer experiences worthy of sharing.

2. Make it easy for them to find your page and become a fan.

Businesses who have at least 25 fans get to specify a user name for their page, giving the page a more user-friendly URL that can easily be remembered by customers (e.g., www.facebook.com/businessname). So if you have just created a page, one of your immediate goals needs to be getting at least 25 customers to like it. The whole point of having a custom Facebook URL is so that customers can easily remember it and, hence, be able to find it when they're on Facebook. Regardless of whether you have one or not, the one thing to remember is to make it easy for customers to navigate to the page in Facebook. Do you have a link to this page on your website, for example, with an invitation to become a fan of your business? How about your email signature? Have you thought about embedding it in your sales receipts? What about other touch points?

3. Provide tools to encourage them to share their experiences and stories about your business to friends.

According to the study, 3 in 5 (or about 56%) of users say they are more likely to recommend a brand to friends after becoming fans. These recommendations can happen "offline" but to let it end at that would be a wasted opportunity to get the word out about your business, and have it spread. Indeed, relying on word-of-mouth to happen is not the same as making it happen. You ought to have some tools or mechanism in place on your page that empowers and enables fans to go from a casual like, to actually writing a posting about how great your business is that gives it additional exposure on the news feed. Done well, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle: users see friends' recommendations about your business, they try your remarkable product or service, they become fans and consequently recommend it or refer it to friends. Of course, this is overly simplistic, but you get the picture.

In short, be remarkable; link or direct customers to your page; and give them tools to recommend and refer your business to friends.

What do you think? Have ideas on your how to market better through Facebook? Let us know.

How To Make the Most Out of Your Facebook Page

2011-09-12T15:07:00.003-04:00

So you've set up a Facebook page for your business, now what?

With the dramatic growth in popularity of social media tools like Facebook, people are increasingly sharing their opinions with friends about nearly everything-- including their experiences at local businesses like yours. Social Raves capitalizes on this trend by helping local businesses capture, crystallize, and channel customer recommendations into powerful word-of-mouth marketing.

If your business relies heavily on word-of-mouth and referrals, the number one challenge you have is not only to get the word out but to have it spread. You’ve probably tried newspaper ads, direct mail, yellow pages, online marketing, email, and maybe even radio or TV, and found that these can get expensive, and difficult to gauge for effectiveness.

Word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising: it costs nothing when customers talk you up and yet it’s effective because people value and trust friends’ recommendations. Relying on word-of-mouth to happen, however, is not the same as making it happen!

That’s why we created Social Raves … a simple and effective way to get the referrals and recommendations necessary to grow your business. Here's how it works:

1. Claim your business on Social Raves. It's FREE. Go here.

2. Add the Social Raves app to your page in Facebook as a "Recommend This" tab on the left sidebar on the page. (Don't have a page? Don't worry. Creating one is as easy as 1-2-3.)

3. Manage your app settings by linking your Facebook page to your Social Raves account, and then configure the tab settings (you have full control over what gets pushed to your page). Go to "Recommend This" tab on the left sidebar of your page after successfully installing the app.

4. Invite customers and fans to rave, recommend, and refer your business to friends right from your Facebook page using status updates on your Facebook wall and/or Twitter, email blasts, newsletters, or any point of contact that makes sense.

5. Track recommendations and referrals, strengthen relationships with fans, and continue building your promoter network via your dashboard.

So why use Social Raves?

Drive more traffic to your business.

When customers rave about your product or service in Facebook, your business gets additional exposure in fans' walls and their friends' news feeds. In addition, other customers who find your Facebook page will see these recommendations and like or comment on them, leading to more exposure for your brand and contaminating other users. Since recommendations are highly trusted, these endorsements from customers result in higher conversions, more "likes" on your page, greater traffic, and naturally, more business.

Get found and discovered when people are searching.

Most people begin their search for local businesses online so it is critical that they find information about your business when they are actively looking (and ready to buy). When you add the Social Raves app to your page in Facebook, it comes with a raves page hosted on socialraves.com that will show up in Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. Since recommendations from fans in Facebook are published on this search-engine optimized page, non-Facebook users who are in the market for what you provide will find and discover all the wonderful things customers say about your business, resulting in greater traffic, more leads, and additional business.

Build a promoter network and scale.

Having a network of raving fans who are ready to spread the word about your business is the only way to scale your marketing. That's because when you engage and talk to fans about something they care about, they'll turn around and tell their friends, who'll tell their friends, and so on. Your dashboard not only allows you to monitor what's happening to your raving fan network, but also provides you with tools and analytics to help you build and grow it.

Ready to get started?

Start here and just follow the simple instructions.

Get raving!

Go ahead and give it a try, and do let us know if you have questions or suggestions.

Tips for Small Businesses on Building a Customer Referral Program

2011-07-07T16:40:00.006-04:00

The old way of building awareness, trial, purchase, and loyalty is not working anymore. Three in four consumers today do not trust what they see, hear, or read about in traditional media. Of those consumers, the majority trust friends’ recommendations more than any other source. Indeed, more and more people are sharing information with their personal and professional social networks. The more you can get customers to talk about your product or service, the better for your business.

In a world that is increasingly becoming more and more social, it's imperative to have a customer referral program in place to capitalize on all the conversations taking place in a way that benefits your business. The one thing to remember is that any successful referral program requires a system and infrastructure that enables you to easily identify advocates, track referral activity, administer rewards, and manage relationships.

When you're implementing a customer referral program for your small business, there are four key elements you have to do well:

Promote your referral program. This is basic. If customers don't know that you have a referral program in place, then nothing will happen. So it's critical that you reach out to customers consistently and give them an incentive to tell their friends about their experience using your product or service. Research has shown that it takes the average person to see a call to action at least five times before responding. So don't be shy and keep on asking!  

Utilize various channels at your disposal (i.e., email, Facebook, Twitter, newsletters, your website, etc.). You can also use various offline methods (i.e., courtesy cards, brochures, window clings, sales receipts, etc.) to stimulate referrals and invite satisfied customers to rave about your business. This is not an either-or proposition, so a combination of any or all of the means available would work fine depending on your resources. The more channels you use, the broader and deeper your potential reach. Regardless of which one you employ, asking your customers regularly and explicitly to make a recommendation for you is key.

Motivate your customers to refer your business. What incentives should you provide? It really depends. You know your customers better than anyone else so choose rewards you think they are most likely to respond to or appreciate. These include cash, gift cards, charity donations, t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. Some businesses are conflicted about giving customers rewards but the truth of the matter is, referral incentives do work!

Enable your customers to refer your business. Make it easy and convenient for satisfied customers to recommend your business to friends. Give them the tools to make it happen. Whichever tool you end up using needs to be trackable (you cannot reward the people recommending your business if you don’t know them). These trackable tools should enable your customers to recommend your business to their social networks wherever they happen to be or on their preferred channel, be it via email, mobile (SMS), socially through Facebook, Twitter, etc. or even offline (e.g., flyers, courtesy cards).

Reward your fans. A key aspect of managing a customer referral program is tracking who’s made referrals and recommendations so that you can reward them and strengthen the relationship. As soon as someone makes a recommendation for your business, you have to connect with them directly, thank them, and administer the incentive. Having a system that enables you to do that is critical. In addition, you need to have a system that allows you to easily cultivate relationships with raving fans and empower them to generate more referrals resulting in additional sales for your business. 

Administering, managing, and optimizing a referral program can be drain on a small business owner’s resources. Turn-key solutions, however, make it affordable to build, implement, and manage a robust customer referral program without taking a significant amount of time, effort, and investment.

***

What do you think? Do you have a customer referral program success story you want to share? What worked well? What didn't? What would you change?

Tips for Small Business Owners on Using Social Media

2011-06-28T07:51:00.005-04:00

We saw this video in our Twitter stream and found some nuggets worth sharing about a few things a small business owner could do to leverage technology and social media to scale marketing.

For instance, we loved the example about offering guests to take their photo with their camera enjoying the restaurant’s food/product and service. Lots of business owners miss this. How many times have you gone to a restaurant with family and/or friends where you wanted to snap a photo for posterity, and an employee or manager stepped up and offered to take it so everyone got included in the photo?

So one lesson we took away was not let opportunities to surprise and delight customers slip you by. Be aware of what’s happening at various customer touch points and be opportunistic in connecting with customers. Create a remarkable product or, if you’re offering a service, a remarkable experience for customers that they would be happy, or be dying to share.

Another nugget we took away was to let customers know that you care and are listening to what they have to say. Actively solicit feedback and follow-through in responding to customer ideas, suggestions, or praise. Social media is open communication and the important thing to remember is to be there in order to be part of the conversation and to engage with customers. Respond to comments on your blog, “likes” and comments on your Facebook page. Have a system or mechanism in place to gather or capture customer feedback about how well you are doing and what you could be doing to improve your product or service. All this entails having the right tools for interacting and connecting with customers, and strengthening these relationships.

There are probably other nuggets but these were the ones that bubbled to the top for us. What do you think?

Add a Recommend Us Tab to Your Facebook Page

2011-06-21T12:12:00.007-04:00

Local businesses who already have a Facebook page can easily add or integrate the Social Raves platform (www.socialraves.com) onto their pages. By doing so, local businesses can leverage the power of word-of-mouth right where their customers are and increase engagement.

A "Recommend Us" tab powered by the Social Raves platform is easy to install and fans of a business can rave about it beyond a simple "Like". This allows local businesses to segment their fan base and identify the ones who are most vocal and passionate. Business owners end up knowing not just who their best customers are but also why they care. They can then be more focused in their efforts in which relationships to cultivate or build, who to engage with, why, and how.

Putting a finer point on "Like" by raving about the business also works well because it gets the word out about exactly what makes a product or service great. Having more information and positive feedback on the fan page can only lead to more traffic and more referrals for the business.

Small businesses can also really use customer feedback about what they're doing right -- and wrong -- so they can continue to provide products and services customers want, enhance customer service, improve operations, etc. This is not possible without going past a casual "Like".

Video Overview of Social Raves

2011-04-18T15:45:00.022-04:00

Since we launched the full beta version of the Social Raves site early last month (www.socialraves.com), we received a ton of user feedback about how busy the home page looks like and how it's unclear at the outset what the site is supposed to do for consumers.

So we went back to the drawing board and are now in the process of redesigning the landing page that users see when they come to the site. It's going to be much simpler and less busy than what is currently there now and will consist of:

1. a clear statement of our value proposition
2. a short explanation of how it works
3. a *leaderboard* showing what's happening in the community
4. a top 5 list of why you should sign up
5. a Facebook like button and a gallery of Social Raves fans
6. a short video overview of what the service is about
7. a call to action to sign up.

Our goal in the redesign was to get to the very *core* of what Social Raves is really all about for you and me. We think that the video in particular, done in common craft style, does a terrific job of articulating our value proposition and the "reason-to-buy" for our users.

The new splash page will be ready in a few days or so, but we wanted to share the video (aka sneak preview) so here it is for your viewing pleasure:

What do you think?

The One Thing Small Businesses Should Do

2011-03-14T14:34:00.011-04:00

As a small business, if you want to get found when consumers are searching for what you sell or provide, it is imperative that you leverage the free listings available from the major search engines. You simply have to be there. Major search engines are probably the first stop for many people when they are in the market for something, so it is absolutely necessary that your business is listed at these sites. How can you be found if you're not there when people are searching?

A useful service that lets you check in one place how your business is listed in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other local directories is the site GetListed.org. Simply enter the name of your business and zip code on the home page and the site will give you a "listing score" which is a number from 0-100 that approximates how effectively your business is taking advantage of free listings at the major search engines. The "gaming" element of getting a score tells how far you are from your goal of 100% and what you need to do to get there.

Getting there means claiming your business where you haven't "owned" it and beefing up the listing with additional information about your business such as descriptions, hours of operation, photos, etc. GetListed.org does not let business owners claim their business from the GetListed.org site. Instead, owners have to go to each individual site and go through that site's unique process of establishing ownership of the business. While the processes vary in execution, they are generally straightforward and range between days and weeks to complete.

But the actual steps to lay claim to your business at these sites only takes a few minutes (it's the verification process that takes awhile to finish). Go ahead and just do it. It'll pay dividends later on and you'll be glad you did.

Sharing Via Facebook

2010-09-26T20:35:00.017-04:00

The fastest way to access all the features of the Social Raves site is to connect through Facebook. Just click on the Facebook icon on the upper right of the screen and a Facebook pop-up window will appear asking you to log in to your account. Another window then appears asking your explicit permission for Social Raves to publish your raves and reviews on your friends' walls as well as your own. Note that, based on Facebook policy, Social Raves does not retain any of your Facebook information which is why to complete the sign up process, we ask all users to provide an email address as well as zip code.

Granting Social Raves permission to automatically publish your raves and reviews is the easiest way for you to share recommendations with friends you're already connected with on Facebook. When you finish raving about a business and hit the submit button, that same content will appear on your wall automatically and show up in your friends' newsfeed on their home pages when they log into Facebook. Here's how it looks like in mine:

Friends who view your post will see several things:
* your rave or review about the business;
* the name and logo of the business;
* the rating you gave the business in terms of likelihood of recommending to your social network (based on a 0 to 10 scale where 10 is "extremely likely" and 0 is "extremely unlikely";
* link to the Social Raves Facebook app.

The name and logo of the business link back to your specific content on the page of the local business within the Social Raves site. Each business page in itself has lots of valuable content not just about the business you are sharing, but other related information. Notice above that conversations can occur between you and your friends as they comment on your rave or review, you comment on their comment, and so on.

More on how we are extending the Facebook experience into Social Raves later on but for now, comments and feedback on the above would be most welcome. In what other ways would you like to see Social Raves integrate with Facebook?

We're Out of the Gate!

2010-09-26T11:35:00.004-04:00

We've been away from this blog for quite some time for good reason. Over the past few months, we have been hunkered down focused on shipping the product. Now that the beta is out (since Monday, September 20), we would like to take this opportunity to share some tips we think will help users get the most out of their Social Raves experience:

Sign up for an account. This one's pretty obvious. The site is loaded with so many features that only registered users can see, use, and benefit from. As an aside, future posts in this blog will focus on what these features are and why they are important and valuable for users. If you come to the site and browse around but not register, that's like going to Miraval, looking around, but never signing up for a hot stone massage, a hike, or something: you will not get the full experience.

There's two ways to sign up. The fastest way would be connect through your Facebook account. The other way is to provide an email address and go through the short verification process.

Complete your profile. Upload your mugshot and answer a few questions about yourself and what makes you tick. Share only what you feel comfortable sharing but encourage new connections with others who share your interests, quirks, etc. Get social.

Get raving. Start spreading the love you have for your favorite local brands and businesses by raving about them. Simply click on the Start a Rave button on the upper right of the screen, search for the business, and get going. Keep in mind that you're making a recommendation to friends so be as specific and detailed as you possibly can. They'll thank you later on because you helped them find and discover the best places to go to, who to hire (from lawyers to landscapers), what to do, or where to dine in your neighborhood or community.

Share. If you signed up for an account by connecting through Facebook, and assuming you gave us permission, your raves or reviews will automatically be published on your Facebook wall for all your friends to see. You can always revoke this permission by visiting your applications in Facebook and editing the Social Raves settings. If you signed up organically (that is, through a verified email address), you can use ShareThis each time you submit a rave or review to share it on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz among others, or via email.

Invite friends. Ask your friends to join you and get them raving too. Each time they rave about their own favorite local brands and businesses, they're helping you build your own personalized reference source on wonderful local businesses. So the next time you're looking to refresh that paint on your door, simply go to the Recommendations tab and click Home Services. There you will find under the Friends tab businesses in painting services raved about by those you trust. Who better to make recommendations to you than the people who know you?

If you have questions, concerns, or ideas on how we can improve the service, please do not hesitate to let us know. Send an email to improve@socialraves.com.

Open Invite to Local Business Owners

2010-03-09T11:53:00.001-05:00

We are looking for a few local business owners (i.e., local to Columbus, OH) to do a private beta test of the site.

Social Raves is a social search engine designed to help local businesses be more easily found and discovered not only through the major search engines, but more importantly, through the recommendations of friends, family, and everyone in their social network. We take thousands of search results from say, Google, and narrow it down to the 2-3 local businesses that have been "pre-approved" or recommended by those in a user's network, making the search process much more efficient for consumers. Ultimately, our goal is to help business owners grow their community of raving fans who talk them up, spread the word, drive traffic, and profits!

To participate in the test, your business or establishment has to be located in the Columbus area, your product or service is targeted at consumers (vs. other businesses), and you are willing to provide feedback by answering a short questionnaire at the end of the test period.

In exchange for participation, we will build a custom profile of your business on the site with photos, video, Twitter and Facebook integration, SEO, and so much more, and maintain it free of charge for a year from the official launch date of the site.

If interested, please email beta@socialraves.com.

Shooting at Ohio State and Social Media

2010-03-09T10:48:00.003-05:00

The news earlier today was all over about a shooting at Ohio State University here in downtown Columbus that occurred early this morning. The incident clearly raises questions about how social media can be more effectively used not only to inform students better to keep them safe but also to arrive at effective communications solutions for the community.

What's amazing is that the report says that only 2,600 of the 50,000 students enrolled at the university bother to get email alerts (that's just 5%!). And even those students who get the alerts are questioning its effectiveness. The article then closes by saying that a university committee is being convened to determine if changes are needed to the notification system. Unbelievable. Don't know about you, but it's pretty obvious to me: wouldn't it be better to "crowd source" the answer to this one?

The article is here.

Carpe Diem!

2010-02-17T13:49:00.011-05:00

I was in Washington DC when the record-breaking snowmageddon, snowcalypse, whatever-you-want-to-call-it winter storm hit. I drove to our nation's capital to meet with a potential business partner who had flown in from overseas. As fate would have it, I could not get out of the city fast enough to escape the storm which arrived that Friday afternoon. And so I was stuck. In total, at least 30 inches of snow must have fallen within a 48-hour period, much more than the average snowfall in an entire typical year. Here's a picture of my car parked outside the townhouse of my sister-in-law who was generous enough to take me in while I waited for mother nature's fury to subside:

It was actually much worse than it looks in the photo. In any case, I knew of the coming storm while still in Ohio and debated with myself whether to go to DC, or to try and postpone the meeting the following week with hopes of better weather. I'm glad I went ahead with the original schedule: had I moved the meeting, it would have never happened because the weather never let up (except for that following Monday when it was clear enough for me to drive back).

Moral of the story: grab every opportunity you get before it passes you by. Carpe diem!

What if ...

2010-02-17T09:51:00.009-05:00

The statistic about the percentage of new businesses that fail within the first three years of birth is simply appalling. There are obviously dozens of reasons for why businesses fail, some within the business owner's control while others outside their sphere of influence. All businesses within a given market are faced with the same external factors so what can a business owner do with what's within their control to increase the business's chance of success versus competition?

Everyone knows that there is no perfect strategy for winning in the marketplace, and no one ever goes from point A to point Z in a straight line or sequentially. While its important to have and maintain focus, some have argued that small businesses owners ought to try multiple things (perhaps not all at once) to see what works. This is the essence of Dandelion Marketing, which is different from the spaghetti approach (i.e., "throw-them-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks" viewpoint). Instead of putting everything in one basket, or "betting the farm" on one strategy, it is far better to make smaller investments on a hypothesis and interact with the market to gain insight, and then building upon that insight to improve the strategy.

The key thing, of course, is having a systematic mechanism for gathering feedback and understanding what customers are saying to get to the insight. Unfortunately, most small business owners do not have the resources to do the kind of customer research that huge corporations do. In this age of online networking and social media, customers talk about businesses all the time (the latest high profile example being Kevin Smith and his tweets about Southwest Airlines for being bumped off after being deemed "too fat to fly"). Given customers are already talking, the least businesses can do to improve is to start really listening and, better yet, participating in the conversation.

Most social media pundits have been saying that small businesses ought to set up a page on Facebook and open an account with Twitter, at the very least. But how actionable do you think most of the tweets are from customers? Given its 140-character limit, it is doubtful anyone can get any high-value content per se from the service. On the other hand, what percentage of Facebook fans actually give feedback using the platform to the businesses they adore on the page they profess such adoration? Very little.

So if you're a small business owner, how do you systematically gather and analyze high-value information without spending tons of money on formal marketing research?

What if there was a web-based platform that aggregates ongoing conversations and presents them in a way that makes it highly actionable? What if there was a site that:

- Systematically collected customer feedback and comments about what you do as a business, and then presented the information in a clear, organized fashion?
- Gathered high value content about what it is that customers love or hate about your products and/or service?
- Helped you identify who your raving fans are and how they got to be that way (so you can keep on doing what's working)?
- Told you how many other people your raving fans effectively reach when they "talk you up" or promote you (i.e., your promoter network)?
- Gave you the platform to engage your promoter network with the help of your raving fans, resulting in greater traffic to your store (online and off) and higher revenues?
- Provided ideas and insights into how to grow the size of your promoter network, and then empowered you to engage and cultivate your army of trust agents to spread the word about all the great and wonderful things you do?
- Enabled you to identify areas of your business that aren't working from your customers' perspective so you can stop doing them thereby immediately improving, and then having additional insights to enhance operations and marketing?
- Facilitated the establishment of more connections between your business and your customers by going to where they are (i.e., in established social networks like Twitter and Facebook)?
- Let you manage and build the online presence of your small business by working closely with major search engines, enabling your business to be found and discovered when prospects are looking?

If you were a small business, what if you had a "tool" like that? How would it improve customer service? Product development? Pricing? Operations? Marketing? How would it drive revenues and increase profitability?

What if? Just asking ...

When Should I Ask Google? My Friends?

2010-02-15T13:32:00.044-05:00

Almost there ... For the past 6 months, we've been hard at work building a social search platform and are about to start offering the service to consumers and local businesses. We should have the site up and running pretty soon and are quite excited for the big day. So, what will Social Raves do for you and me?

At its core, Social Raves provides consumers a tool for finding -- and discovering -- great local businesses more effectively and more efficiently. Instead of searching via Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, Social Raves offers consumers the platform to "ask" friends for recommendations on who to hire, where to go, or what to do each time they are in the market for a local product or service.

When you use any of the major search engines to find an answer to what is an inherently local question (e.g., "Who should I hire to fix my broken sink?"), these search engines query the entire universe and give you results that it "thinks" matches your criteria. This is why you get tons of results, none of which may be particularly useful or relevant. For instance, a recent search for "plumbers 43017" in Google yielded 147,000 results. On the very first page was list of possible candidates with their addresses and phone numbers. But who should you call? Who can you trust? Sifting through the 147,000 results to the one or two you should be paying attention to is not only impractical, but almost impossible to do.

At Social Raves, we are trying to improve the local search experience. How? When you do a search at Social Raves, say, for "trustworthy plumber 43017", the algorithm doesn't query the entire universe to find an answer. Instead, the search is done on a database populated with just local businesses and organizations, and nothing else.

Secondly, each record in the database is enhanced with additional data and information that may be relevant to the search. For instance, consumers in the community can tag local businesses with key words (e.g., "trustworthy") they associate businesses with. Business owners and service providers can also tag their business with keywords they think consumers will use in searching for whatever it is they provide, including the brands or products in their inventory, their areas of expertise, or specialties. This allows for more refined and targeted searches that increases the likelihood of getting to what consumers are looking for more accurately and efficiently. Google Adwords is like buying the right to be associated with certain key words; here those same words are hard-coded into the business.

Most importantly, the results that match search queries are filtered based on who you're connected to on the site, making the local businesses that come highly recommended by friends bubble to the top. The already short list of results is not only further short-listed, but the process is "informed" by the reviews and comments of folks you know and intrinsically trust thereby leading to a potentially higher-quality decision. Anonymous (and fraudulent) reviews thus have little to no value, including those made by someone far removed from the user's network.

So basically, in the end, what we're trying to do is take a gazillion search results and narrowing it down to the few that really count for our users, saving them time, effort, and treasure. We think there's tremendous value in that and we hope consumers will recognize that value too.

Private Beta Test

2010-02-13T10:38:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's been a really long time since we updated this blog. Start-up life happens and when you're juggling multiple demands, a blog can easily get de-prioritized. Lots of things have happened since the last update to say the least, and the most recent is this: we are about to go "live" with a private beta test and are looking for local folks (i.e., local to the Columbus, OH area) who can "kick the tires" and give the site a test. If you, or anyone you know, are interested, send an email to beta@socialraves.com with "Request Invite" in the subject line. We're all pretty excited to unveil the kimono and look forward to hearing from a few of you. Cheers!

Why Settle For Less

2009-07-29T19:38:00.007-04:00

I've been trying to remind the team that perfection is the enemy of the good. This is particularly true when creating a new product or service. Aiming for perfection is a dangerous thing because by the time the product or service has been perfected, it may already be obsolete. Perfection is not only risky but also potentially very costly in building something new.

Clayton Christiansen in his book the Innovator’s Dilemma wrote about the nature of disruptive technologies and said that disruptive technologies often arise from serving segments of the market that are either currently over-served by existing products or services, or are non-consuming because of (too high a) price or (too much) inconvenience.

A potentially disruptive product then is one that is “good enough” for either one of the two segments or both. It doesn't have to be perfect so long as it gets the job done. And that's the key: figuring out what “jobs” target customers in these two segments are trying to get done and then coming up with a solution that is better than competition in terms of convenience and cost.

To use a cliche, it’s better to be an inch wide and a mile deep, versus the other way around. From a software development perspective, this means enhancing our chances of success (and lowering risk) by choosing one or two things that are most important to our target users (both consumers and businesses), and then going deep. This is how we are achieving focus and hopefully create tremendous value for customers in the beta version of the product. Less is more.

Social Raves will be in perpetual beta long after we get out of the gate. The site will never be perfect; there will always be room for improvement and we will let our user base guide us in the ongoing development of the site.

Teaser Site Update

2009-07-29T15:15:00.010-04:00

Today we approved a working design for the Social Raves teaser site which will hopefully be up in a couple of days. Basically, we wanted a design that conveyed a sense and feeling of being hip, vibrant, energetic, and exciting. We also wanted it to be highly visual and appealing, consistent with the young, educated, and relatively affluent audience we are targeting. We wanted visitors to feel that the site is highly accessible and engaging, and encourage our target audience to want to be associated with the brand and the site. We also wanted something distinctive and memorable. In the end, we favored blue and orange because of the emotions that these (supposedly) evoke: freedom and truth (blue), and youthfulness and fire (orange).

Hopefully, we've accomplished all that but, as always, thoughts and comments are welcome.

We will be asking visitors -- particularly those in Columbus, OH which is going to be our lead market -- to give us their email addresses so we know who they are and they can be first to find out when the site is live. Secondly, we will also be asking local business owners to pre-register to build a profile of their business absolutely free. And third, we will be enlisting a few brave souls to participate in our limited beta test program to "kick the tires" before we go live in the Fall.

So please, spread the word to everyone you know that Social Raves is coming to Columbus, OH very, very soon.

Loyalty Vs. Satisfaction

2009-07-27T10:39:00.011-04:00

Most user feedback sites out there ask consumers to rate businesses based on a 5 point or star scale on an overall basis, with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. It's a tricky question because there are so many dimensions with which to evaluate a business. In the end, a consumer's overall rating becomes a composite score of the different layers or dimensions of an experience, all averaged together.

Which is fine, I guess, but only up to a point. Personally, I always find myself scratching my head when I see a rating based on this norm. When a restaurant gets a rating of 3, for instance, what does that really mean? Was the food great but the service horrible? True, there are reviews that go with the score to give it context, but can I really trust them? At the end of the day, what I really want to know is "Should I go try or use this business?"

Do you like or love your ATM?

The other day, I withdrew cash from the drive-thru ATM in my neighborhood and if you were to ask to me to rate that experience using the 5-star convention, I'd probably give it a 5: wait was quite minimal, the user-interface was very intuitive and easy to use, got my money in the fewest number of keystrokes, and the transaction was fast and accurate.

However, if you were to ask me whether I would recommend using the same ATM, or my bank which owns the ATM for that matter -- to family, friends, or colleagues -- I'm not sure I would even though I was completely satisfied. In fact, if it were not so inconvenient and cost me a fee, I would use other ATMs as often because I am confident it would deliver the exact same experience. And if another bank were to sweeten its offer to get my business, I would probably have little to no second thoughts about switching.

Satisfaction Vs. Loyalty

Satisfaction is one thing, being loyal another. And there's a big difference. Customers who are loyal to you are the ones who recommend you to other people. Loyal customers talk you up to their family and friends without you having to ask. They are the ones who would gladly become your advocates and evangelists in the marketplace. The more loyalists you have, the better for your business. You want loyal customers more (way more) than merely satisfied ones.

In a roundtable discussion entitled "From Brainstorm to Firestorm: Creating an Environment for Viral Marketing Success" with Guy Kawasaki two weeks ago, Andy Sernovitz at GasPedal referred to this as getting your customers to love you, but it's essentially the same thing.

He says, and I'm paraphrasing here, that if you earn the love, respect, and recommendation of your customer, they will tell the world about you. Love is the stuff that causes word of mouth advertising. Love is the stuff the causes “buzz” to happen. Love is the reason people talk about you. He adds that love is far from easy: it’s complicated, messy, and sometimes crazy. But when you earn it, it changes everything. But it does not stop there. Once you earn it, you still need to work at it to make it grow.

So What?

Building loyalty requires knowing where your customers stand about recommending you to their family and friends. It means having a great product and/or service to begin with, and actively managing the customer experience at all touch points so that customers walk away thinking they have experienced something truly remarkable. To build a great business, whether yours is local or one with grander ambitions, you have to focus on getting to second base, and third, and eventually home where your customer's loyalty (and love) awaits. If you can do that, not just with a handful of your customers but an army of them, then you are on your way to building a lasting and enduring business.

Which brings me back to the question of rating. At Social Raves, we are turning convention on its head: instead of asking consumers to rate local businesses they've tried based on a 5 point/star scale, we will be asking them to respond to the "ultimate question": will you recommend (name of the local business) to family, friends, and colleagues? That's a major and strategic difference. More on this later.

Why Local Search?

2009-07-25T07:54:00.007-04:00

Ever tried looking for a local restaurant that serves a particular dish you tried while on vacation? Or an attorney with a specific set of skills and expertise? Or retail stores that carry a particular brand of product? Ever try doing your search in Yahoo! or Google and getting a gazillion irrelevant results?

The truth of the matter is most local businesses are not discoverable and the problem becomes greater the more specific the search. When consumers use any one of the major search engines (and get lucky) they may see results of local businesses based on who paid the most to be shown based on the key words entered, which may or may not be relevant. And if consumers cannot find what they are looking for, it translates to lost revenues for the local business that happens to have what was being sought but unfortunately could not be found or discovered.

Local search has a very interesting property in that it is highly monetizable. When people search for local information, it is almost always commercial in nature: they are looking for a product or service most of the time. If you are a local business and you are not discoverable, that is a serious issue.

In the recently released 2009 Small Business Attitudes and Outlook Survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE), and the Association of Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC), about a quarter of businesses reported not having a website. Of those responding, three-quarters do not advertise Online. In the same survey, the majority of small businesses (80%-90%) do not use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to market their products or services. Ironically, in the same survey, over 70% of small businesses revealed that reaching their target audience and building awareness are the biggest challenges they face. So there is tremendous opportunity to bring small businesses online and provide them with a platform that enables them to leverage limited marketing resources to be found and discovered.

With the growth in social media vehicles, online networking tools represent an important part of the solution because as media clutter becomes unbearable, consumers will increasingly tune-out advertising messages. They can afford to do so because they know that when they are in the market for a product or service, they can simply turn to those they trust – their family, friends, neighbors and their network – to get advice and recommendations. So to be truly effective and efficient, local search has to be social too. There is tremendous value not only in being able to find local businesses but more importantly, in finding the ones that your friends have already tried and highly recommend. This not only saves time, but yields significant savings for the consumer too. From a local business perspective, the benefits of capitalizing on customers' social networks to spread the word cannot be overstated; after all, word-of-mouth is the cheapest marketing channel there is, if not the most effective.

At Social Raves, we are on a mission to build a search platform that would bring buyers and sellers of local products and services together more efficiently and more effectively. We are currently in development and plan to launch first quarter of 2010. Stay tuned.