web for humans

Look at what the funny guys over from Loudmouth pants are doing this olympics. Giving their crazy pants which have already had a lot of buzz in the world of golf to a kick ass curling (!) team from norway is marketing genius.

via facebook.com

I could not believe what I found out yesterday, when a friend of mine became a fan of the facebook fanpage "the norwegian olympic curling team's pants". Guess how many fans this page has?! 550.000+ and counting. Unbelievable. Imagine what the web could do for your product?

Kein Morgen ohne Erfolgsnachricht einer Marke oder eines Unternehmens im Social Web. Heute freut sich mirapodo.de, ein Online Schuhstore mit dem Vorbild zappos.com, über mehr als 3000 Fans auf Facebook. Das ist eine starke Leistung. Besonders wenn man bedenkt, dass mirapodo noch nicht einmal public ist.

Mit Speck fängt man Mäuse, hartes Cash ist gefordert. Wie die Rattenfänger von Hameln ziehen die Marketingberater durch die Markenabteilungen. Ein Gutschein für jeden Follower auf Twitter, ein Gutschein für jeden Fan auf Facebook, ein Gewinnspiel hier, ein Wettbewerb dort. Bei mirapodo schauen Twitter User dabei nicht schlecht in die Röhre, sie sind nur 15 Euro "wert" im Gegensatz zu Facebook Fans, da gibt es satte 25 Euro! Da schlägt man doch gern mal doppelt zu, was für ein Quatsch.

Alte Hütte neu aufgesetzt. Alte Push Strategien neu eingepackt. Ein gefährliches Spiel aufgrund so vieler neuer Spielregeln. Was passiert am Ende der Aktion? Dann hört man: "hups?! Was machen wir jetzt mit den ganzen Fans? Mist, die schreiben da jetzt Kommentare...wer soll das alles beantworten? Ähh, schaltet mal schnell das nächste Gewinnspiel" Hilfe, ruft irgendjemanden an, der sich mit Twitter auskennt, der soll da täglich was absetzen."

Das Unternehmen. muss. bereit. sein. Brand, read the fucking groundswell!

Baut echte Liebe auf. Engagiert euch für die Fans. Hört Ihnen zu. Bringt Sie zusammen. Helft Ihnen. Denkt bei Fans an Partner. Wofür interessieren sich eure Fans, was schätzen diese an euch? Denkt langfristig, plant intern, bottom-up. Und macht etwas wirklich Relevantes. (womit ich mirapodo nicht unterstelle, dass sie dieses nicht berücksichtigen werden)

Es ist schwer und anstrengend und aufwändig (praktisch genau das Gegenteil von schnellen Gewinnspielen) aber es lohnt sich. Echte Fans sind eine ganz andere Liga.

today, seth wrote about this:

Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That's yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn't take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That's not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

 

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Mit etwas Verspätung aber nicht weniger stolz möchte ich mein neustes Projekt Schöner Essen vorstellen, welches seit ein paar Wochen live ist.

Mitte des letzten Jahres haben wir uns bei sixgroups mit der Exclusive & Living digital GmbH (Gruner und Jahr) zusammengesetzt und ein „Vertical“ zum Thema Kochen geplant. Dabei ist besonders die Offenheit und Experimentierfreudigkeit seitens Living zu loben. Im Gegensatz zu bestehenden Verticals, die praktisch nur die gemeinsame Vermarktung von Websites aus einem Themengebiet anstreben, tritt Schöner Essen an, das Beste aus dem deutschen Koch Web unter einem (offenen) Dach zu vereinen. Ein erstaunlicher, mutiger Schritt, da Living mit Essen und Trinken sowie Chefkoch bereits über die zwei Schwergewichte im deutschen Kochweb verfügt.

Trotzdem eine valide Strategie. Viele kleinere, liebevoll geführte Kochblogs erreichen im Google Spamkosmos nicht die Aufmerksamkeit, die sie verdient haben. Schöner Essen wird das hoffentlich ändern. Wir nennen die Kochbegeisterten „Foodies“ und für diese ist Schöner Essen gemacht.

Living ist ein großer Partner, der ein starkes Netzwerk mitbringt und natürlich auch eine spätere gemeinsame Vermarktung ermöglicht. Eine Domäne, um die sich viele Blogger verständlicherweise nicht professionell kümmern möchten und können. Darüber hinaus fungiert die Schöner Essen Redaktion, vor allem Florian als Kurator, er strukturiert die Inhalte auf Schöner Essen und kümmert sich um die Community.

Sixgroups hat während der Konzeption und Entwicklung dafür gesorgt, dass die Technik funktioniert und Sinn macht. Jeder teilnehmende Blog dockt über Widgets an die Plattform an, Inhalte „fließen“ im Vertical frei und können an verschiedenen Stellen entdeckt werden. Genau diese Synergieeffekte würden wir uns wünschen. Mehrwerte für Leser, die neue Blogs entdecken. Mehrwerte für Blogger, die mehr Leser erreichen. Wir haben ein möglichst einfaches (der Lecker! Button ;-) Relevanzsystem eingebaut. Jeder Foodie kann auch anonym so seine Wertschätzung für einen Artikel ausdrücken.

Wir schrauben weiterhin an der Plattform, die ersten Blogs werden nach und nach eingebunden. Noch dominieren Inhalte der beiden großen Partner. Letztendlich soll aber die Vielfalt regieren und daher bitten wir alle Foodies, jetzt mitzumachen.

Vielen Dank an die anderen 6g Jungs und das gesamte Schöner Essen Team und bis bald auf http://www.schoener-essen.de

PS: Übrigens funktionieren natürlich alle sixgroups Logins auch für Schöner Essen.

Everybody is going crazy over Facebook; this artificial habitat which is online home to so many people.

Users spend most of their online time on Facebook, chatting with friends, sharing stuff, consuming media, organizing events, etc. As a result, brands and companies turn their mordorian eye on Facebook. For most of these companies social web marketing has melted down to the questions: How do we get into the streams of users and how do we gather fans for our fansite.

These questions are absolutely the wrong ones to start with. Brand Executives should ask one and only one thing:

Do we want to engage with our customers?

I literally hate it when Social Media guys talk about how all these platforms are “tools” and how you just need the right mix and the right campaign strategy. This is all crab. Facebook is not a tool, it is highly complex and at the core of people's lives. It represents and reconnects the strings of friendship. Every shared item, every comment, every picture is emotional and potentially leads to social interaction.

If you and your product have nothing to add to this construct then you better stay away.

Just 2 days ago one of the big Web Gurus, Seth Godin, launched a new use case for his out-of-the-box website/publishing toolbox squidoo.com. He called it "Brands in public", basically an aggregation of brand mentions over the web, all neatly put together on a single page with huge SEO power. He wanted to sell root access back to the aggregated brands for 400 bucks a month.

Of course, we over at sixgroups are big fans of this idea offering a similar product, the brandfeed. Seth is rightfully a very important and famous person on the web (read his books!) and I would have expected all kinds of reactions to Brands in public. Brands going crazy, legal actions, consultants in fear, etc. But very interestingly, the sentiment out there is far worse. People have decided to call him out for "brand hijacking" memeing it the "seth godin fail". This is really weird to me.

We are in the groundswell, people talk about brands all the time, everywhere, online and offline. Take the infamous Dell Hell as an example. Clever brands will listen and engage, others will die. Brands have manipulated our decisions with Googillions spent on TV ADS, press armadas, shopping center optimization, etc, etc.... Brands have hijacked our opinions over decades feasting on the unconnectness of people. Brands are the roots of the freakonomy. Now we have the potential to change all this. The technology is here, people are using it. Brands are reacting, spending less on advertising, more on product and communication. "Brands in public" could be a great accelerator. One resource which tells me in seconds if the brand is good or evil, if its products rock or suck. Where i can go to seek help and support. Where the brand learns about my behaviour and connects to me directly.

Sometimes revolutions need to be forced. Seth forced it.

Unfortunatley for him, people are so good at heart that as soon as we see pushing and punishing we often take the stand of the wrong party. Sometimes we solidarize with the big evil monster although it threatens our society. In this case we should rethink our response. One great commenter, @brandcowboy points out on techcrunch: "To me, having a brand is like running for public office. As soon as you’re out there selling, you’re at the mercy of the people you’re selling to. The idea of ‘control’ is absurd at least, evil at worst." Just like that.

Seth by the way has already backed away from his early strategy making the service opt-in now. Very wise a man he is. If people are not ready for this radical approach you better listen and adopt.

Your product is great or on the way to greatness. We know it. The market might proof otherwise but we don’t care about this now. Its your idea, you build it, you started it, you joined it in an early stage, you love it and so you should believe in it.

You probably do not have money to put your baby in front of millions of users to jump-start you business. Here are five multipliers to basically add a magnitude of marketing power to your efforts. Combine those and become a micro-team marketing powerhouse.

*2 Knowledge You don’t have money, right? So why don’t you add some more time to the equation. Read books, read blogs, talk to people. Learn about all the new marketing strategies that aren’t in the school books yet. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time, listen to successful stories and try to adapt.

*2 Network Start now and extend your business network. As more people you know as more opportunities open up. It is 10 times easier to start a project or with somebody you already know. And remember you always meet twice in life so do not shut once opened doors by acting like a fool and/or asshole.

*2 Employees You need help, you cannot do everything by yourself. Future partners need to be researched, users need support, and you need time to think. There are great people coming out of university every year. They are lever, ambitious, full of energy and best of all, dead cheap. Don’t get me wrong, you should not pay too much below average but it is a fair trade. Because your employees need experience and you should give them tons of that in trade.

*2 Decisiveness Do not loose time making decisions. Decisiveness is the one huge advantage you have over big corporate monsters. So gather your ideas, think it through, have a clear structure of decision making and then grab your balls and run. From my experience it doesn’t matter too much in which direction. It is more important how fast you run and how fast you can switch directions.

*2 Fans Last but not least, try everything to erase all possible hurdles for people not to feel the same passion that you feel for your baby. If you feel it they can feel it too. And if you don’t suck in service, openness, user involvement and all other credentials for evangelism they will come and spread the love. And if they don’t come you know that your product sucks which is great info, too.

Get these amplifiers straight and go for it.

One important thought I like to share with you. Spread the love for your favourite brands and services. In this economy you decide who to keep and who to loose.

Now is the time to really start promoting the interesting start-ups and established brands. You don’t have to buy stuff. Its absolutely ok to hold back money but don’t stop talking. If you listen to friends talking about where to buy shirts, tell them A better tomorrow is the right place. If you know somebody who wants to buy a new car don’t hazzle to tell him that the Tesla is the coolest rod around. If you write a blog use your sidebar to promote the best stuff.

Your recommendation is the strongest help your favourite brands can get. And if you want them to survive this economic nuclear winter, you better start now

Step 1: Identify your basis. Where do your most loyal users (it might only be two or three) gather? What are their touchpoints, what do they have in common?

Step 2: Ask them what they think about your service and what they care most about your product or your brand.

Step 3: Make it the most important goal of your team and your users to clearly communicate and distribute this feature. In discussions, on your website, in your email footer, everywhere. It is the soil for your grassroots.

Step 4: Give your users, new or advanced, every tool that will enhance and engage them in communication or even better, bring them together. Yes, do it offline!

Step 5: Be a good leader of your tribe. Talk to your followers, listen to them, meet them, give them power. Most importantly, give them the credit, they deserve. Let them start their own tribes.

More on Tribes.

via Morten Lund, one of the true european entrepreneurs. It deeply impresses me how openly he writes about his struggle through the money crisis hitting his over 80(!!!) investments and ventures. Fight on, Morten!

Please meet the most energetic guy, I have ever seen on stage (except Microsoft's Steve Ballmer),. And listen to what he is saying. He is right. As opposed to Ballmer. :-)

I have to admit, Gary Vaynerchuk is great. Have a fantastic weekend.