The Distributed Grassroots Marketing Team

Letting your community, advocates, evangelists, and fans do the heavy lifting

 

Speakers:

Elisa Camahort, Co-Founder and President of Events & Marketing, BlogHer

Tara Hunt, Founder, Rogue Strategies (formerly Marketing Director, Riya)

Chris Messina, Independent Consultant

 

Immoderator:

Marnie Webb, Vice President of Knowledge Services, CompuMentor

 

Note Taker:

Amit Asaravala, Manager of Editorial & Content Strategy, TechSoup

 

Key Points

You don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourself

·        Word-of-mouth marketing has long been important, but now it's even more so because Web 2.0 tools allow word-of-mouth recommendations and enthusiasm for a product to travel farther and faster.

·        Organizations that encourage Web 2.0 word-of-mouth for the products or projects can raise awareness to levels that were previously only attainable with large, expensive ad campaigns.

Listen to your audience; let them interact with your brand

According to Elisa Camahort:

·        BlogHer didn't get good word-of-mouth by asking women to spread the word. Rather, "It started by listening."

·        The BlogHer group made logos, but participants modified the logos because they felt like they were a part of the brand, not just a consumer of it. Rather than restricting this use of its brand, BlogHer took the modified logos and shared them on its site.

·        Another example: BlogHer offered a button that people could put on their Web site that said "I'm going." After the conference, a user changed the button to "I went."

 

According to Tara Hunt:

·        Trust your community, even though it's a hard thing to do.

·        We've been taught to protect our information and that bad things will happen if we let our competitors get a hold of our data. But we're seeing that really amazing things happen when we share our information with our communities.

 

You have to have credibility with your community before you can ask them to do things for you

·        Be a part of the community that you're serving. When people have met you face to face, they are more apt to help.

·        Elisa believes BlogHer works because she and others are active in the community and interact with other women bloggers (comment on their blogs, attend events, and so on.)

Strive for authenticity

According to Chris Messina:

·        "[Of] the things that I've done, the ones that have been successful have been the ones I didn't overproduce."

·        Ownership to me is not the most important thing

·        Example: The idea to run a two-page ad about Firefox in the New York Times was suggested by a community member. "If that had been run or controlled by the Mozilla corporation / foundation, I highly doubt you would have seen that sort of [community] support."

Make sure you're inviting participation

·        Ask the question and leave the space for answers. (Note that a lot of blogging is declaratory, which doesn't always invite participation.)

·        Think about the tone of what you're writing -- is it inviting conversation or is it telling it how it is?

You don't have to accept every idea your audience suggests

·        If you don't incorporate things, say why -- don't just let them disappear into the ether and hope that no one will notice.

·        How do you deal with misinformation that gets spread around on blogs and such that is damaging to your organization? Audience member suggests that organizations need to be liberal in what they allow others to do, but at some point they have to say, "No, that's not acceptable."

Does it all have to be techie, funny, snarky, or gross?

·        From audience, Seth Mazow of Interplast asks: A lot of things that become viral are techie or snarky or gross. How can serious organizations like Interplast -- which provides medical access to people with congenital deformities or injuries --  take advantage of these technologies?

·        Elisa Camahort notes that video of an American Nazi Party rally is being spread around YouTube currently. "If you make people laugh, it'll get spread around -- but it'll also get spread around if you make them cry."

 

Tara Hunt's Principles of "Pinko Marketing"

Principle 1: Inbound, rather than outbound messages

·        Organizations can use their sites to promote what else is going on online (rather than publishing a brochureware site.)

Principle 2: Be a community advocate, not a company evangelist

·        Rather than saying that every problem can be solved with your product, join the community that's using your product and take the feedback back to your organization.

Principle 3: 100% authenticity

·        Don't set out to create some sort of viral media. People will see through it. For example: The Chevy Tahoe ad campaign allowed people to create their own ads; so environmentalists took this and created ads that made fun of the Tahoe.

Principle 4: Serve niche markets

·        Focus on [Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson's concept of] the long tail: the people at the end of the curve who aren't in the target market. The long tail is under-represented, overlooked -- and easier to reach.

Principle 5: Follow open source principles

·        Open the design of your entire program to the community. "Let your community hijack the offering."

·        Open up an API that developers can use to create tools for your community.

·        Blogging: Read other blogs, let people comment on your own.

 

Further Reading

Web:

BlogHer

http://www.blogher.com

 

Tara Hunt's blog

http://www.horsepigcow.com

 

Chris Messina's blog

http://www.factoryjoe.com

 

CompuMentor

http://www.compumentor.org

 

Spread Firefox

http://www.spreadfirefox.com

 

The Long Tail

http://www.thelongtail.com