New Rules: Let customers talk to each other!

Here’s the simple truth, if customers talk to each other they may say bad things about your company and they may say good things about your company. If you don’t know what they’ll say then it is risky. It’s scary. Traditionally it’s closely managed by the company. Find the fans, get testimonials and case studies and publish them on the web. Of course they are quite effective, but they are never in the voice of the customer because they have been varnished by a paid copywriter.

It turns out the best thing you can do if you want to be successful in the marketing world of today and tomorrow is engage in a conversation with your customers, and let them talk to one another too. It has to a be a real conversation with real voices from real people. If you do this you will create an advocacy group, you will get huge returns as they spread the word through their networks and you will create better products and service.

Simple. That’s why nobody does it.

What? Why don’ they do it? You tell me. You can go to my company and let me know. I will be grateful that you did.

Verizon adds reviews – risky or rewarding?

Techcrunch thinks that adding phone reviews to their sites is probably a bad move. They think people will be more likely to complain than anything else. I checked out the site and it seemed that every phone said “be the first to review this phone”. I can imagine they will get some flack around the Blackberry Storm, but will that tell anyone anything they don’t already know?

Of course Verizon should allow their users to play a role in their marketing. If their products and services aren’t up to that test then they aren’t long for this world anyway. Ultimately it is the social network that will assess and sell your products (whether they are networked or not). Bring them in.

Given my inherent bias refined by experience, I would suggest they go further than reviews. let’s face it, a review is an answer to a question you never asked. Why not let the users ask questions and get answers relevant to their specific situation.

I think this is a wise move on Verizon’s part. It is in their interest for their users to get the best phones to leverage their big network.

Release 04-19-09 (RSS and more…)

NEW FEATURES

• “Recent” tab to user pages: Displays the 15 most recent posts by that user.
• “Unanswered” questions list to home and category pages: Encourages people to answer those tough questions.
• Question and Answer Widget (Available to Admins only): IFRAME widget that can be embedded on any website.
• Enabling caching and compression for better performance
• Lots and lots of RSS feeds. Here’s the list:
  * /search.rss?query=best+pizza+in+seattle
  * /search/questions.rss?query=best+pizza+in+seattle
  * /search/answers.rss?query=best+pizza+in+seattle
  * /search/comments.rss?query=best+pizza+in+seattle
  * /search/users.rss?query=charles+marty+mike

  * /questions.rss
  * /questions/unanswered.rss
  * /questions/answered.rss
  * /questions/featured.rss
  * /questions/-/latest.rss
  * /questions/-/greatest.rss
  * /questions/unanswered/-/latest.rss
  * /questions/unanswered/-/greatest.rss
  * /questions/answered/-/latest.rss
  * /questions/answered/-/greatest.rss
  * /questions/featured/-/latest.rss
  * /questions/featured/-/greatest.rss

  * /topics/music/questions.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/unanswered.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/answered.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/featured.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/-/latest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/-/greatest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/unanswered/-/latest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/unanswered/-/greatest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/answered/-/latest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/answered/-/greatest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/featured/-/latest.rss
  * /topics/music/questions/featured/-/greatest.rss

  * /users/647-cb-seattle.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/questions.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/questions/-/latest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/questions/-/greatest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/answers.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/answers/-/latest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/answers/-/greatest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/comments.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/comments/-/latest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/comments/-/greatest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/requests.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/requests/-/latest.rss
  * /users/647-cb-seattle/requests/-/greatest.rss

FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Top Contributors list now randomly select 10 out of top 20 users.
• Refinements to suggestions that drop down when asking a question.
• Voting no longer allows users to click it more than once.
• Users stay logged in even if they close their browsers. Cookie was getting cleared when browser was shut down.
• Added more admin options (15, 20, 25) to questions list size on home and topic pages.

Is your website just mimicking a brochure/radio/tv?

Seems like websites are still mimicking broadcast media. They are still speaking at their visitors and treating them as mass markets.

There are some exceptions: blogs and news sites that let you comment, forums that are all about discussion, retail sites with user reviews, and finally social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn that are all about 2-or-more-way communication.

We’re trying to figure out how to let users become part of the typical website so it is not so much a brochure as a conversation. We would really like to deliver on the promises of the Cluetrain Manifesto by making websites a two-way Q&A between all the participants. Here are the first ten of 95 theses:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Q&A as conversation

Marty (co-founder) and I were working on the Lilipip Brand Concept Template graciously provided at by Ksenia on her site for free. It’s designed to help you zero in on your marketing message for a 1 minute video.

I’ve been through that routine before, but this was a really good document and approach. No BS. A good balance between fact/emotional message. Very well done. We learned a lot from doing it, but one simple question at the outset was “what is your name and what is your history”.

We’ve been through a lot of product iterations for such a young company. Our original goal was broadly to improve the quality of discussion on the web. Web based discussions are too often unnavigable and nightmarish. Comments on blogs helped because they provided at least some structure for the topic and discussion. But it has limited breadth of application.

After going through many gyrations that went from debate-style structures to interviewing we realized that the ideal structure was questions and answers. Why? Because the best conversations are typically those that have good questions and because a question-followed-by-an-answer is a great unit of discussion. People can’t just post away willy-nilly, they only get one answer. So the noise ratio goes way down and many voice are heard.

But what about the meta-communication that adds that certain richness and back-and-forth to the conversation? Well we handle that by making them comments and meta to the heart of the discussion. We didn’t know how it would all shake out and whether people would get it – but happily they did.

The result has been structured, discoverable discussions where the best questions and answers can be surfaced while still allowing for self-expression.

Release 4-10-09

New Features:

1. Latest and Greatest Answers added to home and category pages
2. Voting is now AJAXy
3. In-line, AJAXy suggestions of duplicate questions when asking
4. Search results can now be filtered by All, Questions, Answers, Comments, Users
5. Add “Are you sure?” to Report links to avoid accidental reporting of posts

Bug Fixes:

1. “Greatest” sorting on category and home pages now works properly
2. Ordering of answers on question page now works properly
3. Top Contributors displays users with most posts instead of recently posted
4. Improve visibility of “Choose category” and “Post Question” button on Ask Question form
5. “More questions” now goes to 2nd page of questions list

Even more power… local, community-specific Q&A

Marty (co-founder) just pointed out that as much as the tool question (see post before this one) was a fun one, it could have been answered at a generic Q&A site as well. He thought I should have been blogging about the numerous questions that could only be answered in Question Land. Questions that require answers that are local and from a community of people who are like-minded whose opinion you know you want. A simple example would be a guy who wanted stylish haircut, or getting a man waxed (what?), or your favorite strange food from uwajimaya (a local Asian supermarket).

He’s right. The only people who could answer these questions to the satisfaction of The Stranger community is The Stranger community.

The Power of Q&A on Question Land

I had a tool in my cutlery drawer for many years and had no idea what it was. I decided to ask the people at The Stranger what it was and see if anyone could figure it out. I thought it was a long shot since this thing was both obscure and old and for all I knew was a part of some other long lost gizmo. But I went ahead and asked. And sure enough, I got the answer in less than 24 hours. I was amazed. You try it. Don’t read the answers and see if you can get it.

Release 4-4-09 (Search and more…)

CONSUMER FEATURES

• Search:  Now you can keyword search for questions, answers and comments.
• Share Question Buttons:  Now you can share your question in email, Facebook and twitter with a single click.
• Recent Questions List:  Added to the bottom of each question page to encourage browsing.
• Enhanced Paging:  We added page #’s to the paging controls on questions lists so you can easily jump to a specific page.

ADMIN FEATURES

• Bulk Approve/Delete:   Select multiple posts at once for speedy moderation.
• Max List Items:  Configure maximum # of posts to appear in featured and community question lists. Default is 10.
• General UI Improvements:  Added question to answer page, cleaned up form style

The Stranger Launches Question Land

The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper, launched Question Land yesterday afternoon. It is off to a great start with hundreds of questions/answers and thousands of visitors in the first 24 hours.

The Stranger has more personality and honest opinion than any other news/magazine in Seattle and it attracts a great community of people who are both amazingly bright and equally irreverent. It has been a rollicking good time watching them ask each other questions on the site.

Questions have run the gamut:

What’s the highest point in Capitol Hill?

Can a parking enforcement person write me a jaywalking ticket?

We’re really glad to be working with them. Great people and a great product.