Is Your Business Ready for the New Consumer? – Takeaways from Mitch Joel’s Keynote at Radian6 2011 Event

Author, Speaker, and Twist Image President Mitch Joel, the so-called “Rock Star of Digital Marketing”, gave the keynote at Radian6‘s Social Media 2011 Conference in Boston, MA. You can watch the full 51 minute Ustream keynote here, but below I have taken some notes from it that I found particularly interesting.

• “I believe whats presently happening in business and social media and how people are connecting is fundamentally changing everything we know about business.”

• Question posed to Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik by a senior retailer marketer: I believe everything you’re saying about this whole Web 2.0 and social media… We tried it. We hired a 24 year old person just out of university, we brought them in… they had tattoos, earrings – theY really looked the part – it was perfect. We put them in charge of everything. They were in charge of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, everything and… Nothing. “I’m sitting there thinking to myself, these changes are so huge and so dramatic, are you really telling me that you took a 24 year old and put them out by themselves in charge of all this? Its crazy!… The social web is over ten years old… but people make the  miss-assumption that you need to be young and someone who’s on Facebook to understand how this works… we have to change our perceptions and the idea is not to hire and initiate a bunch of digital natives into your organization, the idea is to get a transfusion!”

• “The Web has been around forever and yet it is not in the blood of the executives who staff the top echelons of companies. Make no mistake, the are smart, they are successful and they want to do better. But the Web is such a paradigm shift that if it is not in your blood it is very difficult to imagine its power and how to use it for good. How do you demand innovation and creativity and radical rethink if you can’t imagine it?” – Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik

• “Last year, last quarter, there were more smart phones sold than PCs.”

• The biggest thing is the humanization of technology. Swipes, touch, move, feel [like on an iPad] – these are human gestures that create a humanization of the web. As social media humanized the interactions that people have, the devices are catching up and humanizing the experience and taking away the technology. Its a game changer when we make technology simple and easy to use.

• “When I hear people talking about the social WEB or your WEBsite, in my brain I’m going ‘we need new vocabulary,’ because we are no longer in that world when it comes to social or understanding what people are saying anymore… See we live in the world now of ‘Web,’ ‘Mobile’ and ‘Touch’ and they are three very different experiences. And if you are creating content for it and you are listening to what people are saying about it and how they are talking about it, they way the interact with and use things on these platforms is fundamentally different too.”

• “We will never have an opportunity like this as marketers again, to literally remap what it is people do with our products, brands, and services and how to push these ideas forward.”

• We all agree that no one buys anything any more without researching it online and reading reviews, but how many of you allow reviews (good and bad) on your company’s website? Whats wrong with you? You’re scared. You’re scared someone will say something negative about you, how you will respond, etc…. According to Bazaarvoice out of 150 billion online product/service reviews, average review rating is 4.3 out of 5. Statistically, if you open up and allow anyone to say anything about you, they say nice things. But with the star caveat: You can’t suck. If your products or services suck, social media can’t save you. Marketing can’t save you. Advertising can’t save you. Only you and your desire to not have a sucky product can save you…

• Bazaarvoice data showed that a negative review converts more effectively to a sale than a positive review. How?? 1) When consumers see you confident enough to allow a negative review they find you trustworthy and have faith in your product and will buy from you. 2) Just because the negative reviewer didn’t like you, their negatives may be a positive to someone else.

• Its not just monitoring and responding. Other stuff happens. Communications and engagements are highly distributable. Paradigm shift in not “How many people am I reaching?” but instead “Who am I reaching?”. You have to have real interactions with real human beings.

• “Who’s better to talk about your product or service: you, your brochure, or a really satisfied customer? …And thats the real story here.”

• “Your brand isn’t what you say it is, its what Google says it is.” – Chris Anderson

• Treat every page [on your website] as your home page. People use direct links – especially through Google searches.

• Being on Twitter and Facebook isn’t enough, you have to leverage these channels in a unique and interesting way… Theres an opportunity here; an opportunity to connect, to create these real interactions between real human beings. And the brands that actually evolve are the brands that understand these relationships and do what they can to bring their consumers together and connect them.

• Digital Marketing is a “with” not an “instead of” in regards to traditional marketing.

• “Don’t write checks with social media that your website can’t cash.” - Avinash Kaushik

• We aren’t really “marketing” anymore, we are publishing. Emphasis needs to be on authenticity and honestly – not on “sales”.

• Don’t ask “WHAT are we doing on Facebook”. Ask “WHY are we using Facebook”. What do you MEAN by social media? What are your goals? You must have a strategy.

• Your customers don’t care about flashy technology, they want a good experience. They want simplicity.

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Tags: Bazaarvoice, consumer, Corrie Davidson, customer, keynote, Marketing, mitch joel, radian6, reviews

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Business Strategy, e-Commerce, Marketing, Social Media, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.