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This is the second in a series of articles we will be publishing relaying thoughts and ideas from the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago, which occurred June 5th through June 7th. Peter Kosciewicz, Director of E-Commerce for the Eastwood Company, and Chris Saito, Senior Director, Shopping Products for Yahoo! Shopping, delivered a presentation entitled “Social Networking: The Peer Pursuasion Marketing Tool.”

According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown into an “architecture of participation” that facilitates social networking through devices such as blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, and more. Forrester Research has published studies that show that traditional marketing is continuing to lose credibility. For example, in 2002, 78% of respondents in a survey said that ads are a good way to learn about a new product. In 2004, that number had dropped to 46%. In 2002, 14% of respondents agrees that companies generally tell the trust. As pathetic as 14% is, in 2004, it had declined even further – down to 7%. Social networking as a means of marketing overcomes this lack of consumer trust because it relies on the word of the consumer rather than the word of the producer. Research from Datamonitor reported that 85% of repondents in a survey indicated that word-of-mouth from friends, family, or colleagues is more trustworthy than corporate-generated content.

So how do you take advantage of social networking to sell more product? Simple – you open yourself up. You plant the seeds of a community to grow up around your site by using devices such as blogs, customer reviews, and forums to give a voice to your customers or prospective customers. The caveat is that you must be high quality. You must have high quality service and a high quality product. If not, avoid this marketing method.

Kosciewicz outlined four important rules for using social networking on your web site:

1. Guide but don’t control.
2. Never censor.
3. Don’t be afraid of the negative.
4. Don’t be paranoid.

If you open up a forum on your site but then restrict what people are allowed to say, such as removing posts that are negative toward your company or that mention your competitors, then you will do more damage than good to your reputation. Use negativity as a way to improve your business. If people are negative, look at that as feedback and act on it. Make changes, and then let your community know about it. Don’t worry about your community talking about your competition. Your attitude has to be that you are the best, so why worry about it?

As a community develops around your web site, certain members will establish themselves as more influential than others. They will be more outspoken, and will be the ones who often respond to others. Cultivate these members, because they can be powerful allies. Once you have identified the more influential members of your community, contact them regularly, give them free product, become their friend. Feed your influencers information, and they will distribute it for you. But do not make it appear that you are only interested in them because they can help you sell stuff. You need to be genuine.
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Networking is more than just putting your business name out there for people to find you, but it is also a part of getting to know people, who are going to spread the word about what you do, what you sell, and that are going to support you in all that you do. Networking is going to involve getting to know as many people in life as you can, and putting your business in front of those people, so they will represent your name, your business, and will tell others about what you have to offer.

If your business requires that you travel often, or perhaps you travel often to find supplies, visit relatives or just because you like it. You should make it a point to get to know those who you are sitting beside, those who are surrounding you on the plane, even those who are sitting on the bench while waiting in the airport. Make it a point to meet and greet at least one new person a day.
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If you don’t have good fresh content to use for new products, your momentum comes to a crashing halt and so does your business.
So the question begs itself, how do you consistently create new content?
Here are your four basic options:

1) You can continually write your own materials…and you should.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed… and you should.

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you… and you should.

or

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell… and you should do this as well.

Each option has its own positives and negatives but in my opinion you should be doing a little bit of each.

Let me explain…

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell
Purchasing the rights to content that has already been created can be a double edged sword, but, if you do it right, it can be VERY profitable for a number of reasons.

First and foremost you want to review the “legal mumble jumble” to the materials that you have purchased. There are different “rights” and you need to be aware of the differences. I’ll give you a quick break down of the basic ones that I commonly come across for these types of products.

A. Recording Rights: These usually grant you the rights to record the written material in your voice and sell the audio for whatever price you want. They do not give you the right to reprint the materials or transcribe your audio (yes that is the same thing!!) and resell that.
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If you don’t have good fresh content to use for new products, your momentum comes to a crashing halt and so does your business.
So the question begs itself, how do you consistently create new content?
Here are your four basic options:

1) You can continually write your own materials…and you should.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed… and you should.

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you… and you should.

or

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell… and you should do this as well.

Each option has its own positives and negatives but in my opinion you should be doing a little bit of each.

Let me explain…

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you

Hiring a ghost writer has some major advantages and disadvantages. First and foremost it takes a HUGE burden off your shoulders to create original content. Secondly it frees up a lot of your time. Third, it feels great when you get an email from your ghostwriter and the ebook/book/manual/article(s) are all complete and ready to go – it truly is the magic pill.
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