A great article on thinkvitamin today explains to online business owners, why they shouldn’t necessarily focus on price and quantity when selling their products online. If we have learned anything from blogging and social media practices, it’s that personality, transparency, branding and first and foremost, quality is the way forward.
“Instead, sell a small sub-set of your products that you think may sell well online. For each product, provide a high level of detail describing the product. Follow up with some solid advice on how to choose the correct product for you, or provide expertise and background on the origins of the product.”
I have been posting some ideas and thoughts about Twitter and friendfeed on both of their services. Mostly questioning how they compare or differentiate. I believe they contemplate each other in one way or the other, but haven’t really figured out how they fit together just yet.
I read two interesting things recently, about organising your information sources in your rss reader, on twitter, friendfeed, facebook etc. A presentation from Louis Gray which I caught over at TheFutureBuzz and the other from ReadWriteWeb. Both covering the same subject, but with slightly different approaches. Here’s why they are both wrong and right.
I have never really used Friendfeed in any really engaging way. The conversational aspects of the service is fantastic, but I haven’t really been able to unlock the full potential of it. Until now I have been using Friendfeed mostly as an aggregator for my own content, only to redistribute it using the Facebook widget and the ‘post to twitter’ option. I also used it to remind myself which social networks I’m signed up to, Friendfeed gives me a nice list.
“A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person’s favorable or unfavorable actions.”
A person’s whuffie can literally be used to pay for stuff and the more whuffie you got, the less $$ you need. But in reality, this is simply a set of guidelines on how to create relationships online. Measuring whuffie is just a way to convince companies that they can’t just ignore it, and have to embrace social media, rather than shy away from it.
Personally I’m a big fan of this approach to measuring social media capital. Social media investments can be extremely hard to measure. Traditional marketing results are much easier to transfer to a graph and show of to companies.
5 things that will increase your whuffie
Turn that bullhorn around
Stop blasting your message out and start creating relationships. Listen to your customers and react to feedback as fast as possible
Become part of the community you serve
Figure out who you are serving and become part of their lives. Engage, but DON’T sell. Break it down and identify who, why and what makes people interested in you and be interested in them!
Create amazing customer experiences
Make people LOVE your service or product, really love. Appeal to emotion, inject fun into you or your product, give people control, simplify, make happiness your business model.
Embrace the chaos
Don’t try to control the message. Basically this is about facing the chaos (problem) and actively showing that you are addressing it. See it as a chance to improve
Find your higher purpose
Find a way to give back to the community by thinking ‘customer centric’. Send them to other websites, don’t cut down on customer service.
Kasper Sorensen is an online multimedia journalist with everything that encompasses. Hook up with him on Facebook or Twitter, or email him: kasprSPAMBLOCKbs@gmail.com.
I have been posting some ideas and thoughts about Twitter and friendfeed on both of their services. Mostly questioning how 
Kasper Sorensen is an online multimedia journalist with everything that encompasses. Hook up with him on 