Buzz Canuck

MESH Canada's Web Conference Returns

I felt like such a Kathy Griffin last year not getting my ticket for MESH until it's too late and missing the whole shabang. Moral of the story, commit and get your tickets early.

I love the players at MESH and beyond bringing a set of interesting people together for 3 days of info exchange and networking, the quality of people in the audience are just as interesting as the people on stage (very few Sarah Lacys).

I was amused at their outreach to their 4 key constituent audiences and the tout to Marketers and PR people specifically  "The Web is rewriting the rule book for the marketing industry. Word of mouth is still the most powerful fuel a company can buy, but now it comes in the form of blogs, podcasts, forums and instant messaging – and it can not only power your marketing engine, but burn you when you least expect it. Those on the front lines share their advice on what to do, and what not to do".  

It may be nitpicking, but if I only had two issues with MESH it would be:

1)  the lack of integrators on the slate - I know its a conference on web but as opposed to all specialist web people, I'd love to get a mix of people who are integrating web experiences into broader company efforts and provide a bridging perspective. Getting the web industry to at least hear and perhaps recognize the needs and issues of commerce, culture and the broader marketplace may help push the wheels forward, but sometimes when you keep drinking the same Kool-Aid, it starts tasting like wine (translation - when all you hear is your own views, they become lodged as facts in your brains)

2) scare mongering word of mouth - the number of self-exploding efforts on word of mouth are few and far between - I just wish we would stop pointing the risk of WOM and start talking to its untapped potential  - the language above is like a travel guide saying "you might love New York, but watchout, you might be hit by a fast moving taxi" - chance are you won't, so enjoy the trip!

So see you there! (oh and of course, stick around for a sequel and see you at our June 12 conference as we tackle all forms of word of mouth). 

9 Types of Brand Community - A New Model

In looking at over 50 types of brand communities, I've been able to dissect and classify them into 9 different buckets that make sense. I could have segmented them by core purpose (innovation, evangelism, distribution, insight, user generated content, decision-making, employee-rallying, customization), but the segmentation would become meaningless given how many different purposes exist for brand communities, oftentimes found all in the some of the better communities.

Instead, two defining characteristics of a brand community are:
1) Exclusivity - how private or public is the access granted to members/prospects within the community
2) Depth of Involvement  - what is the scope of the collaboration being asked or commitment being required
All forms can be valuable depending on the brand.

So the 9 Types of Brand Communities resulting are:

Low Exclusivity
1) Fan Club - Wd-40 (low involvement)
2) Brand Forums - Intuit Quickbooks (mid involvement)
3) Brand Network - Jones Soda (high involvement)

Middle Exclusivity
4) Brand Nation - Nike Plus (low involvement)
5) Brand Ambassador  - Maker's Mark  Embassy (mid involvement)
6) Brand Meritocracy - Spread Firefox (high  involvement)

HIgh Exclusivity
7) Influencer Clique - Lululemon (low involvement)
8) Advisory Panel - Dell Ideastorm (mid involvement)
9) Brand Cult - Harley Davidson - HOGS (high involvement)

Some of the categorizations have a few rough edges but I believe the categorization is an effective
paradigm for looking at brand communities.

For those interested in the subject, please pass along any brand communities that they believe fit into one of these groupings (distinguish between an commercial object-centred, brand community vs. a people/ego centred social network like Facebook/Digg). Also, provide any constructive feedback to build on this model.

Finally, just about to launch a full presentation about brand communities entitled "It Takes a Community to Raise a Brand" in the next edition of our Buzz Report enewsletter. To subscribe and get a glimpse at:
- the reasons why brand communities work
- the types of brand communities
- common misnomers
- a 17 step process to plan them
- smart ways to build them
- key ways to maintain them
- essential features/elements
- best examples
Sign up here at Agent Wildfire. 

Ever Really Wanted to Know How to Make a Button?

A eclectic and mind inducingly numb or funny (pending your perspective) video on how to make a button. Miranda July, the host appears to be the Ally Sheedy of the web broadcasting circuit   - weird but strangely interesting women - perhaps the new off-the-wall Amanda Congdon?. I had no idea about furburizing - very technical stuff. Give it a chance.

Sidebar - I kind of like VBS' simple interface for online video and the fact that Spike Jonze is behind it, gives some credence to the fact that I'll like the "Being John Malkovich" styled content. Hopefully next time, Miranda can teach me about magnets or do buttons at pedestrian walks really change the speed of the traffic lights or just make us feel more empowered.

Social Networks "Everywhere and Nowhere", according to The Economist

The Economist produced a damning indictment on closed-ended social networks in their article last week "Online Social Networks: Everywhere  and Nowhere".  The article compares social networking to webmail from a decade ago - a ubiquitous service that may have great utility but not a great business model.

Some of their pronouncements are a bit premature but they do make some very valid points:
- why go to so many websites to maintain connections with your fave friends and colleagues?
- conventional display advertising is challenged to breakthrough on all the big social network sites
- Facebook's Beacon has failed in its first go-around
- personal privacy has become challenged by social networks needing to broadcast all your information, in many cases whether you like it or not
- various groups (Google, Mozilla's Thunderbird) may not have a large incentive to make money off of social networking based on it being a complement to the rest of their services or the fact that they are open-source,non-profit

Let's tackle each one of these:
1) To open source or not :  I actually do believe there is a place for "walled gardens' on the web - just not in big mass collaborative settings like Facebook. In order to grow and be deemed valuable by their users and the advertisers who follow them, they will need to open up and integrate with the rest of the web and answer web user's biggest frustration - "how do I go to one place for my online socializing". Whoever moves their fastest, will get the spoils - as Google is to online search and eBay is to ecommerce so X will be to eSocializing ...could it be Google's OpenSocial work, perhaps an Apple iSocial, a Facebook Unplugged or Microsoft Browser based system? The leapfrog benefit when this happens is that an intelligent semantic web will be able to do social things we wouldn't have dreamed of in our currently splintered universe.

However, as people want more specialized socialization and privacy, niche interest-specific sites will pop up and create thriving micro-communities where people are happy to jump through hurdles to become part of the private insider clubs that will form. Witness the start of the long tail communization of the social web already by Ning's development of 200,000 clients. If Facebook becomes the Strabucks on every social corner, some of us will want Studio 51 too. 

2) Advertising issues: Conventional advertising has been a fool's game in traditional universes for awhile too...half of the pop ups, pop unders and rich media interruptions are likely clicked out of error or confusion than real interest. The type of people clicking on these ads has also proved to be a low income, promotion-hopping and inherently disloyal customer segment.  Google ads work for two reasons: a) people are searching when on Google  and if your ad is relevant to their search it may suade you into clicking and b) it's a pay per click environment. 

On social networks, the whole idea is hanging out on a virtual couch with your friends so: a) we don't want to leave the couch to go someplace else where ads might take you and b) social networks would much rather sell you sponsored and display space because of a).

The companies who are winning in a social network universe are bringing "value to the couch" - see TripAdvisor's  Where I've Been on Facebook which builds a better customer experience as opposed to shouting over the conversation. Most marketeers and agency folk have not recognized this concept yet and corporate acceptance of social networks has thus suffered.

The other pertinent stat that should keep social networks propped up until marketers figure out how to
operate in them. We spend about 20% of our media time on the web yet it receives only 8% of the media  pie. With the 20% number expected to grow, expect a building advertising tide to raise all ships.

3) Beacon's failure: granted Microsoft $12 billion valuation of Facebook put pressure for Beacon to work right out the gate, it didn't and people panned it. The idea behind it however is a powerful one - we love to talk and share information about brands and products we've purchased (Amazon has perfected this execution) . If you're just normal, you'll exchange over 50 recommendations/referrals every week. Plus, in 70% of word of mouth, we actually act on its intentions (could ads even breakthrough decimals on an action quotient?) .  Beacon failed in its execution - expect the next rendition to be closer to the vision of systemizing word of mouth value online. Even in its short history, Facebook has had a history of failing quickly, pulling back and reintroducing something better - expect a similar episode here.   

4) Privacy - as perhaps an unfortunate fact for some of us, privacy is a waning asset. If Barrack Obama's passport info  can be accessed by civil servant hobbyists, your information is a comparably easy read. As more info gets posted online, your life, personal history, family connections, financials and work history will become an open book. It may be Orwellian and certainly social networks need to deal with the short term issue (notice Facebook's calibrated privacy settings) but a decade from now, we may laugh at what information we used to hold so close to our chests. And contrary to the author's assertion, the open sourcing of information will actually make your information more accessible not less (imagine you providing an update and it being blasted to the 26 social networking sites you've signed up for  in real time).

5) Social networks as the loss leader - from a mass perspective, social network services may be the metaphoriacal "tie or socks" that you get for free alongside your bought web services ensuite "suit". Microsoft and Google's bandwidth may be able to support  such loss leadership. It's one of the reasons why I thought Facebook at $12 billion was well over-valued from the outset. Because I don't work for them, I'm less concerned about the fact that every 18-24 months, a new social network overtakes the one before it (Friendster-turned My Space turned Facebook). I'm more concerned about the fact if social networks are free and less of us are looking at corporately produced content, where will the marketing money go to sustain this web ecosystem. Will online become like the airline business where the best operated brands profit and the rest are managed by ego-driven, well-moneyed business people at a constant loss? It's an interesting question in a world where people refuse to pay for content.

A few caveats that will see new forms of revenue-friendly social networks:
- branded social and collaborative social networks/communities, witness the launch of My Starbucks
- mobile-based social networks - which approximate a real world search parallel to Google's online search
- niche social networks - I just spotted a dedicated social network for sports fishermen, niches will always be able to charge more for serving their constituents better than the big guys
- ancillary service social networks - if people won't pay for connecting to their social networks - perhaps there will be ancillary services that sit alongside them that they will pay for - MySpace is now selling music, Facebook is trying to open up a marketplace, perhaps LinkedIn will set itself up as a high end headhunter with affiliates.      

One thing I do know, every evolution of web has created winners and losers and  incorporated the wave of change before it...no different here. Social networks are a part of our life for good and it will be interesting to see which  1-2 companies at the top end and 100-150 companies at the bootstrapping end will make a good business model out of them. 

We Now Have our Own Club - The SWOM

I recognize that there is the Social Media Club, The Podcampers, the Society of New Communications Research, the Corporate Blogging Council...now word of mouthers have their own treehouse - SWOM.

SWOM (The Society of Word of Mouth) built by some of my favourite, most insightful and refreshingly egoless industry experts Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer, is a Ning-based community site that could offer some shortcut alternatives to engaging fellow buzz-driven peers in the future and act as a nice grassroots complement to the more formalized WOMMA trade association and some of the activities we are leading here in Canada. Drop by and friend up.

Arrington's Midnight Rant, the Big Leaguing of Blogs and Canada's Blog Dream Team

I met with a well-informed web friend for lunch at the Esplanade Bier Mkt on Thursday and after half an hour of conversation I recognized just how nose-down in my own business and how oblivious to the social media world around me I had become.

Three commitments I made there and then - 1) to make it down to SXSW next year (it felt like more than 1/2 of Canada's digiterati went down, no?), 2) to redouble over my efforts in reading intelligent  blogs with the latest headlines and fresh ideas in order to keep myself current and 3) regrettably, make a move to Twitter nation and find the remainder 1/2 free hour in my day gone to 160 character headline scrolling.

The post that caught a lot of my attention in my first foray back from the real world wilderness was Arrington's "More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Come the Politics. And Here Comes my Rant." Techcrunch post.

It would appear that some of my blogging brethren are getting very, very rich and what was once a hobby or poor value-per-post job is now a well-moneyed media enterprise.

In Arrington's post, he points to example after example of blogging enterprises getting $1-10 million worth of injection of venture capital and the comparative lack of any type of VC funding earlier than 2006.

In a self-serving trial balloon, he also positions himself as the social enterprise kingpin that you as a smart blogger should be saving yourself for (don't you think this kind of arm rangling we could all deal with a little less of?) as he hatches his own CNET-scaled blogging venture. Given the 160 comments, this topic seems to have galvanized his insider entourage (vs. the 15-30 comments he typically gets on his posts).

There are two problems with Arrington's position, one he identifies himself:
1) venture capital wants a get out plan in 3-4 years with a strong multiple on investment performance  - although  blogs can grow quickly, it's very much a lucky hit industry - with a majority that never reach critical mass and for those who do, the opportunity to flameout is always around the corner
2) it presumes that a lot more people will be reading the blogosphere. If traditional media does a decent enough job of reinventing itself for the user-generated world - will more of the people in the mainstream trust a contemporized NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and The Economist  vs. new corporately-backed blogging interests?  If you would ask a person on the street that today, for all its flaws, a great majority still put more stock and trust in the traditional media brands. And I wouldn't blame them given the gossipy almost catty, echo chamber nature of some of the top Silicon Valley, Hollywood, New York and Washington-based blogs.   

This just proves once again my prediction that every new media that comes into the game, starts to evolve and over time, and begins to looks like the old media that preceded it. If Arrington is right, I see a number of fundamental changes visiting the blogosphere soon that will make blogs like TechCrunch feel and act like a broadsheet, just in a slightly altered medium :
                                                Blogging  2004               Blogging  2009               Traditional Media
Writing Motivation        Do it for passion/self-expression   Do it for money/fame   Do it for money/career
Core blogging politic                 Left wing socialist           Right wing, capitalist        Right wing, capitalist
Role in the marketplace            Surface new ideas        Cover headlines, gossip    Cover headlines, gossip
Role for marketers/companies    Provoke change          Guard paid interests      Guard paid interests      
                                               Police marketplace   Coopt for own messaging  Coopt for own messaging

Atmosphere                               Collaborative              Stealthily Competitive      Overtly Competitive
Top Ranked Contributors           Most Engaged            Best Paid/Grandfathered     Best Paid/Circulated
Saddest regret                       Not a mass medium   Poor link-fed caste system  Slow moving bus. model
Upward Mobility driven by         What you know         Who you know (capital)    Who you know (publisher)
I'm not saying all these changes are bad. If smart people can make money off of their citizen journalism efforts, an exciting new career stream might be developed for aspiring journalists who can't break into the downsizing mass and broadcast media industry. For me however, it will just lose some of the magic and grassroots sheen that many of us who love social media, were motivated by to join in the first place.

Homework assignment - If Arrington's vision comes true, humour me --if you were a Canadian VC, who would you pick  as the top 10 Canadian bloggers to join your "Dream Team".            

CMA Word of Mouth Conference Taking Shape, Join our Facebook page

Peg June 12th on your calendar of important dates. Just do it, trust me. Oh and also join our Facebook Fan Page in the interim.

Why? OK, if you really insist -  the return of the  "From Mass to Grass" word of mouth conference in Toronto is about to reveal itself and I believe we have another conference coup on our hands.

If you can believe it, the agenda may top last year's success. Let's remember last year we had speakers from lululemon, one red paper clip, Monster, Nike, Harper Collins, Scotiabank, Steam Whistle, Church of the Customer, Cossette, Yahoo, Vespa, Unilever, Schulich and other potentates so we've set the bar high.

Formal announcement and agenda will happen at the start of April where you can sign on at the association's website but I can safely say some of Canada's top brands and specialists, entertainment thought leaders, famous authors and documentarians, not-for-profits, b-to-b rainmakers, measurement gurus and both grassroots upstart successes and smart large companies are on the slate. Thankfully, we also have Canadian speakers represented from coast to coast. And if that's not all (said with infomercial dramatic pause), we'll have a cool and altruistic social media driven contest!

As proof of the strength of the conference, look at the strength of the cast on our committee (who deserve special plaudits and the occasional Ritalin):
Mitch Joel, Twist Image  - Canada's Social Media Rock Star 
David Jones, Hill & Knowlton - Inside PR's Stir Stik and Professor
Mirabel Palmer-Elliott, Rogers Publishing - Queen of Considerable Kickass Qualities 
Michael Seaton, Thornley & Fallis -  The Client Side expert-turned-Agency Guy (he'll need to explain it)
Peter Coish, XY Media Ventures - The Ryan Seacrest/Simon Cowell of Male Lifestyle in Canada
Allison Daisley, Cake Beauty  - The Face of Beauty PR and Scrabullous Mensa 
Minnow Hamilton, Savvy Mom - Leader of One of Canada's Most Powerful Femme Fatale Armies
Baron Mannett, Ariad Communications - Jack of All Marketing Trades  but Guerrilla Marketeer  at Heart
Steve Osgoode, Harper Collins  -  The Jerry McGuire of the Literati Set
Kate Trgovac, Reinvent! - One Degree Conspirator and Social Media/Handbag Maven
Jay Moonah , 58 Ninety  -  Podcamp Guru and Uncle Seth's Harmonica/Banjo Specialist
Kiran Balladin, CMA - The Conference Sherpa and Enforcer 
Cathy Landolt, CMA - Relief Pitcher, Event Guru and Music Aficionado
and myself Sean Moffitt, Agent Wildfire -  Word of Mouth Connector and Matt Damon Wannabe 

We hope you can join us.

Paul Simon sings "50 Reasons Marketers Embrace Word of Mouth"

"The problem is all inside your head", she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty reasons to embrace word of mouth

She said it's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself, at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty reasons to embrace word of mouth
Ya, Fifty ways to leave mass marketing

You just slip out the viral, Tyrell
Make some new buzz, Gus
You don't need to be loud, Saud
Just get yourself free
Hop on the CGM, Brem
You don't need to discuss much (well actually you do)
Just drop off the noise, Royce
And get yourself free

She said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you trusted again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
About the fifty reasons (to embrace word of mouth)

She said why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning you'll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty reasons to embrace word of mouth
Fifty ways to start some buzz

You just slip out the RSS, Jess
Make some new fans, Hans
You don't need to be scared, Jared
Just get yourself free
Hop on the social web, Caleb
You don't need to spend much
Just drop off the fake, Blake
And get yourself free"

If your still reading this post after my massacre of a Paul Simon classic....here is in my experience, for good or bad, the stated order of priority that marketers, agency folk and entrepreneurs give for embracing organized word of mouth:

1. Accelerate sales (R)
2. Launch a product/service (R)
3. Deliver buzz/publicity value (A)
4. Build awareness/exposure (R)
5. Drive referral (A)
6. Deliver web traffic (R)
7. Deliver live traffic (R)
8. Target new/specific audience (A)
9. Support ad campaign (A)
10. Develop/enhance grassroots perception (S)
11. Seed influencers (A)
12. Leverage a sponsorship or new news (A)
13. Improve credibility of message (E)
14. Drive overall marketing spend efficiency (R)
15. Incubate a community of brand fans/ambassadors(E)
16. Last ditch chance/nothing else has worked (S)
17. Create novelty (A)
18. Drive/upsell revenue (R)
19. Build better customer experience (A)
20. Be/appear progressive/try something new (S)
21. Launch in a specific geography (R)
22. Get noticed by bloggers/social media (A)
23. Build brand love/affinity (E)
24. Build a worthy cause (E)
25. Galvanize employees/stakeholders (E)
26. Create new/fresh content (S)
27. Meet/go deeper with a tough-to-reach audience (A)
28. Reduce customer acquisition costs (R)
29. Chase younger, more networked audience (A)
30. Support company values/strategy (S)
31. Address CEO challenge (S)
32. Drive brand loyalty/lifetime value of users (E)
33. Participate in a dialogue/conversation (S)
34. Target localization of international/national effort (S)
35. Because we have found money/new budget (S)
36. Improve customer support (S)
37. Create an account specific/alliance-based program (S)
38. Ego/want personal brand to be noticed and talked about (S)
39. Act as a sounding board/stimulus for a lot of ideas (S)
40. Follow a competitor/improve on a competitive effort (S)
41. Diffuse bad word of mouth (A)
42. Identify superior real world insight (S)
43. Work with a new agency/get new ideas (S)
44. Test market for the rest of the company (S)
45. Convert competitive users/ask for reappraisal (A)
46. Solve a problem (S)
47. Find new employees (S)
48. Skirt/circumvent  regulations (S)
49. Save operational costs (R)
50. Create a new distribution channel (E)

Legend - R - Results-focused, A- Advocacy-focused, E- Evangelism-focused and S- Soft benefits

Social Design Principles - The Answer is 16

Joshua Porter may be a social design webhead from Bokardo but he could have written the word of mouth manifesto in his 16 core observations about social design below.

#1,  #5, 6 and 1- thru 14 are pure soundbyte gold and frequently left unaddressed by conventional marketing methods

1. Humans are complex social animals.
2. Technology doesn’t change us very fast.
3. Humans constantly search out ways to communicate more efficiently.
4. The primary use of the Internet is communication.
5. People play different roles in different parts of their life.
6. People tend to connect to those people they are similar to.
7. Who we are similar to depends upon our situation and goals.
8. Over-similarity can lead to group-think.
9. Unpredictable behavior emerges within groups over time.
10. People act differently in groups than they do individually.
11. The people we know greatly influence how we act.
12. People usually compare themselves to those in their social group, not society at large.
13. Humans aren’t always rational, but are usually self-interested.
14. When humans are uncertain, we rely on social connections to help us out.
15. We have biases that we aren’t conscious of.
16. Because life in not deterministic, we cannot always predict human behavior.

As an added "16" bonus, here are the 16 features Amazon bakes into their league-leading design.

The A to Zs of Word of Mouth

As a hobbyist Scrabble/Scrabulous with a middling career record of 38 wins, 32 losses and 2 ties (there should be a rule aginst tying in Scrabble), I certainly recognize the power of individual words. Words have meaning beyond their definition.

As inspiration, I site Gaston Bachelard from The Poetics of Reverie "I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young." Priceless.

In this post, I want to marry my love of words with my professional love - word of mouth. Hope you;ll help join me in finding the 26 most powerful words in word of mouth:

AUTHENTICITY - stealth is the enemy of true word of mouth - we need to render programs and experiences that are authentic in word, motive, activities and results

BUZZ - we buzz about the remarkable, the edgy, the innovative, the authentic and the trusted; just plain "good" does not make it past our brain and wallets to our lips anymore

COLLABORATION - so many choices, C is a very popular word of mouth word - community, co-creation, crowdsourcing, customer centicity...we'll choose collaboration as it is the stir stick allowing many of these other things to happen. marketers that are willing to acknowledge their customers have something valuable to say and responding "yes and.." and not reverting to no, but..." are winning the day

1)

DIALOGUE - word of mouth is a two-way medium with conversation as its inventory, make sure you provide a culture, staff and enviornment to play with, distribute, build and measure that inventory

EXPERIENCE - "nothing is real until it is experienced" John Keats, and don't expect people to evangelize about you until you can provide them with an experience that immerses and transforms them into your brand cult

FACEBOOK - ok, so this may be the one word that needs to be replaced in a couple of years, but Facebook has changed our ability to social network on a lot of our own terms without the design-offensive barriers of its older sibling MySpace, it has also changed our definition of what "privacy" and "friend" is irrevocably

GRASSROOTS - ubiquity is the enemy of word of mouth - if, as a member/customer, I can get your information, incentive or entertainment anywhere, why should I talk about it...word of mouth almost always trickles up from the grassroots than forces itself down the mainstream

HAWTHORNE EFFECT - simply, the very aspect of asking for your target audience's opinions has value and motivation in itself...hopefully you may even act on it. The converse - knowing all the answers as the expert kills conversation before it even starts. (for full background on the effect)

INFLUENCERS - some of these people are not like the other - your most passionate 10% of your audience own more than 1/2 of the value of your chain of word of mouth benefits

JIUJITSU - a martial art with moves cleverly supplemented by a clver use of your attacker's own weight and strength - sounds like a blogger outreach program to me

KINSHIP -  "a close connection marked by community of interests or similarity in nature or character", the tighter the kinship, the more trusted and valued the word of mouth. Brands that can help  build and incubate these micro-communities of interest are thus enhanced.

LEAPFROGGING - it's a poweful metaphor of using so called "weak ties" (acquaintances vs. close friends) to  jump across the conversation barriers and produce runaway clusters of word of mouth, made signifcantly more easiliy by the emrgence of web 2.0

MEASUREMENT - companies will spend to what they measure - whether we like that fact or not it's true - whereas, good word of mouth requires an intuitive mind, it also needs the discipline to measure the value created by peer generated insight, engagement, content and advocacy (see under net promoter score for help)

NETWORK - "build a platform and they will come", well not quite, but as Facebook has learned with its social graph and countless brands have learned with their brand communities, a platform that can house these disparate and geographically far-flung member releationships can untap great value

ONLINE/OFFLINE - ignore one at the expense of the other, most conversation-worthy stuff now starts on the web but over 75% of it still remains in the offline domain of lunch rooms, office meetings, cafe conversations and school yard gossip

PERSUASION -any good word of mouth marketer should grab a book by Ciadini and figure out the 6 most potent psychologiocal forms of influence - reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity - and put them to work for their business

QUALITY > QUANTITY - in the word of mouth world, a conversation has significantly more value attached to it than an impression - in most cases, it is an intimate medium that facilitates your front row of users doing the "heavy lifting" of convincing others

ROI - many of my community-minded peers lose sight of the fact that we live in a commercial reality, many word of mouth applications need to have a return on investment and thankfully many do...whether they are reductions in costs or increase in revenue, word of mouth has real financial and occasionally exponential value

SOCIAL - humans have been social for all of humankind, we  talk to connect, to survive, to relieve stress, to reduce risk and to benefit economically and now that we have a range of media and tech. platforms that allow us to reach out and touch "people like us", we do, at the expense of more aloof corporate offerings...wheras a generation ago, you might have had 4 regular numbers to phone, you now have 164 friends on your Facebook list reinforced by hundreds of email, IM and cellphone buddy lists

TRIPLE PLAY  - the triumvirate principle of smart customer generated content - create, rate and develop - mostwell-structured community sites are leveraging this approach to build content (create), develop fans and followers (rate) and build better more validated and creative stuff (develop)

USER-GENERATED - as Time mentioned last year - "YOU" are the person of the year - we have trained a generation of young and old to chime in, post blogs, submit photos, craft stories, contrive videos and find better solutions - blurring the lines between employee and fan, journalist and citizen pundit and marketing and activism

VIRAL - the "and they told two people...and so on...and so on" has never been more powerful - people use old and new media to get their passalong messages to others - with the potency of these media and networks - the ripples are larger, faster and longer than they have ever been

WEB 2.0 & 3.0 - the collaborative and semantic webs have allowed people to particpate not merely consume and access info through a different breed of internet platform; and Web 3.0 will usher in more open source, integrated and intelligent platforms that will allows users to take an active role in manipulating their web from whatever device they choose

X MULTIPLE -initial CPMS make word of mouth formats appear a very poor investment compared to tradional media formats, the scales tip the other way when you multiply how many gnerations of word of mouth are being repeated multiplied by how many people are averagely being told at each stage (otherwise known as the X multiple)

YOUTUBE - if a picture is a thousand words, what's a moving picture? With 65,000 new videos uploaded a day, 70+ million unique visitors/month and 60-70% of video traffic, video and YouTube specifically is a juggernaut. From a word of mouth standpoint, video can sometimes more easily max out on the 6 principles of sticky ideas: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion and storytelling

ZEALOTRY - at its most successful, word of mouth helps create fanatical devotion to a cause; the highest form of advocacy is whetehr your brand can be tattoo-worthy - think Harley's HOGs, Grateful Dead's Deadheads of later Phish's Phishheads, although no official moniker, Apple qualifies here too

Hopefully we haven't missed any obviouses...keep us honest if you know of a word that should be on this list, let us know.