WOMMA Presentation: Tools to Spread the Word
December 6th, 2007
I’ve had several people email me about my presentation at the WOMMA Summit
in Las Vegas, so I thought it might be fun to share the presentation with
everyone.
First off, I enjoyed presenting with Abi Sideman of Oddcast. Great guy, and
his first question to me was “How does a guy with a southern accent get a
name like Geno?” It’s hard to explain, but it has something to do with my
Cherokee, Swiss, and Italian heritage.
Our topic was “10 Tools to Spread the Word.” For my part I wanted to
challenge the attendees to think beyond tactics and think more holistically.
What do you want your tools to do? Where do they fall in the cycle that
takes your customer from participating with your brand to evangelism and
finally to ownership?
Some of you might be familiar with my post “The Cycle of a Fan.” For this
WOMMA presentation I created a mini-fan cycle. The mini-fan cycle has four
steps: participation, adoption, evangelism, and ownership. I’m not
recommending that the six steps of the original fan cycle are obsolete. For
the WOMMA presentation, I wanted to still use the fan cycle to hopefully get
the attendees to think about what they want WOM tools to accomplish - and
stop thinking about collecting WOM tactics.
Participation
What do you do that is engaging or remarkable enough to make someone
interested to want more?
Tool #1
Customize conversation tools where your advocates or fans have natural
conversations — at a store, in a chatroom, a church, or a Friday night
football game.
Adoption to Evangelism
Adoption is personal, but passive. Turning adoptive passive behavior into
fan evangelism requires understanding a fan’s needs.
Tool #2
Online and offline “open source” tools. Welcome Membership kits, online
do-it-yourself tools, offline do-it-yourself tools.
Ownership
To continue to feed the evangelist flames, they need to know that they’re
not alone. Providing opportunities for evangelists to gather and interact is
an important catalyst.
Tool #3
Bring your advocates together in person.
Final point: Don’t fool yourself: True ownership requires sacrifice, a
sacrifice of time and money.
Other posts by Geno.
Kyle says:
Another Geno graph…Its great. I’m in what I believe is the evangelist stage of disc golf right now.
Can anybody be an evangelist? How important are personality traits for the transition?
December 6th, 2007 at 10:37 amSherida says:
Thanks for this post, Geno. Especially for those of us who couldn’t make it to Vegas. I’m going to save this as a reference point for future conversations regarding our passholders.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:05 amolivier Blanchard says:
Great to see you posting, Geno!
Kyle: IMHO, everyone from the janitor to the CEO should (in theory) be an evangelist for an organization, product, brand or worthwhile idea. That’s the “perfect world” scenario that we should strive towards.
Real world application:
1)Organizations should review their hiring criteria and ask themselves each person applying for a position (or already working there) is capable of acting as an evangelist. So HR needs to be involved in recruiting the right types of people into the culture of the organization. It takes more insight and courage than simply matching qualifications to job requirements.
Honestly, if someone in your organization is not capable of evangelizing it, why are they there?
2)Organizations should strive to give their people every reason to BE evangelists. (This is not the same as creating a culture of evangelism within an organization - which can come across as fake and contrived.)
It’s a tall order either way.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:08 amGeno says:
Thanks guys for posting. Olivier… I seem to go through blog dry spells. My goal is to not be as silent.
Kyle, I agree with Olivier. Anyone can be an evangelist, the worst thing IMO that a brand can do is try to pigeon hole their evangelists. They come in all varieties and that’s what I think is so awesome about fan movements.
With RAGE we have student body presidents and teens that have pocket protectors and they both evangelize.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:06 pmKyle says:
Great! Thanks Olivier and Geno!
I agree… Although, we contract our janitor and I can’t seem to get anything out of her other than “Don’t put anymore half-full cups in the trash.” At least she’s an optimist.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:45 pmGoodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire! » The Buzz Bin says:
[...] on Fire posts about tools to spread the word (based on a presentation from the WOMMA Summit). Tools for aiding through the process of [...]
December 10th, 2007 at 11:51 pm