Pick whatever PR or Marketing blogger you want and they will all say that companies will be getting more deeply involved in social media as a way to connect with customers.

The next thing they will say is that in order for any company or person to connect, they need to be genuine.  While everyone agrees with the statement, many have a different opinion as to what genuine means.

While most successful companies let you know that you’re reading a blog post from Scott or interacting on Facebook with Tony, there’s a key difference in how these companies set standards to communicate so that people feel like they’re connecting with the company and not just the specific person themselves.

Some good examples are Zappos and HubSpot.  Both companies have a great online presence and if you see the way they reach out on their own blogs, “TV” videos, tweets, and other forms of social media, they do very well at representing their companies while educating, interacting, and some times entertaining.  But here’s the part that really stands out; if Tony moved on from Zappos or Mike or Dharmesh moved on from HubSpot (Disclaimer: I haven’t met these people (yet) and I know nothing about their future career plans.), yes, I would probably follow their new blogs or interact with them wherever they went.  More importantly though, is that I would still continue to follow and interact with HubSpot and Zappos.

Some companies are mistaking being genuine for being too personal and while your community manager is doing a fantastic job connecting to prospects, customers and everyone else, those people are associating themselves to that one person and not your company.  That’s bad.  What happens when that person leaves your company?  How many people will continue to follow them and have absolutely no interest in your company once they leave?

The key point I’m trying to make is that getting into social media takes a strategy just like every other part of your marketing plan and while being genuine and helpful are critical, if the people you’re communicating with aren’t connecting with your company or brand, it doesn’t really matter.

We’ve been so busy coding and redesigning our site that we almost forgot to take the time to thank all of the beta users and business partners that participated in our beta.  The feedback was great and we can’t thank you enough.  We know the information you’ve given us will help to make our site and service that much more valuable when we launch in January. 

Some of the input we knew was coming (the site design) and some of it was new to us.  That’s the beauty of getting honest feedback from prospective customers that haven’t lived it night and day for the last year.  Thanks!

So what are we doing with the feedback? We’ve prioritized your input into three categories;

• Must Change Now (We’re changing it right now.)
• Future Enhancement (Want to get it done in Q1 and Q2 of ’09.)
• Need More Data  (Need to see how things play out and get more data before taking action.)

In January, you can expect to see;

• Our production site design (much better then our beta)
• Updated pricing based on feedback
• Ability to add your company logo
• A few more things…

Also some stuff that you won’t see like major enhancements to our platform that will allow us to grow and add more efficient ways to bring B2B buyers and sellers together much faster in future releases.

Thanks again!

Today, ReadWriteWeb, had did a post titled, “Corporate Blogs Not Trusted”, which was based on information from a Forrester Research report.  While I could do an entire post on how you can find poor bloggers in small companies just as much as large companies.  The key thing that struck me was the chart. 

Two things stood out:
1. “Consumer product ratings/reviews” was the second most trusted source of information.
2. The word “Consumer” in that title.

In regards to the first point, “Email from people you know” was at the top of the list and it always will be.  We will always trust information and experience from people we know more then anything else. 

The second point is more subtle.  The reason you see the word “Consumer” in so many charts and reports when it comes to ratings and reviews is that for some magical reason, we don’t use that same common sense mentality in our business lives.  This is one of the driving factors as to why we created FYIndOut and are looking forward to our launch in January.

In today’s economy, small businesses, and even large corporations, need to share experiences with each other when buying applications or services for our business just as we do for ourselves.  Think of the last time you didn’t look for a customer review before buying a book, camera, or when going to a new restaurant?  So why would you blindly try three or four lawyers or business applications before finding the right one?  Did the ones that paid for the biggest ads in the phone book or highest ranking in a search engine work out for you?  Can your business afford to lose time and money finding the right solution?

Think of how much time you put into finding the right camera for yourself and then realize how little that amount is to the solutions your business needs.  Ratings and reviews are coming to the business world with FYIndOut.

Hey All,

Our friends at crowdSPRING are one of five finalists for Wired’s Small Biz Program.  The winner gets $40,000 towards their business.  Please help support our fellow entrepreneurs by clicking here and voting for them as soon as possible!

Thanks.

Last week Marketing Charts posted the results of a study done by Rubicon Consulting that shows how online reviews are second only to word-of-mouth when it comes to influencing someone’s purchase decisions.

Per the article,
“Online reviews and comments written by users – often overlooked by marketers in favor of things they can control – are disproportionately influential to consumer buying decisions and are second only to personal word-of-mouth for purchasing influence for Americans, according to research from Rubicon Consulting.”

This is the whole reason we started FYIndOut.  We firmly believe that there’s a lot to be gained by both buyers and marketers in the B2B market in using social media and communicating directly with each other instead of at each other.

The article also stated,
“Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily,” said Harry Max, a principal at Rubicon Consulting.  “What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions.  Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.”

We can’t agree more and we believe that FYIndOut will be a leader in helping to make this happen.