The most remarkable notes according to humble me are:

Word of Mouth is still the most trusted influencer.
Which brand / movement is known throughout the world and did not invest in marketing? It was the first movement to use only word of mouth and still had a lot of followers? The answer? Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.

Steven also descibes Zappos, which is also in my book. This company has a 90% NPS score (nett-promotor score), which is the highest score on a global scale. The founder is the former owner of Link Exchange and sold Zappos recently to Amazone for…. 1,2 BILLION dollar!

Did you know that every 8 seconds, there is a new Facebook user?

Did you know that Youtube has been eveolved in a speed that currently there is 24 hours of moving images being uploaded every minute?!

Steven advices companies to transform PR Managers into Conversation managers. These days an influential blogger (with loads of followers) can be more desisive than regular press.

In a time where we see about 3.000 logo’s, ads, commercials and other commercial messages it’s time to think of different ways to start a conversation with consumers.
Games are ofcourse one way to do this (hence my book A Brand New Playground), but so are Social Media.

Research shows that advertising messages only stick in two situations:

1. You either own an item of this brand
2. You are planning on buying a product of this brand

Brand Identification is key. 

Advertising to consumers that do not even consider your product is useless, so better focus on current clients and brand fans to grow from the inner circle!

Universal studio’s used this conversation strategy when launching their new part of their park, the Harry Potter Castle. They invited 7 brandfans (very active Harry Potter bloggers) to take part in a video interview (a webinar so to speak) and revealed the first look to them at midnight. You can imagine that they didn’t sleep that night but wrote an article on their blog and send it out to the world. Within in one week, 350 million people knew about the Harry Potter Castle in Universal Studio’s in Orlando (and I am going there within two weeks!).

Central question when starting a conversation with brand fans about your brand is: “What should people share about your brand with their friends?”

Nice quote to explain behavior of the digital consumer: “What happens in Vegas, sticks on Facebook!”

Keep that in mind!

To conclude, there are 6 rules according to Steven to start conversation through Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.

1. Listen 
2. Ask Questions 
3. Be Open 
4. Be Honest 
5. Be Personal (don’t speak to the crowd, speak to a person) 
6. Engage your Fans and build Relationships!