Friendly Recommendations

Last night was my monthly Board of Directors meeting for the Snowbird Sports Education Foundation. During the meeting we talked about attracting more members and the topic of online media came up. One of the board members had just attended a seminar on viral marketing and using sites like Facebook and MySpace to increase memebership.

I sat there quietly listening. I actually am in the process of getting a patent for some software I wrote that is used for viral marketing. I understand the lure of low-cost marketing methods and can see why organizations would want to embrace them. However I also understand the difference between theory and reality. It is one thing to talk about success cases but quite another to actually implement one.

The idea behind viral marketing is that people are more likely to purchase something based on a friend's recommendation than an ad seen on TV (unless it is after 9pm and you see a fast-food commercial . . . they make me hungry). For example, if a friend goes to see the latest action movie and comes back with a glowing recommendation about how exciting it was, I am more likely to go see the movie than if I read a review.

The problem is how to get people talking about the movie and recommending it to their friends. Unless someone asks me what I did over the weekend or if I have seen a specific movie, I am reluctant to share my thoughts about it. I am also careful about what movies I recommend to whom. I was once on a business trip with one of our salesmen. We arrived at our hotel and saw that there was a movie theater across the parking lot. We quickly checked in and ran to see if we could catch a late showing of a newly released movie. We made it and had a great time watching the film. But it was a "guy" film and most of the women in the audience came away thinking less of their dates. Naturally I would never recommend that film to anyone but guys. Furthermore I would recommend they see it with other guys and not their wives or girlfriends.

How does a company leverage "friend's recommendations" to sell product or, in our case, increase ski team participants? With the ski team, you want the current kids to have a great experience and talk about it to their friends. I think that is already happening as shown by the number of team members that live close together. The real trick is getting outside the existing circle of influence. If all your friends are on the ski team, there really isn't anyone else to recommend.

I guess my only advice with viral marketing is to proceed with caution. Some strategies work while others just sound good on paper. As for me, I'm just trying to figure out how to get more people to read my BLOG.