Captains Log

Country Boy can’t understand all the Commotion!

I’ve been enthralled with this phenomena web 2.0 social networking and how it’s being used for marketing business. Then the other day a friend asked me how I got customers in my various businesses over the years. I told her that I always asked for personal referrals. After all I had tried various mainstream advertising, and measured the results, only to find that the value was nonexistent.

I think we all appreciate value for money spent and lets face it referrals offer the best value. I considered all this and I think web 2.0 is just a new name for personal referrals. Web 2.0 happens mostly digitally and personal referrals happens mostly face to face, however they both work on exactly the same principals.

Lets look at the features of both systems, they both are person to person contact with a common interest or interests, this personal contact creates a social atmosphere underlying the whole relationship, creating believability or at least removing skepticism, we perceive an element of trust and since our inclination is to stay safe we do the same as those we believe we can trust, there is interaction with both parties so as individuals we feel as if we are choosing our own direction, there’s no sales push although these feelings of recognition and trust are strong encouragements for us to choose to buy, we also know that bad news travels faster than good so we feel we have the power to eliminate trust offenders.

So I raise my glass of red, that my mate Graeme told me about, to salute, something a friend in toastmasters taught me, the rebirth of the good old fashioned method of referrals reinvented and remodeled especially for the digital age.

Captn Tup