How-to run an advocacy program on social web

Background: Advocacy programs provide a win-win situation for any brand or product on social web. On one hand it lets you recognize that set of evangelists who would be ready to promote your brand/product free of cost and on the other hand it leads effective promotion of your offerings to your consumers. We at 20:20 Social have researched some of the most effective advocacy programs to seek out varous ways in which these advocacy programs on social web can be modeled.
Scope: In our research we have focussed ourselves in studying how advocacy programs can take consumers and visitors across different levels of Ladder of Engagement. The Ladder of Engagement involves identifying various levels at which the consumers ( or site visitors/partners/employees ) can be engaged. It begins with content consumption, then moves on to content curation ( rating, voting, commenting ) , content creation, collaboration and then subsequently to trial, purchase and finally to evangelizing and recommendation( hereby mentioned as advocacy) to others.
Our research on some of the most popular Advocacy programs shows that advocacy can be used to transition consumers across the following levels:
1) Advocacy to content consumption and curation
2) Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation
3) Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase
4) Advocacy leading to content collaboration
Advocacy to content consumption and curation:

One of the most effective strategies of modelling an Advocacy program on social web is to find a bunch of evangelists who appreciate your brand/product and are ready to write good about them. These evangelists can be popular bloggers or influencers having a lot of connections on social web. A good example of such a program is Microsoft MVP ( most valued professional ) program where the company recognizes talented influencers in the field who write about the businesses Microsoft is related to. Another case where influencial bloggers were leveraged for brand advocacy was in the marketing campaign of Chrystler's Dodge Grand Caravan where the company loaned the car to influential mom bloggers for a week for trial run, which triggerred a lot of conversation in the blogospere. Similarly Redwood Creak ( An Ameircan wine making company ) has created a community platform around passion for outdoor adventures and recognizes wine evangelists known as ‘The Trailblazers’ as their official brand ambassadors who talk about wines and adventures on the company blogs and forums. Sometime influencers need not be popular and advocacy can be leveraged from consumers who have a strong social network. Something similar was done by MTV in its 'Elite Influencer Network Contest' where members were asked to promote their obsession for the MTV culture on their blogs, websites, social networks like Facebook, YouTube and through this MTV tried to find out the most influential individuals on social web. These contest winners will now participate in further upcoming events.
Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation

Advocacy programs can even be modelled to take consumers upto creation level on the ladder of engagement, which can be used to find your next set of evangelists. A good example of such a tactic is HP 31 days of Dragon contest which is a user generated contest lanched by the company for the promotion of its HP HDX dragon notebook. The company found 31 popular blogger evangelists/ websites who created their own User Generated Contests on their personal webpages. Thus the task of planning, designing and promoting the contest was taken up by the participating evangelist websites and involved taking the consumers across various engagement levels. Another example is walmart's eleven moms community which has the popular mom bloggers blogging about money saving ways ( which is core to the brand value itself ) and the consumers interacting with them and sharing their own money saving tips etc.
Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase
Many of the cases we researched showed brands leveraging consumer and evangelist advocacy for product trial and purchase. The Indian gaming website zapak.com uses a facebook application to give the users an option to recommend the game they are playing to their freinds on facebook and also embed it in your personal webpage. Similarly the cleaning products company 'Method' launched a campaign called 'people against dirty' which aimed at finding product appreciators who were ready to share their experience of the brand with others.
Advocacy leading to content collaboration
Now the reason I took up this point last is because I am still not sure about this, but product help communities like that of Intuit can qualify as advocacy programs. This is because if somebody is ready to help you out with a solution on a product help community then that means a) he has already tried the product b) He finds the product interesting enough to make him participate on the community c) if in the future any other problem crops up then there would surely be more people like him to help you out with that product. If such a thing qualifies as advocacy then product help programs can be instrumental in collaborating efforts around a particular problem.

What's happening in social media on climate change

Background
I follow Indian Express and almost everyday when I pick up the morning daily I see something being written on Copenhagen 2009 summit. Then there was the Blog Action day on Oct 15, 2009 when thousands of bloggers wrote about climate change the same day. Hence no prizes for guessing but a lot is happening over environment in social and traditional media. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to see how specifically social media is helping us make our planet a greener place to live.

Scope
Honestly social web is seeing a lot of activities on climate change and a greener planet. There are a bunch of facebook apps, many websites and applications on organizing events and creating petitions, online communities targeting environment and wild life etc but I would specifically like to focus on social applications targeting aggregation of environment related news and influencer platforms. The reason for the preference is that some of the most popular efforts in social media for environment have gone in these two directions.

News Aggregation

Various websites are using different models for aggregating environemnt news. The most popular of them is using the digg.com model for aggregating news. Users bookmark the environement related news they like and others curate/vote for their favorite news. The most popular news gets features on the homepage. Ngopost.org is using this kind of model in India. Then there is care2.com which is also the largest environment promoting online community and uses this kind of aggregation model. Care2 in fact does a lot more than this. It has a online petition site where people can start their own petitions and sign the petitions they support. Members can donate, read expert's views on healthy living etc.

The other popular model is importing stories and news feeds from top news websites and blogs. Greenedia.com for example, aggregates blogs, podcasts, videos by experts on green living, climate change, global warming and other topics who have been vetted by Greenedia. Experts can submit their credential for contributing to the platform or users can suggest popular blogs to be tracked by Greenedia. Alltop.com is another popular website which uses this model for many topics like food, photography, health etc and it has a separate platform for aggregating news on climate change.

The third news aggregation model is something that was adopted by change.org for Blog action day where they asked everybody to register and write on the climate change. Presently their homepage features the link to the most popular web platforms that participated in the event and also gives links to all the participating blogs.

Influencer Platform

Influencer platform are a great way to generate opinions, gain traffic and trigger word of mouth. Presently the platform getting most attention and traffic is change.org which has an influencer platform called 'Changemakers'. Users can nominate influencial people whom they want to see as the changemakers and others vote for the nominees. The selected changemakers will then be invited to write on the platform and their opinions will be pushed through change.org's network of partners, bloggers and activists.

The other types of influencer platforms are ecorazzy which aggragates news about what celebrities are doing for environemnt. With news like 'Brand Pitt to donate various hats to charity' and 'Roger Moore continues his battle with the Foie Grass Industry', this brings another way of getting influencer's say. Similarly Huffington Post has a environemnt news category called 'Green' which showcases celebrities taking about various environment related issues.

Food, Air, Water and Internet

I remember a fine day in July 2004, when after spending some gruesome 20-25 minutes over the 45 kbps bsnl modem connection, I finally created a yahoo mail account and sent my first e-mail ever. This was not only my first rendezvous with electronic mail but also one of the first times I was learning something beyond Google.

Some 5 years later, here I am, working on a WiFi, being online 10-12 hours a day and working on probably the coolest internet tools. My typical work day starts with checking mails and ends with tweeting and facebooking. I blog, I read news online, I talk to friends through net, my entire worksheets and projects are managed online, I bank through net, pay my bills through net and even have my CEO and MD added to my facebook friends list!! The entire point is, what else in my life has EVOLVED so much as internet. I still watch the same TV channels, still hear to the same music bands, still like the same food and have not changed much as a person, but when it comes to internet, I see drastic difference in my online activity and behavior.However it''s not just me. The society I live in has grown to be increasingly net savvy and this trend is only increasing not only in depth ( that is the already net-savvy are becoming net-savvier) but also in breadth ( that is new people are joining the club). I see people stay online even when in office, not because they want to chat with people, but more because they don''t want to miss any mail, people''s status updates, comments etc. Moreover everyday I see more and more people responding to other people''s content, commenting and liking their updates, tweets or uploaded videos, meaning people around me are not only becoming net savvier but also becoming more social and more engaged.

So can me and the society around me manage without net? Surely, they can as they used to some 10 years ago, but then whole point is that they wont like it. The fact that even at its nascent of stages internet has roped in all of us, definitely it has a long way to go. Earlier people thought internet was just a means of getting information (webpages, googling etc.), so people thought, its great but then how many times during a day do I need to gather information? Then it became a mode of interaction ( e-mails, g talks and messengers), so people thought, that''s great, but how many people will I keep on interacting with? Then suddenly with gaming and downloading, it became a mode of entertainment, then it got integrated with our social lives ( through social networks) and work. And now it has given us a new way of expression where we don''t need traditional media to make our voice reach to the world.

So what''s the big deal about it? We all know that net is important. But what I am trying to highlight here is that if something is changing so fast around you, are you preparing yourself for it. Can you anticipate what it would grow into and what impact will it be having on you or your business by the time you would be celebrating your next birthday. You might be using it for checking mails or random search, but can you see it bringing money for you in the near future? Do you see it saving money for you or your time in the near future. Are you updated enough to what''s happening all around the world in your field because your client might be? Are you internet enabled enough to save his time. Are you networked enough? Are you able to maintain required relations because your competitors/contemporaries might be taking advantage out of theirs. Do you know what is being said about you/your brand in the web? Do you know with the world changing everyday, what will soon become your customers demand?

Since after all the endless questions that might have been asked and all the endless doubts people might have had for internet in India, there are just two answers: Yes!! It will grow and No! you can''t stay away from it.