Word of Mouth on Steroids

by Don on October 24, 2009

Crush it Book CoverI just got Gary Vaynerchuck’s book Crush It in the mail today. I started reading it and couldn’t put it down.

On page 36 he talks specifically about word of mouth referrals and social networks.

“Since the first six handfuls of grain were handed over in exchange for a new ox, business owners have always known that what their customers and their friends, family, or colleagues think about their restaurant or care or vacation spot or cleaning service or design firm has always mattered more than any billboard or radio ad they could buy.”

But, he points out, there has always been a relatively small number of people their customers, friends and family could talk to about their experience.

This is all changing with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These services have the potential to magnify the effect of word or mouth referrals.

This statement is music to our ears of course. We wholeheartedly agree. But even aside from that the book is super-inspiring, so grab it if you are looking for a short but compelling read.

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Why the Mob Rules

by kathleen on October 23, 2009

Many of you probably read the excellent Wired article Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter.  As you may have guessed, we are pretty “pro” mob here at RefMob.  The article aptly describes Twitter as a “a throbbing global sensing organism that delivers instant opinion and eyewitness reporting on everything from presidential debates to football injuries.”

The gist of the first part of the story was that when the Twitter developers tried to build “retweeting” officially into its base app, they didn’t allow for the fact that people want to embellish their RTs and there was an uproar from the Twitterverse.  It was the mob, the Twitter users, that invented the retweet in the first place.

We love retweets.  RefMob’s success will depend on them as much as the direct participation by people who are already logged onto RefMob, or are sharing referrals with their friends on Facebook.  And it is the mechanism that will allow businesses to extend their reach exponentially through their immediate circle of friends and followers.

But back to the Wired article.  The retweet incident, as they call it, was really an illustration of what a great job the Twitter folks did up front in building a platform that was simple and that could become what its users needed it to be.

At RefMob we’d like to know when and if you decide to tweet or retweet about a referral offer.  How are you using RefMob and Twitter together?  What is working?  Who responds?

We are striving to build RefMob with the same model of simplicity.  We hope that it will become what its users need it to be. So call us on this – give us your feedback and we promise to continue to make it easier and easier to share referrals with your friends and best customers!

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Refer-A-Friend Service Now Online

September 27, 2009

We’re just getting things underway here at RefMob after our launch at the TechCrunch 50 in September. Even though the launch of our RefMob for Business is a few weeks away still, individuals have already started adding refer-a-friend offers for their favorite businesses.
If you are looking for a new apartment, bank, high speed internet service [...]

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Welcome to Refmob

September 17, 2009

Hello,
We are excited to announce the general availability of refmob.com. The RefMob service helps businesses create, manage and measure their word-of-mouth referral campaigns.
And individuals can refer friends to their favorite businesses and share the bonus too.
Give it a try – and let us know what you think!
-Don, Kaushik and Kunal
Your friendly RefMob team

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