When you want to buy a new car, do you go to the auto manufacturers’ websites (i.e. Ford.com or Chevrolet.com) to find out which vehicle is the best, or would you prefer to go to a 3rd-party auto website where you could read hundreds of car reviews and ratings by vehicle owners? Which information would you trust more and which would you feel is more biased?
This concept of trust derived from non-authoritative sources is an essential element in what is making the Internet successful. If you want to know which book is the best, would you trust the review of the book publisher, or the Amazon.com reviews from dozens of people who have read the book?
Richard Miller sent me the following quote about “anti-authorities” (or “non-authoritative sources”) from Made to Stick:
“A citizen of the modern world, constantly inundated with messages, learns to develop skepticism about the sources of those messages. Who’s behind these messages? Should I trust them? What do they have to gain if I believe them?
“A commercial claiming that a new shampoo makes your hair bouncier has less credibility than hearing your best friend rave about how a new shampoo made her own hair bouncier. Well, duh. The company wants to sell you shampoo. Your friend doesn’t, so she gets more trust points. The takeaway is that it can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities. Sometimes antiauthorities are even better than authorities.” (Made to Stick, pp. 136-37, emphasis added)
In the Book of Mormon, a prophet named Alma was teaching the people in a new city. Alma was the authoritative source. However, the people did not believe him. A man named Amulek, who was well-known in that community, stood up and became a witness of the message Alma had shared. Amulek was the non-authoritative source, and with his added testimony the people believed the message of Alma (see Alma 10:4,10,12).
As with Amulek, members of the LDS Church can add their non-authoritative voices with even more credibility in certain situations than the Church itself. This is because co-workers, neighbors and friends will often trust their their friend more than the Church itself.
This same concept applies in most industries. Hopeful adoptive parents, for example, would much rather get a referral to an adoption agency from someone who had a good adoption experience. Businesses need to provide tools for their customers to share their non-authoritative voices (such as testimonials or blogs), and then feature this content in a visible way.
In doing this, though, the businesses need to be careful to show some less-flattering voices along with the good. If a company only shows the good reviews and responses, then the censorship will destroy the credibility.
Also, businesses need to do their best to fill industry-specific review sites with good information about their products. For example, a book author needs to have readers who liked her book to write reviews on Amazon.com and BN.com. A lawyer, dentist or doctor, might encourage customers who had favorable experiences to publish their reviews of those professional services on business review sites (InsiderPages.com, Yelp.com and others).
Posted on April 6th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Business Management, Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing, e-Business
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