Wednesday

Tagging - Trust Networks

Tagging – extending WOMA

Walking down the street, I find an interesting point of interest or product I like the look of, or even better have a great lunch time meal at a roadside café which to be honest I was not considering ……. How can I share my experience with similar people before I reach the pub tonight ? Stand there like a nutter preaching to passers by - probably not.


Some ideas could be as simple as the restaurant owner having all the comment cards in a strategic place for my viewing , a simple indication of the number of cards left of display can give me an initial indication of what delights or disaster await inside.

Taking this one step further, lets make it more contextual. Those cards need to be split into groups, gender, age, live in the area , regular visitor the list could be endless and adds context and makes the recommendation relevant to me.


This concept has been around for a while with location based marketing still trying to find a place in the marketers hearts. Issues surrounding privacy, spamming users are just the beginning of what could be one of the greatest opportunities this decade. GPS car navigation has revolutionized not only the journey on which you punch in, but also allows you a freedom of showing you what you do not know, the nearest gas station or restaurant helps calm the nerves and allows us to concentrate on the job of playing eye spy and driving the car - while we know in the background our best interests are being taken care of.

Location Based marketing though has some interesting tangents which should be explored. Rather than the straight ‘ here is a coupon ‘ for a discount in the shop you are approaching , similar to the annoying flyers being handed out on Oxford street every day, context is being added through the use of profiles and personal recommendation from similar like minded people.

This is where tagging comes in, the chance for people via their devices to share there views, tag favourite products and stores gives an exciting opportunity to extend the WOMA concept to people ( a rating scheme could be used to help rate the reviewers ) it gives back the spontaneity to the whole consuming experience ( planning which restaurant before a shopping trip may not be viable, however upon arrival viewing other peoples tags would allow for a choice to be made. ) The ability to create personal bookmarks which would be placed on a web server, it would give the location which is useful, a link into shopping services could then direct offers to the user when they login, or alternatively relevant shop offers could be delivered to the device while the prospective is in the vicinity ( or offers from competitors )

Quiet simply it works by tagging through your mobile phone a location, then adding some form of comment ‘ Excellent pasta ‘ to the tag. This is then appended to your location details and stored on a central website. Images and audio can also be added.
Shortly after your tag, another like minded person or friend ( you could save the tag as either public or to your buddies list ) will receive an alert that a tag exists, upon viewing they see your comments, picture and any voice recordings you may have made , along with your profile and rating ( a similar system to e-bay could be used to help regulate the users of the system ) and encourage genuine positive WOM experiences. They can then take up the referral , or possible voucher which could be distributed by the place in question, leaving there own feedback to compliment the tags already there.


The great thing with the system can be integration into formal recommendation portals such as Timeout, FHM and the like – with the social network playing the part of advocate or with the alert being as descriptive or succinct as you need ( a simple staring system could be displayed for speed )

marketing technology
Demonstrated through
http://socialight.com

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