The Digital Value Exchange: Driving influential WOM using Tweets as virtual currency

I'm seeing more and more examples of deliberate and requested leverage of Twitter to drive influential reach.

Last autumn Jack Johnson offered a free music track in exchange for a tweet as a promo for his new album, Kellogg's Krave have been encouraging Teens to barter social mentions for gig tickets, and a few weeks back I caught this tweet offering a free lunch offer from London restaurant Circus :

And it worked, was genuinely free and was very nice:

I even found  myself suggesting / recommending it as a venue to someone just yesterday.  So that worked! My free taster lunch v likely dinner spend of 6 people....  just off one tweet and a follow up email. Do the maths...

Today I've spotted this free e-book in exchange for a tweet offer:  I loved the language "Pay with a tweet".

Simple. Easy to grasp, costs me little beyond a little effort, a few clicks and a few moments of time.

I'll award more points to the Jack Johnson crowd for allowing me a few characters to adapt my tweet v this one being fixed, but overall it's another nice example of how if you are providing something useful, interesting and relevant that people are prepared to make a nominal effort to get something back.

So here's the journey:

Click on tweet flagging offer, takes you to web page above.

Click on "pay with a tweet button" redirects to 

A click and a few key strokes later and I've connected to my Twitter account and get my pre-formed tweet ready to hit post. Simple.

Posted and I get an automatic download book screen.  Too Easy.

The book (I obviously downloaded it) is 172 pages long, so I've not read it and can't offer an opinion yet, but the blurb (and in my geek world, also the distribution mechanic) was convincing enough for me to spend a few moments going through the process to send the tweet to get to the download and I've already seen it re-tweeted by 2 of my followers inside 10 minutes. Which means it's probably been exposed to a good few hundred people from just a few clicks.

For the cynics amongst you who are scratching their heads and thinking "oh but what about the ROI, any idiot can give stuff away, what are they getting out of this?"....  Note that if you looked carefully at the first image you could ALSO buy the book on Amazon.  So this is a sampling exercise.  I might read this book on my iPad or Touch or Android Phone, I might even load it to all 3, I'm unlikely to print out 172 pages of A4, staple them and cart them around getting ever more dog-earred in my bag, more likely I'll skim an electronic copy, and if I think it might be worth a proper read and investment of my time I'll buy a proper book to read later, share and refer back to.

Meanwhile the authors have given me the opportunity to trial at low opportunity cost, might get a sale out of me as well,  and in the process got me to influence people I know +/or reach so for them it's a win win.

Virtual currency doesn't just have to be about Second Life's Linden Dollars or any other form of "real money" converted into "virtual money" as any 7 year old playing Club Penguin will tell you. Undertake a task, get something back that you can get value from later.

Think about what your brand could offer or can facilitate to help drive distribution of your product / message / experience.

Believe in influence / word of mouth and power of social search

I offer you in evidence,  the following screengrab fresh from my Facebook newsfeed:

1) Someone asking his friends (not Google or Bing) for help / cake recipe advice
 
2) 3 responses, the first in just 5 minutes

3) Two of the responses cited / recommended brands (Mrs Beeton & Waitrose)

Think about the importance of that as a consumer behaviour, only likely to be amplified in the future: - No search engine used, no chance as a brand to intervene via paying for "sponsored links" , just the advice of people you know and trust.

That's why the time is now to build relationships between consumers and brands, based on product or service experience that delivers certainly, but far beyond that also allows the brand to nudge in a relevant way, on a regular basis to remain top of mind  (and not always necessarily based on product benefit / ad lead news).

Sure, you won't necessarily be able to control when those pearls of wisdom are passed on, but does that always matter? Have trust in your consumers, they can work out when it's relevant all by themselves.  The brand gets recommended, the sharer gets "friendship brownie points" for helping out / providing trust advice.