Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 Preview; Jackie Huba on One Percenters

Jackie Huba, a Principal at Ant’s Eye View, and author of Citizen Marketers: When People Are The Message, will be speaking at the Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 in Austin, Texas. She will be speaking on Engaging The One Percenters: Twitterers, Bloggers and Facebookers Who Influence Opinions About You. We had the opportunity to ask Jackie a few questions about her upcoming talk.

You are going to be talking about ways to engage the One Percenters. Is there a profile or demographic that these influencers fit into?

One Percenters are the very small amount people who create online content about your brand, product, service or company. They can be very influential as that content is found through searches online. Anyone can be a One Percenter as now there are so many sites that allow people to participate, such as reviewing a product on Amazon or rating a restaurant 5 stars on Yelp.com. We see One Percenters in every age group, demographic and psychographic. Especially now that cell phones can take pictures, videos and browse the web, we all have content creating machines in our pockets.

What importance do these One Percenters have in the enterprise?

One Percenters inside the enterprise are just as important as One Percenters outside the enterprise. These are the employees who are probably opinion leaders, change agents and ambassadors for the company. The key for companies is to create more ways for these folks to participate in the business. One example is Dell who launched EmployeeStorm, an internal idea exchange site where employees could suggest improvements to the company and other employees could rate and comment on the ideas. Dell then followed this up with IdeaStorm, which was an external site for their customer One Percenters to do the same.

Was there a lightbulb moment for you when you realized that you had to write a book on this topic?

The lightbulb moment was back in November 2004 when George Masters, a teacher from California, created an animated iPod ad that looked as good or better than any ad agency could create. His animation went viral around the web and was featured in Wired Magazine, CNBC and other mainstream media outlets. This was the start of the trend that amateurs — everyday people — now had the tools and creativity to create content that could become marketing, for or against, any brand. That content is uploaded to web and could become a global marketing campaign, without the consent or knowledge of the brand being featured. That was very scary for a lot of companies. And still is.

Is there an example or case study for these “Citizen Marketers” that came to light after your book was published that is inspiring or unique?

A case study in progress is from Lady Gaga. Yes, the singer and musician. She is brilliant at cultivating an army of citizen marketers. She doesn’t allow professional photographers into her concerts but is ok with her fans taking videos and posting them on YouTube. She understands how those videos will spread online. She also uses Twitter to talk directly to her fans, who she affectionately calls her “little monsters,” named after her album “The Fame Monster.” She tweeted them right before she performed at the Grammy’s to let them know she was thinking of them. She tweeted a picture of a “Little Monsters” tattoo that she just got in honor of them. She even tweeted that she was having pizza delivered to a very long line of fans who were waiting overnight for an album signing. Who knows if she has the staying power of Madonna, but for leveraging her One Percenters, she is well on her way.

The recent stories about actor/director Kevin Smith being taken off an airplane due to his size have created a lot of buzz. Could Southwest Airlines have done a better job, or was this a no-win scenario?

Southwest could have handled it a bit better. Their blog post about the incident entitled Not So Silent Bob was a bit snarky. They finally did the right thing by having a senior communications person track Kevin down and have a civil chat about it and blog the results. However, almost any brand would be challenged by the relentless profanity and bullying of the director over Twitter and on his podcast. The main lesson for us all is that pays to build an army of evangelistic fans. While some comments to Southwest’s blog and Facebook page were negative, there were many, many customers who applauded Southwest for taking a stand for their comfort and were very vocal about it.