My Friends Helped Me Make My Purchase

Businesses beware!  Gone are the days of the slightly dazed consumers standing at your product counter asking for your help and advice on a product.  Today they know about your products, and most likely you, before they ever enter your store. They are using a wide variety of online mediums to help them make their buying decisions. 

Social networking better be changing the way you do business, or it will change your business!

Here is my story.  I have been a Blackberry user since 2006.  Back in the day, if you can believe that three years is “back in the day,” I carried the hottest technology.  My Blackberry was clunky, heavy, with no camera or fancy smancy apps that all those IPhone users brag about.  But I could get email, and use the phone, and keep my calendar and contacts up to date; I was happy as a pig in mud.  (And addicted for a year or so, I’ll admit.  Too bad I didn’t know about Crackberry back then. :-)

I carried that phone until just recently when my son chose to try the Palm Pre and passed along his Blackberry Curve to me.  It’s not the latest model of curve, but it beat the bananas out of my old BB – even had a camera!  I quickly got re-addicted and never left the house, or the bathroom for that matter, without my new Curve.  (Hey, a girl has to hold onto whatever curves she’s got right?)

Unfortunately, I blew that Blackberry Curve into a BLACK berry.  Without knowing that the cord I plugged into the car to plug into my Curve was intended for heating a hot mug of coffee and not my tender Curve, I fried its shapely circuits.  And mine too!

I have been DAYS without a Smartphone.  (Someone call Dr. Drew!)

But I wanted to try an experiment.  Could I make that difficult buying decision using my social media strategies?  The short answer is yes.  And when I enter the wireless store tomorrow, I know what I want.  I am an eager, ready buyer; educated and dedicated to my cause.

I chose to go with Blackberry. 

My Tweeps, and Facebook Friends helped me decide.  Had I had more time, I would have invited my LinkedIn colleagues to get in on the debate. 

I questioned my friends on Facebook asking for their experience.  People using these mediums tend to help each other out, like neighbors used to do.  I had immediate responses both for the IPhone and the Blackberry.

People using these mediums tend to help each other out, like neighbors used to do.

Then I posted on Twitter the same kind of question.  Nada.  No response. 

So I used a service called Socialtoo which provides a great little survey tool for social networks.  I asked a simple question:

If you were buying a Smartphone today for use in business and some social networking, which device would you choose? 

I then offered them 5 choices.  I got back survey results after every reminder throughout the day.

Things were pretty even, and I was still undecided, when one of my TFam, or Tweets responded. (Meaning a "follower" of mine from Twitter)

It was WIRED magazine.  Imagine that, I am getting advice from people who really knew what they were talking about.  They sent me this article.  Is states simply that the security around email and data on the Blackberry still out does the IPhone, although the IPhone is constantly improving in that area.  It says that although the IPhone is more fun, the BB s probably more suited to my business needs.  I think in the future I would like both.  :-)

By the end of the day, I feel informed, sure and ready to purchase.

Point to the Story

Your customers are no different.  Someone is educating them: someone online most likely.  It better be you.

To our Success

Harmony Thiessen