Consider a research study that involved phone calls to Dallas residents from Hunger Relief Committee. One set of residents received a call asking if the organization could come to their homes to sell them cookies to benefit the charity; the second set of residents were asked the same question, but the caller first asked, “How are you feeling this evening?” and waited for an answer. This one question nearly doubled the number of positive responses from residents. Further, once the volunteers were in their homes, almost all participants who’d been asked this question actually made a purchase.

This one question made all the difference, showing that the more time a consumer spends with you (assuming it’s a positive experience, of course) directly relates to how likely they are to spend money with you. We’re constantly creating new ideas and ways for consumers to easily interact with brands – like voting for favorite stories. So how are brands reaching out – transparently, authentically – to encourage more interactions with consumers?

We’ve all seen sweepstakes and other gimmicky ways that brands have basically tried to build their databases, but user-generated content on a site really gives brands opportunities to create real dialogue online that’s actually meaningful to other consumers. For example, we’ve seen brands have great success with topics and campaigns that don’t tie directly to products – like PETCO’s Howl-O-Ween campaign, which encouraged pet owners to share photos of their pets’ Halloween costumes. PETCO knows their target consumers love their pets and want to show them off, and this campaign gave customers and prospects a whole new way to connect with PETCO, which could pay off for months and years to come.

Amazon has a lot of ways for users to interact with their brand. Of course, they encourage product reviews, and also encourage voting on review helpfulness. They also allow users to create wish lists and registries, and customize recommendations based on the types of items they’ve purchased in the past.

Bazaarvoice clients are constantly finding new ways to interact with consumers online – responding to reviews, answering shopper questions online, and highlighting top participants in other media, like blogs. Free People does a great job highlighting their top reviewers, and a recent webinar discussed how brands make the most of their top contributors.

The new white paper Ze and I wrote together, “Participation Chains Connect Customers to Your Brand,” delves into how important an authentic brand/consumer conversation is, and the real impact it has on businesses. We also go into detail about maximizing the results of these interactions.

Download your copy of “Participation Chains Connect Customers to Your Brand.” We’d love to hear how increased interactions have helped drive increased sales (or other business metrics) for you.

• Why do timeshare salespeople give so many freebies to get 90 minutes of your time? Because they know their chances of converting you to buy a condo on the beach goes way up with that much time. You’re participating in their process.
• When I managed Dell.com consumer site, I added an interactive financing calculator to a page and saw abandonment drop in half? Why? Visitors were participating in something.
• After you purchase something on Café Press you are asked to forward an invitation to that store to five friends. That works because people were engaged in purchase participation.
• Freemium models for web apps and viral loops work because participation is required.

Each of these examples demonstrate the power of participation. Once a person engages with something in a participatory way, they are more likely to engage again. And if you can get someone to participate by contributing content, you can use that content to pull others in to participation. And so the cycle continues.

This was the gist of a conversation I had with Bazaarvoice advisor and new media visionary Ze Frank in a ‘hole in the wall’ Thai restaurant in New York several months ago. Several discussions and emails later, we had the beginning of a whitepaper on a new concept we call “Participation Chains.” We are talking about all the ways we interact – or want to interact – with brands, and how these interactions build relationships over time.

In short, the more brands start conversations with consumers, the more everyone can win. Ze and I outline a variety of ways to keep interaction going, and we outline the details of building an effective participation chain strategy.

I met Ze Frank several years ago over drinks at a partner event and a few months later over lunch at the Austin airport, as he was leaving SXSW where he hosted the interactive track. Based on his videos, I was expecting a “zany” conversation. What I got was one of the most articulate and thoughtful perspectives of web participation I’ve heard. He comes at this from someone who has built a brand and a community with his own hands (he designed, programmed and edited everything on his site). He has dabbled at monetization strategies, but most importantly he understands what moves audiences to watch, interact and contribute. Undoubtedly, he is a true visionary when it comes to participatory use of the Internet.  At that airport lunch I asked him to be an advisor. Fortunately he loves what we do and agreed. For the last couple years Ze has been one of our most active advisors, giving feedback on our products and recently gave a memorable presentation/interview with Kelly Mooney at our Social Commerce Summit in May.

Last week we brought Ze to town and I asked him to address the whole company about what participation and community means to the audience as well as brands. After his talk, I got input from some of our employees about what struck them most about what Ze said.

Several of our Community Managers commented about how volume of user-generated video grows more slowly than review volume. Video is the “latest thing” to use in conjunction with customer reviews, and sometimes gaining traction is tough. Ze encourages us to narrow our focus and ask customers to post a video based on a specific idea or concept, rather than under the broad focus of a review. Encouraging them to send a video showing them doing something specific with a product can gain participation.

Focusing consumers also helps their contributions to remain relevant and helpful. If brands provide the tools and guidance around how to participate, and what to contribute, they get more meaningful participation. This struck me as very relevant to what we do. It’s why Ask and Answer is better than a forum, for example.

Ze is fairly tangential in his speaking, which is fun to watch, and he encourages us to remain that way when solving problems, and developing products and features. To Ze, the journey is as important as the destination – there are many ways to solve a problem – and we should continue to be curious and learn all along the way. Tangential possibilities can create alternate paths that should be explored.

A true individual, Ze has used his own site to display his own thoughts, as well as the insights of those who read/interact with it. His idea of the Internet as a community where anyone and everyone can participate leaves the mind open to all the possibilities of this huge resource. One size does not fit all – either for participants or brands.

For me the biggest topic we discussed is with regards to how a brand participates in the conversation. And not only how, but where, what do they say, how do they say it? The message from brands has always been so crafted, communication so guarded, the whole process managed by outside experts. How can a brand start communicating in real voice, through real people without radically changing what that brand means? This is a point of view that we will continue to evolve and develop, along with our clients, along with Ze.

So these are just some of the things we were left thinking about once Ze left. Tell us what he (or his site) makes you think about.

Kelly Mooney, president of Resource Interactive, and author of The Open Brand, interviewed artist, actor, comedian, and Internet phenomenon Ze Frank. In addition to a crash-introduction to Ze’s eclectic online community, the audience received some important information regarding the nature of brand, community, and authenticity.

1. Don’t Fear Change

Ze considers himself a brand, and believes other brands share many of his challenges. To meet these challenges, he recommends committing for the “long haul” and “reinvesting materials for the implementation and forward stages.”

2. Engage the Community by Highlighting a Few

Ze finds the relationship between companies and individuals inherently unequal and, consequently, recommends addressing the community as a whole whenever possible. He explains, “When I get 1000 emails, I read them, and then respond to the entire community and point out a few.” This not only scales well, but as he pointed out, “It gives us a shared history,” which further fosters community.

3. Remain Authentic

Ze feels successful brands remain authentic. During the interview, Kelly asked him whether brands can reasonably display the same level of sincerity he does. Ze responded, “I think it’s almost necessary. There is a certain emotional landscape that comes out. There’s a range of emotional spectra that you can piggy-back on. But if you go with the really big platitude you’ll run out.”

I was happy to see Andy leverage the valuable community we assembled at our first-ever and sold-out Summit in May by recording five video interviews. It was truly an amazing group of individuals, charged with word of mouth marketing at many of the largest companies in the world, from Bank of America to Wal-Mart. It was humbling to be in the presence of so many smart industry leaders, sharing best practices with each other in our rapidly emerging field. Because of them (as well as the hard work by our team), we have set a very high bar for our Summit next year.

Andy recently published his interview of me. We discussed how user-generated content is changing the merchandising culture at companies, helping them become more customer-centric and successful as a result.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read on to see more interviews by Andy.

Andy previously published an interview of Ze Frank, another one of our keynotes and one of the funniest but smartest online personalities you will ever meet. Ze's interview at our Summit by Kelly Mooney (a Summit keynote speaker, author of The Open Brand, and President of Resource Interactive) was a personal mental highlight for me, probing into some very deep issues. Andy covers topics like viral marketing with Ze. By the way, that gong behind Ze in the interview is a very important part of Bazaarvoice's culture, and has been since the beginning. You can thank my co-founder, Brant Barton, for that, and you can find multiple gongs in our Austin office and one in our London office (so far).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andy also previously published an interview of Steve Leveen, the founder and CEO of Levenger. Steve is a very smart leader, and brought his son to our event. Steve gave me some great tips on raising our daughter, Rachel, and is a very kind person (as is his son, by the way).  In Andy's interview of Steve, they talk about the use of video reviews and Flickr as a natural medium for Levenger's sophisticated customers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have not subscribed to Andy's blog yet, do it today. Incredibly useful tips are published on an almost daily basis. I found myself recently evangelizing on why to follow it to the founder of Hey Cupcake, a local joint in Austin. I connected with the founder, Wes Hurt, recently after reading about him in Tribeza because we may be related (it is a long story). You must try these cupcakes the next time you are in Austin – they are unreal. But I'm off topic – I was telling Wes to read Andy's book and subscribe to his blog because he will quickly learn how to build his business as a result. I also found myself telling Wes the story of how Krispy Kreme lost its "specialness", parroting Andy telling me the same story.

On Andy's blog, he will soon be publishing the remaining two interviews he did at our Summit: Bryan Eisenberg (highly respected industry consultant, co-founder of the Web Analytics Association, keynote speaker at our Summit and several other conferences, prominent author [ClickZ, Call To Action, and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?], and Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member) and Seth Greenberg (former CEO of eHobbies.com – one of the online pioneers, former Shop.org Board peer, and leader at Intuit).

* Note: we are proud members of WOMMA and our own Sam Decker serves on the Board of Directors while WOMMA's President is my fellow Board Director at Bazaarvoice, Ed Keller (keynote speaker at our Summit, author of The Influentials, former CEO of Roper, and co-founder and CEO of The Keller Fay Group).

We had the pleasure of hosting Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive and my peer on the Shop.org Board of Directors, as one of our keynote speakers at our Social Commerce Summit last week (note: the event was amazing, see the recap post from Sam Decker, our CMO).  Kelly was great, as always.  Her interview of Ze Frank, one of our Advisory Board members, was fantastically thought-provoking and entertaining.  Hey keynote presentation on The Open Brand, her new book (see my interview of Kelly), was also top-notch.  What I remembered most from her presentation was the "Yes We Can" shared community video produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.  Kelly blogs about it here (her blog is one of the few that I personally follow).  The video is an awesome expression of community participation and user-generated content (note: mouse over the mosiac as it plays).

Whether or not you support Obama, his innovative use of the online channel will be emulated for future democratic elections.  And as politics gets more "open", that will benefit us all.  Just like customer-generated reviews benefits all with better products and services (at our Summit, I learned that Wal-Mart drops any product nationwide after it gets a certain number of negative reviews online), so will politics as candidates engage in openness.

Millennials will demand this as they have grown up online, marinating in "community".  I found Wired's Founding Editor's letter to his children (Millennials themselves) in this month's issue especially uplifting given the gravity of change we need (when speaking of the global warming issue alone).  Here's the best excerpt:

Strauss and Howe's [of Generations] description of Millennials inspired us: "This generation will show more teamlike spirit and more like-mindedness in action than most Americans then alive will recall ever having seen in young people… Millennials will carry out whatever crisis mission they are assigned — as long as they can connect it with their own secular blueprint for progress. If crisis brings war, soldiers will obey orders without complaint. If it involves environmental danger or natural resource depletion, young scientists will make historic breakthroughs. If the crisis is mostly economic, the youthful labor force will be a mighty engine of renewed American prosperity. Whatever their elder-bestowed mission, these rising youths will not disappoint. Assuming the crisis turns out well, Millennials will be forever honored as a generation of civic achievers."

What's heartening to me, Orson and Zoe, is that even though you and your peers have grown up watching your parents become self-absorbed, hypocritical, and now plain crotchety and rancorous (not Jane and me, of course), and even if you stand in the rubble of the social institutions toppled by the Digital Revolution, your response is not the me-me-me of your parents' generation but us-us-us. Whether you're addressing climate change or serving in Iraq, you are simultaneously more traditionalist and future-forward, more practical and idealistic, than your parents.

The challenge is obvious, the dangers present, the need great. But be optimistic. I would say that, wouldn't I, since we were often accused during my time at Wired of being overly optimistic. But optimism is not false hope, it's a strategy for living. If you are optimistic about the future, you will step up and take responsibility and attempt to make it better for yourselves and your own children.

117 days and counting to the opening night of the first annual Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit. Questions you have will get answered: Where is Social Commerce going. How do I maximize return. What am I missing that others have discovered? What are the pitfalls. How to I evolve my strategy? There will be la lot of learning, networking and fun (and yes, free stuff and the best BBQ in Central Texas!). We're capping attendance at a max of 200 spots, and we're already starting to fill up! Strategic sponsors are signed up, including Cheetahmail, Endeca, ATG, Omniture, Aggregate Knowledge, Coremetrics, and others.

And the agenda is now posted at www.socialcommercesummit.com. Below are some of our topics and speakers for our 2.5 day summit in Austin TX, May 28-30…

• How to Grow Your Social Commerce Strategy
• Strategies for Opening Your Brand
• Word of Mouth Marketing:  Increase Visitors and Buyers By Creating Conversations
• 10 "Must Do" User-Generated Tactics (How Do You Score?)
• Is Your Ecommerce System Anti-Social?
• Case Study: Customer-to-Customer Answers with Answer Depot
• Turning Negative and Rejected Reviews into Assets
• Research & Strategy: Unleashing the Power of Influencers
• Insights for Driving the Highest ROI from User Content
• Feeding the Voice: How to Increase Participation
• Dell UGC Case Study: Culture, Organization & Metrics
• Social Commerce Analytics: How to Measure ROI and More
• How to Scale Up Search Visits with UGC
• Turning the Social Technology Groundswell to Your Advantage
• Ze Frank Q&A: How Do We Interact?
• Bazaarvoice Product Roadmap Lightning Round
• Real-World Tips to Evolve into a Customer-Centric Culture
• 10 Ideas for Online Advertising "2.0" 
• Beyond the Web: UGC Goes Multi-Channel
• Social Networking and Web 2.0: Practical Ideas that Work for Retailers
• The "Just Ask" Session
• and more…

Speakers include:

• Andy Sernovitz, author, Word of Mouth Marketing
• Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder, FutureNow and author, Call to Action and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark
• Ed Keller, CEO, The Keller Fay Group and author, The Influentials
• Ethan Holland, E-marketing Manager, Jewelry Television
• Jim Osborne, VP eCommerce & Online Marketing for Loblaw
• Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
• Kelly Mooney, President, Resource Interactive and author, The Open Brand
• Matt Corey, VP Marketing for Golfsmith
• Paul Miller, SVP Direct Commerce for Sears
• Sean McDonald, Director, Communities and Conversations, Dell Inc.
• Seth Greenberg, Director, Online Advertising and Internet Media for Intuit
• Simon Rodrigue, Sr. Manager eCommerce, The Home Depot Canada
• Stuart Wallock, Sr. Mgr, Global Consumer Online Marketing, Dell Inc.
• Ze Frank of zefrank.com (Video Blogger)
• and more…

Online registration is available now for clients and invited prospects. If you do not know your registration code, email summit@bazaarvoice.com. The cap is 200 registrants and we're getting signups every day, so register now!