The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business (Hardcover)

by Tara Hunt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hunt, cofounder of community-marketing consulting firm Citizen Agency, presents the hows and whys of accruing "whuffie," her word for social capital in the Web 2.0 landscape. Introducing a wide range of post-blogosphere social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr, Hunt clues in marketers to the possibilities with online success stories, influential voices and winning strategies. Numerous anecdotes (from the Obama campaign, online t-shirt boutique Threadless, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, etc.) illustrate the power of even the most tossed-off communiques; micro-blogging site Twitter, for instance, may restrict posts to 140 characters, but is uniquely powerful in its ability to reach a swarm of "followers," establish new relationships and provide multi-various feedback. Hunt packs in many specific strategies and concepts, which include seeking out and incorporating feedback, educating and empowering your connections, and treating your company's message as a conversation (a good net marketer's goal should be contained in the statement, "I want to create a culture of..."). Detailed, practical profiles of networks and related tools make this a valuable, illuminating title for anyone looking to the ever-expanding realm of online social life for business success.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Embrace the chaos! The Whuffie Factor weaves stories from Moleskine, 37Signals, Threadless, Willitblend, and Gary Vaynerchuk into a compelling story of the way business is now done. Tara doesn’t just talk about it, of course, she does it herself.”
—Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

“Marketing–or doing business at all–in the age of whuffie and the world of social media means authenticity, listening, engaging, and trusting. That’s what Tara Hunt says, and it’s also exactly what she does. If you are in marketing now or starting a company that has customers, you need to read this book to understand exactly, and I mean precisely and with detailed examples, how the conversation between vendor and client, business and customer, has changed radically. Tara Hunt knows her stuff, and she knows how to put a great deal of knowledge into compelling ­stories that are a pleasure to read because her voice is not just the voice of extensive experience: Tara Hunt’s voice works well in this book because it’s who she is.”
—Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs

“Social capital may be the most powerful currency of the twenty-first century, and this book is a guide to its care and feeding. Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, Tara Hunt shows us how to win friends and influence people in a Web 2.0 world.”
–Tom Kelley, cofounder of IDEO and author of The Ten Faces of Innovation


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business (April 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307409503
• ISBN-13: 978-0307409508
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,841 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why use social network sites and blogs to build (grow) a Web platform and possibly a customer following? Readthisbooktofindout!, April 22, 2009

By	Jeff Lippincott "www.Jlippin.com" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I liked this book. A reader might find it helpful to see why using social network sites and blogs to build (grow) a Web platform and possibly a customer following is the way to go in the Digital Age we live in today. I certainly will recommend this well written tome to my SCORE clients who either are stumbling with New Media or need to learn about it for the first time. The book has the following ten chapters:

1. How to be a social capitalist
2. The power of community marketing
3. Turn the bullhorn around & create continuous conversations with customers
4. Building whuffie by listening to & integrating feedback
5. Become part of the community you serve
6. Depositing into & withdrawing from your whuffie account
7. Be notable: 11 ways to create amazing customer experiences
8. Embrace chaos
9. Find your higher purpose
10. Whuffie "in real life"

You might not be familiar with the term "Whuffie" before reading this book. I know I wasn't. It supposedly stands for "the store of social capital that is the currency in the digital world." Marketing today in the New Media is about building relationships. It's about give and take. It's not about "in your face" or just throwing money into advertising campaigns. By reading this book you should better understand what online marketing has migrated to be about and why it is important to go with the flow.

This book is not going to tell you how to plan an online marketing campaign. The best book on that subject that I know of is Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. And to learn more about blogging I recommend: ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, and Secrets of Successful Blogging System. This last item is kind of pricey. But in my humble opinion it is really worth its weight in gold. I have posted book reviews on Amazon for all three of these products. 4 stars!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tara Hunt is the new voice of social media, June 25, 2009

By	Easy Writer - See all my reviews

The Whuffie Factor should be required reading for anyone who wants to "enter the conversation". I've read them all, including the Clueless Manifesto, Here Comes Everybody, Groundswell, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Citizen Marketer and many others by intellectuals, social commentators, sales gurus and other "outsiders".

But the Whuffie Factor has the authenticity of an "insider's" point of view. It explains the online culture in a human and impactful way. It makes you understand - really understand -- why the old business model doesn't work on the web. Not at a logical level, but deep in your skin.

1. Online is trial and error. Fail fast. Most business people are afraid to fail and instead err on the side of extensive planning and testing.

2. Online is human and approachable. People connect with other people. Most businesses hide their real people and let you talk to the spokespeople.

3. Online earns your loyalty every day. Google and Facebook and Twitter co-exist and don't try to lock you into exclusive relationships. Most businesses try to lock you into contracts and snub competitors.

Tara shares her experiences generously without arrogance or posturing. She speaks about her humble beginnings and never tries to sell herself as anything more than she is. "Embracing the chaos" is not just a handy mantra. It's the culture you need to embrace - even pursue wildly with arms flailing and flip flops clacking - to thrive online.

And I finally understood that deeply after reading the Whuffie Factor. Thank you Tara Hunt.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent points, entertaining and expertly stated, June 23, 2009

By	James Beswick "Open technology is going to so... (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was lucky enough to meet Tara Hunt at the WordCamp 2009 conference in San Francisco, and heard her 30-minute piece on 'Whuffie'. Apart from being an engaging presenter with a clear perspective of her subject, she makes excellent points that are crystallized in the book. I'd thought about some of the ideas prior to hearing her but never really formed an over-arching opinion of what it meant - this book convincingly cements some of those concepts.

Rather than summarize the book in detail, the fundamental concept is that marketing to your customer has changed. The long-entrenched system of throwing money at marketers to create ads that scream for our over-stretched attention is dead: we see this in the death of newspaper ads and the collapse in the cost of TV advertising. We just get too much noise with too much disinformation to be interested, and we don't believe the messages. In the new model, we trust opinions of friends and we like companies that aren't afraid to hear criticism and deal with it, and she gives several excellent examples of this. This is 'Whuffie' - social capital that you can trade for business.

Many people I've heard talking around this topic tend to slip into vagaries at about this point, but Tara Hunt has solid hands-on practical advice to help generate Whuffie. Clearly, there's no definitive 12-step plan for every company, but there are ideas that are employable in every business. My wife's a Marketing Director and has already started to use some of the advice in the book, and her opinion is that it's *transformational* in terms of customer relationships and staking your place clearly from competitors, compared with barely incremental in traditional advertising.

If you've had a nagging feeling for a while that social media is changing everything, this book is valuable in understanding how to engage your customers and create this social capital that allows your business to flourish. I just wish it wasn't called Whuffie, but at least it makes the point memorable when trying to enthuse your co-workers.