earthfaves – Your positive location recommendation network – build your own trusted good life network with friends and colleagues, about favorite places for leisure, lifestyle, savoir vivre, travel and sustainable products

Hi folks, long time no news! We are busy getting our platform ready for 2009! Here are some new things we added recently:

1. Videos: two new introduction videos on the homepage, one about the benefits of earthfaves, one about how to add earthfaves – don’t miss them!

2.  Your new location recommendation network size overview: the area on your user home page that shows the number of all the location recommendations you have from your friends and their friends at earthfaves!

3. New “Invite your friends” tool: on top of the page you now find the tool to quickly grow your number of friends at earthfaves. This is important, as the more friends you have, the more earthfaves they have, the more and better location recommendations you can get. So invite your friends!

4. Your discovery rank score – the points you got so far for adding earthfaves and for people that earthfave them. You get 10 points for adding an earthfave, 20 points if someone earthfaves them and 10 if you earthfave another users’ earthfave. You start as “Freshman”. With 1000 points you become “Pearldiver”, with 5000 “Connoisseur” and with 10000 “(Wo)Man of the World”! So adding earthfaves and finding people who like them increases your reputation in the network a lot!

5. “Recommendation rank”™ results: if you are logged in and you search for locations, you get results filtered along your personal trust levels. This way, we make it easier for you to always find the best and most trusted results first. Your own earthfaves appear on top, followed by those of your friends, those of your friends of friends and then those of other earthfavers.

6. Messaging: if someone wants to become your friend or if somebody has earthfaved one of your earthfaves, we send you notification mails so that you quickly can reply to the other users actions.

7. Mapping: simply by copying and pasting code just like at youtube, you can now add your map with your earthfaves to your blog or any other website. This helps you to make more new friends quicker and, for sure, you can show the great places you know much more easily to your friends and readers. You find the link on your user home page.

We plan a lot more for 2009: especially we want to improve the search and the adding functionality (please always search first if you want to add new earthfaves . We also want you to say about earthfaves “I love this place”, so keep us posted with your ideas and the bugs you find at info@earthfaves.com.

We wish you and your families a great year 2009!

Happy discovering & recommending!

Your earthfaves team:

Barrett, Daniel, Markus T, Oliver, Tim, Tom, and Markus S.

Last Monday, Markus and Markus presented earthfaves and the underlying business concept to more than 50 International Tourism Management students at the HTW in Saarbrücken. It was fun, we had more than 75 minutes, explained a lot, answered many questions, made great contacts and already received quite a few applications for internships for 2009. We are going to co-operate more with the HTW in the future.

Today, Jan Grönefeld from our partner Ergosign held a keynote about “UI Design for Social Commerce” – check it out, it is about how and why we designed earthfaves that way we did:

Barrett presents in Walldorf, Germany

What a great opportunity it was to speak at the SAP Web2.0 Business User Summit last week! Using the collective intelligence of your business teams’ “social knowledge” about where to stay, where to go out, and what to do when traveling professionally was our presentation focus. The presentation also included a live demo of our beta platform and lead into a great discussion about mobile Web2.0 applications and how they will ultimately enhance business users access to trusted information on the go. Audience members actively participated in a half hour post-presentation discussion and asked some solid questions about our platform and how it will benefit all types of teams within SAP.

A big thanks goes out to Michael Altendorf for inviting us to take part in what was a very successful event!

Read the interview “The Inside Word on Word-of-Mouth Marketing” with Dave Balter, founder of BzzAgent, one of the first Word-of-Mouth Marketing Agencies, published on Guy Kawasaki’s Blog “How to Change the World”. Very much worth reading! Download the Manual as pdf here!

My favorite quotes:

“Word of mouth happens for companies of all sizes.”

“…for those companies that guide or inspire word of mouth by empowering consumers, respecting their opinions, thanking them for sharing their input, and making changes based on consumer counsel … in those cases, word of mouth marketing is successful all the time, every day.”

Anne M.Schüller ist eine der renommiertesten Expertinnen im Bereich Loyalitätsmarketing. Ihr neues Werk “Zukunftstrend Empfehlungsmarketing” ist sehr zu empfehlen. Gerade für diejenigen unter Ihnen, die in naher Zukunft beabsichtigen, ihre Kunden via earthfaves zu Promotern zu machen, liefert es zahlreiche Gründe, die dieses vorhaben unterstützen. Hier der Auszug aus ihrem Blog und das Inhaltsverzeichnis:

“Weitersagen! Kostenlos zu neuen Kunden
Eine Werbeform so alt wie die Menschheit erobert die Welt, on- wie offline. Ob man es Mundpropaganda, Buzz- oder Viral-Marketing nennt – gemeint ist: Empfehlungsmarketing. Aus Begeisterung und Überzeugung werden Produkte und Dienstleistungen aktiv weiterempfohlen. Glaubwürdigkeit und Akzeptanz dieser Empfehlungen führen zu immer neuen Kunden und Empfehlern. Eine Kettenreaktion die geradewegs zum Erfolg führt. Doch wie macht man aus Kunden begeisterte, durch und durch aktive Empfehler? Was sind die Zutaten für empfehlungswerte Anbieter, Produkte und Services? Die Antworten stehen in der aktualisierten und erweiterten Fassung meines Buchs: Zukunftstrend Empfehlungsmarketing.

Zukunftstrend Empfehlungsmarketing:
Das Inhaltsverzeichnis zum Buch

1. Ihr größter Schatz: aktive, positive Empfehler
Empfehlungen sind die bessere Werbung
Ãœber positive und negative Empfehler
Eine Rechnung, die aufgeht: Der Loyalty Value
Was Mundpropaganda und Empfehlungsmarketing unterscheidet
Die Bandbreite des modernen Empfehlungsmarketing

2. Nur Spitzenleistungen werden weiterempfohlen
Mit sieben A’s zu Spitzenleistungen
Marken sind gut fürs Empfehlungsgeschäft

3. Nur Spitzenleister erbringen Spitzenleistungen
Wie aus Mitarbeitern Spitzenleister werden
Vor der Kundenfokussierung steht die Mitarbeiterorientierung
Sich selbst zum Spitzenleister machen

4. Empfehlungsgeschäft ist Vertrauensgeschäft

5. Begeisterung ist ein Turbo für den Empfehlungserfolg
Wie Begeisterung entsteht
Von der Kundenbefürchtung zur Kundenbegeisterung
Dienstleistung neu erfinden

6. Die richtigen Fragen stellen
Die Empfehlung stimulieren
Empfehlungsfokussierte Kundenbefragungen
Die Empfehlungsrate ermitteln

7. Schritt für Schritt: Ihr Fahrplan in eine empfehlungsstarke Unternehmenszukunft
Schritt 1: Die Analyse
Schritt 2: Die Strategie
Schritt 3: Maßnahmenplanung und Umsetzung
Schritt 4: Kontrolle und Optimierung

8. Aktionsprogramme für Ihren Empfehlungserfolg
Ins Gespräch kommen
Zum ‚Talk of the town‘ werden
Schriftliche Verstärker
Testimonials und Referenzen
Mundpropaganda via Handy & Co.
Empfehlungen geldwert belohnen?
Neue Formen der Mundpropaganda

9. Das Internet als Empfehlungsplattform
Ein globales Dorf
Virales Web-Marketing

10. Mundpropaganda durch Guerilla-Marketing

11. Die Presse als Empfehler
Positive Schlagzeilen
Negative Schlagzeilen

12. Geschichten erzählen – zum Weitererzählen
Wie man Unternehmensgeschichten macht
Geschichten für drinnen und draußen
Erzählstoff durch Mitmach-Marketing

13. Wie aus Reklamierern positive Empfehler werden

14. Am Ziel: Ihr Empfehlungserfolg

Weitere Infos hier.

Dear business owner, are you successful? Do you spend your money on the right stuff?

It is known for a long time: with traditional advertising, you waste money, everyday.

Now we even heard: traditional advertising is dead!

Check the numbers here:

Obviously, traditional advertising is an enormous, irresponsible waste of money. Therefore STOP wasting 3-digit billions for useless stuff like TV ads, Print ads, Flyer, Yellow Pages, Direct Mail, NO ONE READS THESE MESSAGES!

OK? Good. Thank you.

But what are you going to do now?

Some ideas: hire more people, pay higher salaries, work less, spend more time with friends and family, enjoy nature, donate money, save the rain forest, protect animals, invest in new green technologies, live a happier life…

“Sounds good”, you think, “but what happens with my business?”

Your business will grow even better if you focus on recommendations. Turn every customer into your promoter. Recommendation marketing is not another “hype” – it defines the way businesses interact with their customers in the future.

You can start today: offer great products, be nice to your customers, ask them to recommend your services to others, listen to them, give them what they want, build things they like, reward them for their honest input and their recommendations.

The Buzz about the Buzz:

| View | Upload your own

It has scientifically been proven: a 1 per cent increase in word of mouth advocacy (= positive recommendations) equated to £8.82m extra sales! Read more in this study from The London School of Economics (LSE).

But:

How can you make every single recommendation permanently visible, so that hundreds, thousands of people can read it, even months later?

How can you track who is recommending your business to others?

How can you reward your promoters for the great job they do?

Can you show prospects your list of highly satisfied customers?

Can you prove that you have more satisfied customers than your competition?

Can you communicate with all your promoters and ask them for new product ideas?

You will be able to do so, soon…via earthfaves.

Stay tuned.

We are getting ready for the official launch of earthfaves which is expected to happen in July/August. Since the start of our public but secret beta in April we fixed more than 100 bugs, developed more than 20 new features and finalized our first “real” UI design (you will see it soon). Apart from that, we heavily work on our marketing and communication strategy. We have loads of things to keep in mind, therefore we created an “old school” real world mind map that helps us a lot to not forget important aspects:
“

Several months ago we uploaded some slideshows/videos to youtube to show you how we see the world. As soon as we have launched publicly, and you and your friends add the extraordinary places you recommend to each other, we are going to present features like that, including YOU, YOUR FRIENDS and YOUR EARTHFAVES. Exceptional places is what people want to learn more about, so start filming now and send us your footage (link)!

Here our most popular video from the Argentina trip. The queue at the hairdressers’ in La Recoleta / Buenos Aires is just hilarious!

Yes! We made it. What a week it was in Berlin:

And there should always be an earthfaves team picture somewhere, right? Sure! …oh yeah, we’d also like to thank Olli for putting us up in his cool flat in Kreuzberg for the entire week — nice place, dude.