This past Wednesday I taught an eight hour course called "Search Engine Marketing Bootcamp." We really should have dubbed it "Online Marketing Bootcamp" since the afternoon focused on things like social media and viral marketing. We spent a lot of time talking about the need to spend time engaging your audience and your customers and how essential it is to build relationships. There was a lot of focus on using social media to identify brand evangelists and then leveraging that into a viral marketing campaign.

I talked about the customer evangelist campaigns going on with Which Wich, Fiskars and a few other companies. I pointed out that the best campaigns of this style come from businesses that recognize an existing (and vocal) product evangelist instead of trying to create the appearance of one.

This evening I spotted a fantastic diagram at Brains on Fire (via Church of the Customer) that lays out "Cycle of a Fan."

Geno explains:

Talk has become cheaper than when you had to write a letter, make a phone call, hold a meeting. When I say “cheaper” I mean less physically involved. Communities are a wonderful tool allowing fans, customers, even passive customers to engage in conversations but this anonymous way of communication can come with a price – no accountability. And because of this cheaper communication us fans are so busy talking to each other we often forget the real power of word of mouth. Face-to-face social currency.

I tend to put it a little more simply. My phrase at the class this week was that social media is mostly just word of mouth on crack. Instead of a person telling ten friends at a dinner party, they blog it and reach thousands (or millions) of people around the world.

At what other point in history could your average Jane/Joe tell so many people about a good (or bad) experience with an every day product?

Looking at Geno's graphic, you can clearly see the progression of how someone progresses from a casual user into someone who helps you sell your product.

I've seen myself progress through this process on many occasions. My current obsession with bento is a great example...one that I'm seeing spark others to move through this same cycle. My love of the ClickTracks analytics package is another. Chances are high that every last person reading this article has experienced this progression as well.

On the other hand, chances are that you've experienced this in terms of "Cycle of a Detractor" as well. Just as we have experiences that make us loyal to a company, we have other experiences that turn us off so completely that we head out to tell the world about them. People can be generous with their praise, but they can also be generous with their criticism.

The challenge of this cycle in terms of creating brand evangelists is helping them continue their progression. If they stop at any point along the way, you have a customer, but you don't have an evangelist. Thus, you need to make sure your customer experience (be it your web site usability, your product quality, your customer service or your customer engagement) helps encourage people to move along the process.

On the other hand, you need to consider each of these points in terms of dealing with unhappy customers as well. Call it the "Life Cycle of a Detractor" if you will.

Their progression through the cycle would look a little something like this:

They have an introduction to your product or service…

Then they have an experience with it as they try it out.

But instead of adoption, they have a negative experience and they reject it. At this point, some users will take the time to try and return the product or to contact customer service, but many will simply toss it aside without ever letting you know why they are unhappy.

From there, especially if you don’t catch them in their customer service complaints (say, they return an item that is broken and you don’t properly address things) they move into anti-evangelism mode. They may make a blog post, or a post to a discussion forum talking about their negative experience.

If you fail to catch them at this point and offer a solution to the problem, the issue goes out into the greater community. Think of what happens when something shows up on the Consumerist or a similar blog. You’ve moved beyond a simple public complaint and you’re in viral mode. (The Kryptonite bike lock incident is a good example.)

Finally, you risk someone moving into ownership mode of hating your product. Just look at the anti-corporation sites that show up when you run a search for McDonald’s or Wal-Mart.

The good news is that while you have to find ways to encourage people to move along the chain, you may have an easier time getting them to stop their progression along the chain of becoming a detractor. From the first customer service complaint they launch, to the very first public blog or forum post they make, you have multiple chances to address (and solve) the issue.

Online reputation management goes both ways. Find and encourage the people that speak positively of you. Find and satisfy the people that speak ill.