Anyone involved in promoting their service understands the power of word of mouth in developing highly qualified leads. On the flip side, when we need a skilled professional (such as an accountant, physiotherapist or professional photographer) we prefer to ask our friends, family and contacts to recommend someone to us.
Increasingly, social media tools are being used by everyone to connect skilled professionals with the people who need them. Business owners and managers are creating Facebook pages to seek to spread the word through the largest global social network. When informing our purchase decisions we increasingly tap into our online networks, such as Twitter, to ask our contacts there what products or services they recommend.
Currently there is no single large-scale way of harnessing the power of word of mouth referrals for people offering skilled services. This is one of the big ideas behind Weedle and one of the main the reasons I joined the company last February.
Weedle enables you to create a personal web page where you can showcase any skill, expertise or talent that you have. You can add text and rich media such as images, video, presentations, documents and many other file formats. You can then promote your skill page to your family, friends and contacts. This means that in the first instance they will be more likely to use you in future. But it also means that they will be more likely to recommend you to their friends.
The next time someone searches for your skill on Weedle they will immediately see in how many ways they are connected with you; for example if you both grew up together, attended the same college or university, worked together or have a friend in common. We all prefer to do business with people we know. Furthermore, anyone who views your skill page will immediately see the recommendations for you from people whose knowledge and opinions they respect. We are more likely to trust what people we know say before the ratings or reviews of anonymous strangers.
This is the thinking behind Weedle and already people from over fifty countries around the world have started showcasing their skills, expertise and talents there.
One of the early benefits of creating a social platform such as Weedle, where skills are the focal point, is that Google returns Weedle web pages quite high in the rankings when someone searches for a skill that happens to be listed there. In the same way as other social platforms optimise for your name (search for your name on Google and there’s a good chance one of your social network profiles will appear on the first page) Weedle optimizes for your skill. People who know you by name will search that way, but people who don’t know you but who need your skill, will search for your skill title. This is Weedle’s initial SEO (search engine optimisation) benefit.
You can connect with me on Weedle on my personal page weedle.com/brendan.hughes – anyone who joins early can claim their personal web address before it is gone. I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept behind Weedle and on how we have implemented the platform to date. Join Weedle today to see how it works and please, please send us your feedback.
Brendan Hughes 