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Word of Mouth Marketing

The Earthquake Will Be Socialized…

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I’ve never been in an earthquake before, and I had no clue what was going on when it hit yesterday. When I did, my first instinct was not to stand in the nearest doorway (what I should’ve done, in case it was worse than it turned out to be) – it was to start tweeting about it.

In fact, it was the first instinct of many, many others. Seconds after it happened, I saw tweets from people in DC, New York, Ohio – it was how I found out just how far-reaching the quake was. I went to CNN, and they were still reporting events in Libya as breaking news. I heard from a few of my followers that I was the first person in their stream to tweet about the earthquake.

I checked Facebook and saw all the tremor chatter there – this only minutes after it happened. We were all sharing information and our experiences in real time, long before mainstream media picked up on it.

This may be old news to you, but social media once again serves as the hub of activity and updates during an emergency. So think about how powerful it can be during a non-emergency – a conference or a fundraising campaign. Word-of-mouth matters, and social media is the tool that can help you spread the word.

 

How Engaged is Your Community? The 5 Levels of Social Media Engagement

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If you manage social media outposts for your business or organization, then no doubt you’ve heard the word “engagement” numerous times. It isn’t enough for people to simply follow or like you, the goal is for them to interact and participate in a way that keeps them engaged with your brand. But because we’re talking about “social” media, we have to consider and accept that different people are social in different ways. Not everyone will engage in the same way, but you can help them to increase their levels of participation so they are more engaged with your brand in a meaningful way.

How engaged is your social media community? There are 5 levels of increasing engagement we’ve identified through our social media research and campaign work, which will help you to segment your community members:

 
  • Level 1: Observing – watching the conversation from a far & simply “lurking” to decide if it’s interesting/valuable enough to join.
  • Level 2: Following – following the brand in some way, i.e. following on Twitter or Liking on Facebook.
  • Level 3: Engaging – interacting in a limited fashion, such as clicking through to read your content, viewing a video, or Liking a wall post.
  • Level 4: Endorsing – actively sharing your content with others, i.e. retweeting, sharing via Facebook, etc.
  • Level 5: Contributing – actively participating in the conversation and interacting with your brand, i.e. tweeting to your brand, posting on your Facebook wall, or commenting on a blog post.

Notice that the circles in the graphic get smaller as the level increases. This means that the number of people decreases as they become more and more engaged with your brand through social media. This is to be expected, and those Level 4 and 5 folks are the ones you should ultimately focus on building relationships with – they are your brand advocates. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to the people in Levels 1-3, because there are steps you can take to move them up the ladder and convert them to Endorsers and Contributors.

What are those steps? Stay tuned…that’s another blog post!

 

 

Search Drives Word of Mouth, But Don’t Discount Social Media

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Today I came across a resource site called Think with Google, containing digital marketing information, trends and insights and recently launched by (one guess)…Google. I excitedly dove into the wealth of information it provided, starting with Word of Mouth under its Think Insights section, thinking of the treasure trove of research, articles and posts about WOM, social media, digital marcomm. What I got was a treasure trove of Google-centric research about how search (Google) is the #1 spark of WOM conversations, how search (Google) is more likely to result in a purchase, and how search (yes, you guessed it) far outpaces social media sites as a resource driving WOM conversations.

No, I’m not surprised about this, for 2 reasons:

  1. It makes sense that search drives most WOM conversations, since that is the one place people will go to find information about a company or product. No, they don’t go to Twitter or Facebook, they go to search. Search has been around for ages in Internet years, far longer than social media, and it’s ingrained into our brains to go straight to Google (or your search engine of choice) to research a potential purchase.
  2. Why should I be surprised that a digital publication called “Think with Google” wouldn’t be Google-centric? It’s like Oprah’s O Magazine – she’s on the cover of every issue.

So the takeaway here is that companies should be focused on search marketing when it comes to generating WOM conversations, right? Well, yes – but the reason why I’m writing this is because I don’t want people to discount social media and its role in the WOM landscape. Search is, always has been and always will be an extremely important (if not THE most important) part of any online marketing strategy; but everything else you do online feeds into that.

  • Information shared through social media sites is included in search results (take a look at the Discussions tab the next time you search on Google).
  • The Twitter-to-Google firehose may be off, but retweets still impact how content is indexed on Google.
  • Sharing through Google+ will most certainly have a greater impact on search over time.
  • Social sharing impacts the creation of content that is then indexed in search results.
  • Building a strong social media network increases the likelihood that your content will be shared, therefore impacting how it’s indexed in search.
  • Relationships built through social media can lead to outside content-creation or linkbuilding opportunities.

So don’t think about how search is more likely to impact WOM conversations than social media, think about how your social media efforts impact your search marketing efforts to drive WOM conversations.