THINKing

Word

The oldest form of media still is the best when it comes to spurring consumer action. Word-of-mouth from family and friends still is the most trusted source of information, despite all the hype about the digital world and social media. This is borne out by a Mediavest survey on trust in sources of political information. The survey indicates,

…the most credible and influential source of such information comes not from professional media outlets, but from friends, family and colleagues via word-of-mouth.

Now, I’m not saying that online social networks can’t be used to amplify your message through digital word-of-mouth. It can.  But you have to understand both the analog and the digital process of building buzz.

Gord Hotchkiss, in a MediaPost Search Insider column, says,

For some reason, we think buzz is a new thing that lives online. In fact, it’s as old as human behavior and has its roots in our very social fabric. We need to pass on information. We’re driven to do so. We gossip because it’s inherently satisfying, both to ourselves and to the recipient. But the spread of gossip through a social network is neither uniform nor consistent.   In the ’70s, Mark Granovetter discovered that, like many things, social networks are patchy, made up of tightly linked clusters of people who spend a lot of time together (families, friends, co-workers) which are loosely connected to each other through “weak ties,” more distant social relationships. The survival potential of a viral piece of information (Richard Dawkins first coined the term “meme” as a cultural equivalent of a gene in his book, “The Selfish Gene”) lies in its ability to jump Granovetter’s weak ties.    If the meme doesn’t jump out of a cluster, it ceases to propagate itself and can die an isolated death.

 GasPedal has an excellent post on developing your own word-of-mouth buzz program in 5 simple steps. According to the post, it’s as simple as finding your “talkers”, create a way to communicate with them (email would be my recommendation, as well as GasPedal’s), give them something to talk about, make it easy for them to spread the word and then thank them publicly.

Want some more ideas on developing word-of-mouth programs? Check out this THINKing piece.