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Accelerating Your Word of Mouth in the Online World

Written by: Bonnie Harris

Article Overview: It takes consistency, creativity and persistence to use a word of mouth campaign to make your message “stick”. The cheapest and best way to do it is online.

Accelerating Your Word of Mouth in the Online World

It takes consistency, creativity and persistence to use a word of mouth campaign to make your message “stick”. The cheapest and best way to do it is online.

If you haven’t read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell buy it right now. If you have read it then you know Gladwell talks about the mechanism that makes an idea “sticky” using examples from Paul Revere’s famous ride to the resurgence of Hush Puppies. Most of us would love to accelerate the speed our core messages travel via word of mouth. Sometimes called a viral campaign (usually by marketers who want to charge more with a sexier term that means the same thing) word of mouth marketing programs can yield spectacular results. Most of the time they fail because we’re too busy.

I’ve included a few articles that describe in more detail some of the actual channels you’ll use. But here are a few tips to get started. Pick one or two of these things or try them all. They’re easy to implement.

1. Hire an intern or a virtual assistant (VA) to conduct the campaign. I love interns because they’re usually in their early 20’s and are much more familiar with the medium. VA’s that are online savvy often have the experience from other clients. And they work from home.

2. Sign up for an account at PRWeb and send short 200 word advisories every 6 weeks. Who cares what it’s about! (Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow’s second cousin once removed just bought your product.) PRWeb is a great way to get your message moving. Want an example of a campaign we’re doing right now? Google the words “lifemoxie top 25”.

3. Make a list of your favorite bloggers. These should be ones that deal with topics in your industry. Post an innocuous - or brilliant if you’re inspired - comment on once a week. You don’t need your own blog. Comments on blogs get the benefit of SEO too. Comment to a blog on the Huffington Post – that’s the fifth most read news media in the country. And it’s a WEBSITE.

4. Set up a MySpace page, a Facebook page and get LinkedIn if you’re not already. Have your VA or intern do it. Cost will be from $13 to $20 bucks per hour. You don’t need fancy videos either.

5. Maybe you want to try for something a little more creative? Do a sweepstakes. There’s one going on a Femail Creations that has customers uploading videos talking about “how much they love Femail” to YouTube and the winner will get a $1000 shopping spree. Not only do we promote the contest but the customers are doing commercials for the company online. Brilliant!

6. Take every newsletter article you’ve ever written and submit it to the online article directories. You can email me for a list of those if you like. Soon your name and message will be blasted across hundreds of site.

7. Measure your results with google alerts for your company name, your name and any combination of the two. (If you’re already doing this, try setting alerts for news items that have to do with your business too) You’ll get some junk, but you’ll see when your name or company name is mentioned anywhere.

Finally remember chat rooms and discussion boards are great places to talk about your product. But don’t be salesy. If you’re going to pop into those provide some valid input. Also, don’t “ghost.” Ghosting is when a company uses an alias to participate in a discussion and sway the opinions. The CEO of Whole Foods just got caught doing that. On the other hand, if your product is for younger folks, you can pay some interns to work those discussion boards and chat rooms for you. For some reason teens and 20-somethings that are “paid ambassadors” are welcome on those sites.

All of these things can easily be done by an intern or VA. They could even be a good job for your computer savvy kid!

Bonnie Harris is the president of Wax Marketing, a marketing and PR agency for small business. She also operates waxcoach.com, a DIY marketing and PR site for entrepreneurs. Bonnie can be reached at bonnie@waxcoach.com.

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  The Power of Word of Mouth
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  Word-of-Mouth: The World's Best-Known Marketing Secret
  They're Talking About Your Competition

Article Tags: Facebook, social media, word of mouth



Related Forum Posts
Measuring Word of mouth - [quote="jvprosperity":2l2ujat4]I couldn't find the Part 1 Doctrine on the site but I believe from reading the blog posts it had to do with the distractions entrepreneurs and their customers face daily. He may have also talked about Word of Mouth and the true way of measuring it.[/quote:2l2ujat4] Hi Andy, So how can one measure "Word of Mouth" marketing then?
Re: What's Up With Word Clouds? - I would like to see Word Clouds used in conjunction with a Survey. I've been experimenting with Word Clouds within Google Docs forms using the advanced Word Cloud Widget.
Word of Mouth - Word of Mouth marketing by its very nature takes time. You need to develop relationships before people will refer you. Why not boost it a little by making a few partnerships? You could partner with a gym or put on seminars. Think who else targets the same people and how you can work with them and help them. You can also write articles and become and expert in your field - put them online, write a column for a community paper on health, etc. Even a door to door flyer drop with a simple one pager can help drive some clients. Good luck!
Re: Exotic Tea Shop Website for Review - Hi David, - Background is nice and fitting, but I don't like the header. The title completely blends in with the background? - About Us shouldn't be second from the left on the navigation bar. People read from left to right. The commercial intent is to buy, the online store should probably be second. - Online Tea Store... too many choices without supplementary information. No description of product choice. oz and pricing should be stylized separately from the name of the product. - Online Tea Store.... Visuals is definitely very important in raising commercial intent. Someone who comes to the site through SEO is searching for exotic teas and not particulars. Meaning they're browsing. Text is not enough for a browsing shopper. - World of Tea... the information can be organized a bit better. Again, visuals. Some of this info belongs to online tea store. I'm not too sure on the name. - Tea & Treasure... not sure on this name either... mainly because you have "World of Tea" next to it. Navigation should be transparent in conveying information to the users. Why not call it "Find Us" or "Visit Us"? - Email newseletter.... "occasional updates" containing what exactly? Again, my humble opinion. Hope you find it useful!
Name for website - Hmmmm Authors World Authors Network Authors World Wide Weblog World Wide Authors Arboretum (or some other alliterative word) WritertoWriter Writer to Reader WritersWorld WritersConnect AuthorsandtheirReadersBlog


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