Category: Word of Mouth

Categories: Video, Word of Mouth Posted on

Video: Kit Kat’s Risky Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign

Kit Kat got a lot of flack from the Greenpeace brandjacking, yet, I wanted to point out a marketing campaign where they leveraged popular news mentions. What was interesting is they used a simple email and some doctored photos, on Good Friday in the Netherlands (a country in which 45% are not religious) A few questions: When consumers find out this was a hoax, does this create distrust? Does tapping into market memes demonstrate being in tune with your market? Would it have only worked in a country where a large portion are not religious? Whether sacrilegious or brilliant marketing, perhaps it can only work in the Netherlands –it would have never worked in the US, You be the judge, … Continue readingVideo: Kit Kat’s Risky Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign

Categories: Advocacy, Community Marketing, Social Media, Word of Mouth Posted on

Checklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program

Recently, I attended a corporate event that showcased products related to an industry. Press, media, bloggers, and influencers were invited to attend, and meet a variety of vendors and see products. Featured were members of the company’s advocacy program, (a group of preferred clients), and were given products to demo. Some members of the this advocacy program are bloggers, in particular one with a journalistic background, who’s credibility came into question. While the event continued on, a not-impressed attendee (who claimed to be a journalist) started to make comments that some of the members of the advocacy program were not authentic and went so far as to say quite loudly during the presentation they were “shills” from the back of … Continue readingChecklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program

Categories: Community Marketing, Social Media, Word of Mouth Posted on

As Media Brands Build Their Own Communities, They Must Evolve Their Business Model

Left: Several Press, Analysts, and Bloggers met with executives from Cisco and Warner using Telepresence from NY, SF, to San Jose. Cisco’s Eos (their community platform for media brands) landed an enterprise wide deal with Warner Music. Attendees included John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Dan Scheinman who heads Eos, and Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner music and Michale Nash of Warner. Rather than focus on the details of the deal (you can read WSJ, Reuters, and GigaOm), I’m going to discuss what it means to the industry at large. [Media companies will adopt social technologies to respond to the Groundswell in social networks –yet to be successful, the change isn’t about technology –but instead, their business model] Media companies know … Continue readingAs Media Brands Build Their Own Communities, They Must Evolve Their Business Model

Categories: MicroMedia, Word of Mouth Posted on

How Bloggers Should Inspire Retweets

I’m on a Twitter hiatus and am not tweeting for a while, instead, I’m focusing on what Forrester calls energizing, what others may refer to as “word of mouth’. So instead, I’m going to conduct experiments to help my clients understand how to best use social tools to allow content to spread for person to person. While social media ‘chicklets’ already exist that make it easy to make blog posts diggable, tagged on delicious, or emailed to others, we’ve often forgotten to recognize one of the most powerful behaviors: the retweet. As a result, every single one of my future blog posts will have easy-to-use, copy and paste content that is designed to be rapidly tweeted to your followers –or … Continue readingHow Bloggers Should Inspire Retweets

Categories: Social Media, Web Marketing, Word of Mouth Posted on

Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service

My role as an analyst is to find out what types of social media are effective for Forrester’s clients, this weekend provided a unique opportunity to watch how sponsored blog posts are now emerging. Understanding Sponsored Blog Posts I posed some questions on Twitter when I learned of it on Sat (I embedded them below for any late-comers), and then got on the phone (yeah that old thing) with Ted Murphy the CEO of Izea to get the facts, and then talk to Chris Brogan, one of the bloggers who participated and is also on the Board of Advisors of Izea, who has since explained his actions in this lengthy and active post (over 170 comments and 17 trackbacks). Ted … Continue readingUnderstanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service

Categories: Social Media, Word of Mouth Posted on

So, Who Do Consumers Trust?

Left: This is the same graphic I discussed yesterday, “How much do you trust the following information sources?” Yesterday, we highlighted the findings from Forrester’s latest report on consumer trust. Although there has been quite a bit of discussion on Twitter, on Josh’s comments (read former colleague Peter Kim’s comments) there’s been a mixed bag or reviews from Read Write Web and eWeek. So it’s out in the open: most corporate blogs are trusted, and the reasons are very obvious. Let’s examine the graphic that was provided: First, review this graphic in a separate window, let’s start at the bottom and move our way up. Right above corporate blogs, consumers nearly equally don’t trust social networking site profiles from a … Continue readingSo, Who Do Consumers Trust?

Categories: MicroMedia, Social Media Measurement, Word of Mouth Posted on

Retweet: The Infectious Power Of Word Of Mouth

Word of Mouth, the Holy Grail of Marketing Word of mouth marketing is one of the most desirable activities to brands, why? Because research on trust shows that consumers (folks like you and me) trust the opinions of people we know more than anyone else. It makes sense of course, think about the next time you’re going to buy a car, who’s opinion are you going to trust, those of your friends or the opinion of the sales guy representing the product? [Information within Microblogging communities like Twitter encourage rapid word of mouth –of both positive and negative content] Twitter, Although Small, Continues to Demonstrate Influence Twitter, which I’m seeing informal stats of around 5 million users, has continued to … Continue readingRetweet: The Infectious Power Of Word Of Mouth

Categories: Social Media, Voice of the Customer, Web Marketing, Word of Mouth Posted on

Findings: Why Companies Should Talk to Customers

ExpoTV recently ran a research study to determine how do consumers relate to each other. While this isn’t Forrester Research, so I will not defend, nor explain their methodology. It’s rare that analysts point to research other than their own, if I put your interests first, you’ll continue to come back to me. Blog ExpoTV found that: 55% of customers in their survey want to have an ongoing discussion brands Respondents were most anxious to talk to the product design (49%) department, followed by customer support (14%), marketing (14%) and pricing (13%) 89% said they felt more loyal if they knew the brand was listening through a feedback group (attention insight community vendors) WOM: Sixty-one percent of survey respondents said … Continue readingFindings: Why Companies Should Talk to Customers

Categories: Social Media Measurement, Word of Mouth Posted on

Social Media Measurement Attribute: Defining Velocity

I would love to do some formal research on this on the day job, the following is just highlighting a probabble definition and formula, it certainly doesn’t include any formal methodology or practiced process. There’s been a great deal of talk about ‘virality’ or ‘word of mouth’ but when it comes to measurement, we need something just a bit more substantial. When I was on the vendor side at PodTech as Director of Corporate Social Media Strategy (client facing), I worked closely with Darold Masaro, VP of Sales. We frequently bantered over new ways to improve measurement as this is important improving existing programs and increasing budgets. For many of those in the social media space, the goal is to … Continue readingSocial Media Measurement Attribute: Defining Velocity

Categories: Europe, Interview, Video, Word of Mouth Posted on

Video: Tristan, Mozilla’s European CEO on Evangelism and Word of Mouth (4:00)

Click To Play Tristan Nitot, (his blog on open source in French) CEO of Mozilla Europe talks about how Firefox spread mainly through word of mouth and people just sharing it and advocating it to others. He suggests that the open source initiative first resonated with people, thus spurring word of mouth. They encouraged users to have the software loaded on a portable thumbnail flash drive, and install it wherever they went. Blogs were a big component of how it spread, as well as local communities that would be passionate about their region, self-supporting each other, and spreading the word. Un traditional web strategies As you may know, Mozilla hasn’t done a lot of traditional marketing or advertising (except for … Continue readingVideo: Tristan, Mozilla’s European CEO on Evangelism and Word of Mouth (4:00)