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Look Smart, Be Smart: A daily compendium of what you need to know to be effective as a word of mouth marketer
[Originally posted by John Bell on Digital Influence Mapping Project] At the WeMedia08 Conference, I had the chance to hear about two different yet very complimentary initiaves to jumpstart community journalism in the face of traditional journalism "shrinkage." Representative Journalism...
[Originally posted by Virginia Miracle on Marketing Environmentalism] While prowling my new Georgetown neighborhood for fashion finds this past weekend, I stumbled across a darling awning in the distance proclaiming “Georgetown Cupcake“. The cupcake phenomenon that has kept lines formed...
[Originally posted by Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That!] Restaurants used to give away matches. Everyone grabbed one, even if they didn't smoke. Those little things got passed around, saved in the big bowl in your...
[Originally posted by David on David Binkowski.com] In a departure from the regular "This is Sportcenter" ad format, the current spot for SC doesn't feature a high profile athlete or famous mascot, but instead offers viewers the opportunity to vote...
[Originally posted by Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That!] Physical objects start conversations. People see this little award on my shelf and ask me about it. It isn't a big deal. I got it for writing...
[Originally posted by Brett Hurt on Bazaarblog] User-generated content is radically transforming retail. Wal-Mart launching walmart.com/ratings as the new method of shopping, and promoting it via their in-store receipts and shelf fact tags is radically customer-centric. Best Buy launching bestbuy.com/topratedcameras...
To promote an upcoming presentation featuring Andy Sernovitz, CEO of WOMMA member company GasPedal and author of "Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking," the American Marketing Association created an online video promotion. Whether or not the video gains traction remains to be seen, but using word of mouth marketing tactics to promote WOM is a resounding endorsement.
In this podcast with Joe Pulizzi, creator of the blog and business bookmarking site Junta42, Pulizzi discusses the role of content in the form of podcasts, blogs, videos, communities, and a variety of other Web 2.0 platforms as a marketing device. Content as marketing is not a new concept -- but the internet age is turning content marketing from a science to an art, according to Pulizzi. Here he discusses the basics of content as marketing, as well as how-to tips and best practices.
Join us Wednesdays at noon EST for WOM Wednesdays, WOMMA's ongoing teleconference series. Just register, dial in, and listen up to get the ideas that will truly expand your marketing horizons. UPCOMING WOM WEDNESDAY TELECONFERENCES ---------------------------------------- Wednesday, Mar. 5, at...
The next Batman movie, The Dark Knight, has launched the next segment in its viral-driven marketing strategy. Following on the heels of the flick's December efforts, which used online viral marketing to "reveal" the movie's trailer, the latest campaign is driving Batman fans to the "I Believe in Harvey Dent" website, where they can enter their email address to join the fight to save Gotham City and follow the fictional District Attorney candidate's campaign efforts.
This video, which features an interview with Baby Einstein founder Julie Clark, was put together by Microsoft to tout the power of word of mouth marketing, especially in the context of small business marketing. According to Clark, traditional advertising -- whether in the form of a T.V. commercial or magazine ad -- is something she skips and ignores. When she's looking for something she really wants, she trusts the word of mouth from friends -- and applied that common sense philosophy to marketing her own products.
Ninety-five percent of senior marketing executives believe social media's importance is set to soar over the next five years, according to new research from WOMMA member company TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony. Nearly half of the marketers surveyed believe social media to be an integral part of corporate communications -- one that should be monitored at the executive level and allocated significant resources.
[Originally posted by Jake McKee on CommunityGuy] My soapbox issue of late has been the state of traditional marketing/PR agencies in relation to social media project development. In my view, the billing model traditional agencies, being fundamentally campaign-based is diametrically...
[Originally posted by Jake McKee on CommunityGuy] Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang interviewed me recently for two different reports he’s been working on, both of which are out now. Both are impressive reports, and I’d encourage you to check them out:...
[Originally posted by Rob Key on Converseon] Cymfony’s new social media study just reaffirms what we’ve already been seeing: Traditional marketers are struggling to come to terms with social media. Converseon was founded nearly seven years ago based on the...
[Originally posted on Radian6] Social Media Group (SMG) has been making waves lately in the social media world with their landing of Ford and SAP. Maggie Fox and the gang at SMG have also created lots of positive buzz with...
[Originally posted by Walter Carl on Word-of-Mouth Communication Study] There's an interesting line of research out of the European School of Management (Berlin) about WOM. Researchers Dr Frank Jacob and doctoral candidate Martin Oetting are working with the notion of...
[Originally posted by Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That!] This is a follow-up to last week's post about Starbucks shutting down for three hours. 1. What did the employees think? I interviewed a few baristas about...
[Originally posted by Lois Kelly on bloghound] J.Crew’s CEO Mickey Drexler is a great example of a CEO who lives conversational marketing, passionately listening to customers and incorporating their ideas into the business strategy. In his Saturday N.Y. Times story,...
[Originally posted by Spike on Brains on Fire] A friend of Brains on Fire, Ryan Sworth, documented his weekend camp out, which just happened to be in the parking lot of a brand new Chick-fil-A in Fort Mill, SC. Ryan...
The relationship between sales and marketing, especially in a BtoB setting, is sometimes contentious. The two practices have different objectives and are often at odds, but both ultimately want to grow revenue for the organization they live in. This podcast, with Paul Dunay of the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog, discusses the key differences between sales and marketing, as well as how to get the two practices talking.
This podcast with Joseph Jaffe -- who will be speaking at WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing University (WOMM-U) Conference this May 8-9 in Miami, Fla. -- features a CEO roundtable discussion about social media and conversational marketing. Click over and listen up to hear what CEOs have to say about how they're using social media and what they see on the horizon.
Join us Wednesdays at noon EST for WOM Wednesdays, WOMMA's ongoing teleconference series. Just register, dial in, and listen up to get the ideas that will truly expand your marketing horizons. UPCOMING WOM WEDNESDAY TELECONFERENCES ---------------------------------------- Wednesday, Mar. 5, at...
Is the Internet chewing up everything in its path? Find out at the OMMA Global Hollywood Conference & Expo. OMMA Global Hollywood March 17 - 18, 2008 Renaissance Hollywood Hotel For more information, visit: http://www.womma.org/events/recommended/...
On the Spare Change blog, Nedra Kline Weinreich discusses how nonprofits and government agencies can use microblogging site Twitter to spread the word about what they do. Weinreich also provides links to a slew of organizations who have used Twitter successfully, and highlights some of the benefits and some of the limitations of the 140-character format.
If you build it they will come -- unless they don't know that you built it and don't really understand how it works in the first place. This is the lesson with RSS feeds. If you want readers to subscribe to your blog's RSS, you can't forget to promote that you have one and make it as easy as possible for your fans to subscribe. Here are ten quick tips for how to best promote your RSS feed on your site.
The honesty of posts that appear on Wal-Mart's "Check Out" blog, which has been live since just before the holiday season, caught the attention of the New York Times, which noted in a recent article that posts are often critical even of products that Wal-Mart carries. The blog posts, which are written by buyers -- the company's "tastemakers" -- instead of executives, are largely unedited, and have the potential to step on the toes of both merchants and customers. But that's a risk that Wal-Mart is taking, to the credit of its authentic approach to blogging.
[Originally posted by Ian McKee on The Power of Influence] The New York Times carries a story “Hoping to Make Phone Buyers Flip” which leads on the hyper competitive cell phone handset market, the quickening pace of innovation and the...
[Originally posted by Joe Barnes on TheMarketingAdvantage] Great piece by Marc Guldimann on the Adotas.com website. It gives some great practical advice how to speak with customers instead of speaking to customers. Here are some of the highlights: Brands can...
[Originally posted by Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That!] Robert gave one of the most extraordinary talks I've hear at the Customer Service is the New Marketing conference. He tell a tale of the amazing ways...
[Originally posted by Kelly LaVaute on What's the Diff?] Go figure - I thought I was joining these social networks to share pictures & get "poked" by people I knew in kindergarten and now can't remember for the life of...
[Originally posted by John Bell on Digital Influence Mapping Project] Melissa Katz and Michael Parks from Centocor talked with a few of us and John Mack (thanks to JM) about their new blog:CNTO411. It follows in the footsteps of very...
[Originally posted by Brant Barton on Bazaarblog] By Luke Iseman, Partnerships Director U2 is a great band, but far too many ecommerce experiences make me recall their 1987 chart-topper, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Even at leading...
[Originally posted by Spike on Brains on Fire] The boys and girls at Cymfony recently published a report that found that “nearly 50% (of senior marketing execs) believe (social media) is a vital component of corporate communications that should be...
[Originally posted by Pete on ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com] Dawn is breaking, and I'm hours away from heading to the polls for today's "make or break" Ohio primary. (Yes, I live in Ohio - the hilltop community of Mt. Adams, Cincinnati to be...
We are constantly adding valuable word of mouth marketing whitepapers, research studies, essays, opinion papers, and other content to WOMMA's member center. These are just a few of the NEW items you’ll find there: >> Valuing Advertising's Original Medium: The...
On the Communities Dominate Brands blog, Alan Moore takes a look at what companies can do now to bridge the communications divide between themselves and their customers. The blog post, which pulls research from a recent Ketchum study, references the idea that companies are out of touch with the way consumers use media, and makes some suggestions for how to sync back up and get -- and stay -- on consumers' radars.
On the heels of some interesting research highlighted marketers' dissatisfaction with agencies' understanding of social media, this list of nine reasons why agencies "don't get" social media attempts to explain the perceived information gap. The list, which is originally taken from the Marketing Conversations blog, runs the gamut, covering everything from the lack of a revenue model to general technology skittishness on the part of agencies.
Join us Wednesdays at noon EST for WOM Wednesdays, WOMMA's ongoing teleconference series. Just register, dial in, and listen up to get the ideas that will truly expand your marketing horizons. UPCOMING WOM WEDNESDAY TELECONFERENCES ---------------------------------------- Wednesday, Mar. 5, at...
In 2007, it's projected that more than one billion dollars was spent on word of mouth marketing -- and this without having a definitive value placed on the worth of conversation. So what would happen to the industry if a tangible measure of WOM was declared? That's just what WOMMA member BzzAgent is aiming to find out with a newly released whitepaper that takes a stab at finding an effective CPM for word of mouth.
This pair of articles from Buinessweek plays point/counterpoint with the topic of widgets. Peter Yared's Feb. 29 article posits that the functional, opt-in usability of widgets make them a savvy way for marketers to play into consumers' desire to filter the content they take in. Alternatively, Ben Kunz's Mar. 3 article asserts that widgets fly in the face of consumers' online objectives -- which are to "do" things rather than to simply receive information.
The secret to true word of mouth marketing is to create products and services that people are inclined to talk about -- not to pester or bully consumers into giving you word of mouth recommendations OR ELSE! So how can you encourage people to talk about your stuff without irritating them? This adotas article highlights several ways you can leverage word of mouth marketing techniques without turning customers off.
[Originally posted by John Bell on Digital Influence Mapping Project] David Churbuck had a great post this past week decrying the need for deeper nutcracking in social media marketing. (No, not that kind of nutcracking. Okay, maybe a little of...
[Originally posted by Robbin on Brains on Fire] I hate the term WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING. Or WOMM as it is so lovingly called by those who cradle it’s potential in their arms like a baby. I hate it. Funny...
[Originally posted by Pete on ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com] Forget the election results for a quick moment. What continues to capture my fascination is the degree to which all the campaigns are reaching out to key stakeholders in a participatory, respectful, personalized, and...
The WOMMA Word