whakapapa (blog)

Word of mouth is when one person talks to another person about you, your product or service. The statements are perceived to be more authentic, trustworthy and reliable than from any other source.

If you conduct a search online you will probably find that people are already talking about you, so jump in and join the conversation. By following these seven tips, you will have people talking favorably about your brand, improve your ROI….and turn your campaign around.

1. Content- Give people a reason to talk about you.
2. Make it easy for the conversation to take place - leveraging the viral multiplier.
3. Keep it Fresh - Keep giving people a reason to have the conversation about you.
4. Agility - Remain flexible, and adaptable.
5. Community -Participate in and support existing communities and conversations.
6. Key Influencers - Its important to identify with and connect with the key influencers in your community.
7. ROI -Determine in advance how you will measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of your campaign. Set clearly delineated goals make it planable and trackable.

1. Content- Give people a reason to talk about you. Think outside of the box, its more about fun. Do something that engages people, and creates a deeper connection.The reason you give people does not have to be directly related to your product for example: A real estate broker over the holiday’s sent a card that was designed to be a hanging display. It had six good wishes for the coming year printed on individual silver card stock, the cards were than fastened to a satin ribbon. Her holiday card received a phenomenal response, people would keep the card displayed well past the holiday season, some kept it up all year long. The cards cost her ten dollars each to have printed, admitedly an expensive per item purchase but they created very powerful word of mouth. The select few recipients felt very special and talked about the agent with unbridled enthusiasm.

2. Make it easy for the conversation to take place- Online communities for example facebook, allow people to easily follow you and share your content. By leveraging this correctly you can capitalize on the viral multiplier. The person who forwards your content/message is effectively making an important recommendation. It’s to your advantage to have as many file sharing widgets and systems available as possible. The number of programs that perform this task is growing, some of the more popular methods are Digg, Reddit, delicious, facebook and stumble upon. In the very least you need to have comments enabled, an RSS feed and a method for people to “tell a friend” via email.

3. Keep it Fresh- Keep giving people a reason to have the conversation about you.This should be approached in multiple platforms by seeking ways to improve the customer experience. i.e surprise shipping or a flexible return policy, and by continuously generating new content and posting updates for the sites you are utilizing. If you are not passionate about it, the lack of enthusiasm will be palpable and you should have someone else take on the responsibility. Make sure they are good communicators and give them the permission to be an authentic voice. It doesn’t have to be the responsibility of just one person, encourage all your employers who are interested and motivated about the importance of the communication to get involved.

4. Agility - There is no formula for success. You will learn from everything that you do. Be willing to experiment and remain flexible and objective about what is working and what isn’t. Don’t get emotionally attached to a pet project. If it isn’t generating a response drop it. A well designed campaign will call for a wide range of approaches. If a campaign is working, be ready to capitalize on your success, have a plan of action in place that will keep the momentum going.

5. Community -Participate in and support existing communities and conversations. Observe and follow protocol of how people are interacting within the community. Understand Social Media is a two way conversation, if people leave a comment, you need to respond, whether it is good, bad or neutral, peoples opinions are valuable. If you receive negative feedback you have an opportunity to fix the situation, and in doing so demonstrate that you care and are at least willing to try to resolve the matter. Seek ways to reward your loyal base, build community and give back.

6. Key Influencers - Its important to identify with and connect with the key influencers in your community. You should note that your biggest customers are not automatically the biggest influencers. Recognize these people and help them talk about you. If they are bloggers you may want to give them an exclusive interview or if its a very vocal satisfied customer arm them with extra brochures; encourage them too write a review on one of the multiple review sites i.e. yelp, Angie’s list; or use their testimonial as content.

7. ROI - The analysis of your investment is critical. Determine in advance what your goals are and put systems in place to track the results. Its easy to keep track of the expenses and time involved, responses are time intensive but its not a spend. Creating pages on social websites is free except for the time consuming hours needed to build and maintain the sites. Its difficult to monetize all results but of value is tracking page views, comments received, and response to referrals. A campaign could be declared a success if you see a decrease in customer returns.

The most successful long term approach is to tackle this with the positioning of wanting to build stronger personal relationships not as marketing.