Social Media making messages viral is the new form of word of mouth.
Just like when you used to rant and rave about the best toys as a kid at the playground, Social Media lets you talk about your toys to a lot more kids at a lot more playgrounds.
So what are the key ingredients to generating word of mouth? Fresh: Be fresh and talk about something that just happened, might happen in the future, or maybe even play devil's advocate to elicit people's reactions.
Talking about World Cup news was fresh at the beginning, and though still highly interesting, has lost some of its freshness.
Scarcity: This is a long time marketing communications tool that has worked for thousands of products before the iphone and ipad were selling out.
Trying to find the hottest toy for the holidays, being one of the first privileged to sign up for G-Mail in the early 2000's, Exclusivity: Think of how over priced country club are cool because they are exclusive.
People want to be a part of something that is important, not something every Joe in the world is doing.
That's why messages on Twitter that speak to a "Tribe" (ala Seth Godin) have a more loyal and attentive audience.
I remember going to Nike's Facebook page right when the World Cup was starting.
They had a great video with top actors, it probably cost a lot of money to make, but it was EXCLUSIVELY available on their Facebook page.
Not only that, even before viewing the video, I had to click "I like this" before watching it.
We may not have the millions, but we do have Facebook access like Nike and if we adopt their strategic thinking, we can get word of mouth just as they did by getting fans to "like us" by clicking a button and broadcasting it to all of their friends on Facebook.
Just like when you used to rant and rave about the best toys as a kid at the playground, Social Media lets you talk about your toys to a lot more kids at a lot more playgrounds.
So what are the key ingredients to generating word of mouth? Fresh: Be fresh and talk about something that just happened, might happen in the future, or maybe even play devil's advocate to elicit people's reactions.
Talking about World Cup news was fresh at the beginning, and though still highly interesting, has lost some of its freshness.
Scarcity: This is a long time marketing communications tool that has worked for thousands of products before the iphone and ipad were selling out.
Trying to find the hottest toy for the holidays, being one of the first privileged to sign up for G-Mail in the early 2000's, Exclusivity: Think of how over priced country club are cool because they are exclusive.
People want to be a part of something that is important, not something every Joe in the world is doing.
That's why messages on Twitter that speak to a "Tribe" (ala Seth Godin) have a more loyal and attentive audience.
I remember going to Nike's Facebook page right when the World Cup was starting.
They had a great video with top actors, it probably cost a lot of money to make, but it was EXCLUSIVELY available on their Facebook page.
Not only that, even before viewing the video, I had to click "I like this" before watching it.
We may not have the millions, but we do have Facebook access like Nike and if we adopt their strategic thinking, we can get word of mouth just as they did by getting fans to "like us" by clicking a button and broadcasting it to all of their friends on Facebook.