Word of Mouth is the Original Social Media
The term “Social Media” is sexy. Twitter. Facebook. Blogs. All sexy in today’s marketing world where people are sharing opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other online.
A simple Google Trends search shows how much sexier a term “Social Media” has become compared to “Word of Mouth.” In early 2007, “social media” overtook “word of mouth” in online search activity.
The sexiness of social media also extends to which programs are getting greenlighted by marketing departments. Conversations I’ve had with WOMMA member agencies and brands tell me it has become far easier to gain budget approval for marketing programs sold as social media strategy than it is to get go-ahead approval for unsexy word of mouth programs.
I’m bothered by how “word of mouth” has become such an unsexy term.
As marketers we’ve lost sight that word of mouth is, was, and will continue to be social media. The term “social media” simply refers to the online digital manifestation of what has taken place for centuries in the physical world of person-to-person communication.
Word of mouth happens in physical ways (in person, on the phone) and digital ways (online, through email). Both ways are media. Both ways are social. Yet, both aren’t equal.
According to a Keller Fay study, 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations take place every day in the United States. About 90% of those conversations occur physically (in person, on the phone) while no more than 10% occur digitally (online, through email).
Today’s marketing world continues to behave a lot like yesterday’s marketing world where people share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other through word-of-mouth. Nothing has changed there. Only the tools people use to pass along interesting information have changed, they’ve changed to include digital ways.
Seems to me word of mouth will always be the original social media.
Long after the tools of today (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs) fade away, person-to-person and voice-to-voice conversations will continue to be the driving force of word of mouth activity. Might not be sexy, but sometimes the truth ain’t sexy.
I couldn’t agree more. Voice-to-voice converstaions not only continue to be the driving force of WOM, they are integral to every social media movement as well.
Love it John. Let’s get the true Word of Mouth Marketers together to make WOM sexy again.
“Bringin’ Unsexy Back.” Oh yeah!
Amen to that.
We have so many conversations that start with tactics. People wanting to “engage or play around with” a the shiny new Social Media toy. Bake ‘em up a facebook page or start a campaign. If more companies started with a genuine desire to create a real relationship a with their customers and support the passion conversations they share… well, image that.
Avoiding the terribly kitsch term “Word of Mouse,” I will offer that we’ve had a lot of success differentiating by talking about Digital Word of Mouth. It’s stops people for a minute–long enough to explain the concept. Media is not social. Media is boring. People are social, and the things people are talking about in these terrible mundane and boring “social” tools are social, but not the media. Can we say, then, that this is akin to “putting lipstick on a pig?”