By John Moore, Marketing Strategist at Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice and a Consultant for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association

Originally posted on PROMO

Talkable brands do not rely on expensive traditional advertising to drive sales. Instead, they tap into the inexpensive conversational power of customers as their primary advertising vehicle. These brands enjoy the benefits of using word of mouth marketing to not only increase awareness, but also drive sales.

Starbucks Coffee is a talkable brand. Whole Foods Market is also a talkable brand. It wasn’t by accident these two brands grew from a local business to a regional brand to global icons. Both brands made deliberate decisions to bake word of mouth marketing into how they did business not just one day, but every day.

As a marketing manager with Starbucks in their formative growth years and later, as a marketing director with Whole Foods, I was fortunate to witness and participate in the various methods these brands use to get customers talking.

Getting customers talking isn’t as difficult as you may think. The process begins by making decisions to be obvious, remarkable, and conversational.

Talkable brands like Starbucks and Whole Foods are obvious in what they stand for. Starbucks stands for bolder, more flavorful coffee. Whole Foods stands for natural and organic groceries. By deliberately deciding to stand for something, these two companies are known for their unique point of view.

Whole Foods Market does not sell products with artificial ingredients. The company is obvious in its stance against artificial ingredients. On its website, Whole Foods posts a long list of unacceptable ingredients it doesn’t allow products they sell. Walk up and down the soft drink aisle at Whole Foods and you will not see brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper. Each of those best-selling sodas is made with artificial ingredients. Instead of seeing popular soda brands, you will see unfamiliar brands like Izze, Maine Root, and Blue Sky on the shelves at Whole Foods.

By being obvious in what it stands for, Whole Foods Market appears more original. And that’s the lesson other brands can learn—the more obvious you are, the more original you appear.

Popular marketer and author Seth Godin says, “You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.” Talkable brands decide to be remarkable by earning opinions from customers.

Starbucks deliberately earns opinions from customers. Think about your first visit to Starbucks and you’ll remember being confused with their odd names for drink sizes and the weird language Starbucks baristas used to call out your drink order. You know what I’m talking about—a “tall” is really a small, and a “venti” is an extra large. Don’t think for a second you haven’t learned how to order your favorite drink in perfect Starbucks dialect. You have. And by having customers learn to say, “grande non-fat extra hot, two-pump vanilla, one-pump hazelnut, no-foam latte,” it’s yet another way Starbucks is a remarkable and talkable brand.

The unique Starbucks language is polarizing. Some people love it, while others hate it. Starbucks knows its polarizing ways makes the whole process of buying a common cup of coffee uncommon. So uncommon it sparks conversations with customers.

Talkable brands join conversations wherever customers are talking. Customers, as we know, are a talkative bunch. Keller Fay Group, a marketing research firm, estimates the typical American takes part in 125 conversations per week with friends, family, and co-workers that discuss products and services. Of those weekly conversations, specific brands are mentioned over 60 times.

Today, these brand-related conversations are amplified trough social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Both Starbucks and Whole Foods actively participate in the online conversations customers are having about them. (Starbucks has over 23-million fans on Facebook. Whole Foods has about 2-million followers on Twitter.)

Starbucks and Whole Foods are not using Facebook and Twitter as a broadcast channel to talk about new promotions and new products. Instead, they are using social media websites primarily as a listening channel to provide better customer service.

For example, Whole Foods actively responds to the many comments and questions people have about the company on Twitter. Nine out of every ten tweets from Whole Foods on Twitter is a company response to something someone tweeted. Whole Foods has a deliberate social media strategy that involves listening and responding more than talking.

Your business can start becoming a more talkable brand by deciding to be unique, then deciding to be remarkable every day, and by deciding to be conversational using social media.

John Moore is a Marketing Strategist at Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice and a Consultant for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

By Tara DeMarco, Marketing Writer, Bazaarvoice

Originally posted on Bazaarblog

For millions of people, social networking has become a constant part of daily life, accessible at all times through various devices. A new study from Edison Research finds that 33% of American social networkers now use social sites several times a day – that’s 48 million people. As mobile internet access becomes more ubiquitous, more and more consumers will join this group of habitual social networkers.

And still, many businesses treat social as a channel, developing siloed strategies for individual networks and devices. To engage users consistently, and deliver consistent brand experiences at every customer touchpoint, companies should view social the way habitual networkers view it: woven into the fabric of experience, not sewn on.

Want to understand how these über-networkers view social? Here are some of the most enlightening findings from the research.

Social is habit-forming

Ninety-eight percent of these habitual social networkers (those who use social sites several times a day) are on Facebook, and 23% are on Twitter – making habitual networkers nearly three times as likely to use Twitter as the general population (8%).

These habitual networkers are more likely to interact in other ways as well. Forty-three percent of them follow brands on social networks, compared to 25% of all social networkers. Habitual networkers are also more likely to have used mobile to engage with a video display, such as to access a coupon or play a game (18% vs. 8%). Another study found active Twitter users five times more likely to blog, three times more likely to review products, and six times more likely to publish online articles than the average person, monthly.

Don’t tie them down

Habitual social networkers aren’t likely to be tied to one device. On average, they routinely use 3.5 different devices to access the internet – 35% of them use four or more, which includes 20% who use five or more. They’re more likely to be “cord cutters” – 36% of them use only their mobile phones and have no home phone, compared to 24% of Americans age 12+. Habitual networkers are avid technology owners in general – more likely to own MP3 players, smart phones, tablets, and other technology than the general population.

Similarly, habitual networkers aren’t tied to their homes – they tend to be out-of-home consumers. The study found them more likely than the general population to do many common out-of-home activities like dining out, going to movie theaters, and going to coffee or sandwich shops. Another study found social network users to be highly social offline, with 82% of them involved in offline group activities.

Mobile phones become the primary screen

As people who don’t like to be tied down, it makes sense that habitual social networkers love their mobile phones. Ninety-one percent of them own one, and 56% own smart phones, compared to only 31% of Americans 12+. Sixty-four percent of these habitual networkers say they’d rather give up their television than their mobile phone.

Habitual networkers aren’t just more likely to check social networks on their phones – they’re more likely to do most smart phone activities, like send text messages, browse the web, and listen to music.

Siloed channel marketing tied to specific social networks or devices won’t effectively reach habitual users, who float freely from social network to social network, channel to channel, device to device. Start thinking about social the way its biggest users do, and make it an ubiquitous, integrated part of your business to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Mark Rose

We recently reached out to some thought leaders in the word of mouth and social media realm about topics that will be presented and discussed at School of WOM, May 9-11.

Today, Mark Rose, Editor of PR Blog News and Partner at Influence Consulting Group, answers our questions on storytelling, offline WOM, and brand culture.

“Storytelling” seems to be the latest buzz word in word-of-mouth and social media marketing today, do you see this as just a fad or a sustainable movement?

Since the days of the cave man, through the time of Homer, perpetuated by Gypsys throughout the world, the oral tradition of storytelling has endured. This is not a fad. Witness the recent escapades of the BronxZoosCobra, the Twitter reptile sensation that regaled us with a fictitious tourist jaunt through New York City. It was like we lived a children’s book fantasy unfolding 140 characters at a time. The anonymous author of that Twitter feed knew how to tell a story, and adapt the narrative to real-time events. After the real snake was found the story became about escaping again, naming the snake, inking the movie deal, etc.

Our brains are wired to think in stories, appreciate stories, respond emotionally to stories, anticipate where the story might go. We’re also wired to reject hype as we develop an increasingly sophisticated noise filtration system. Telling stories and keeping it authentic will never go out of vogue. It means that adhering to dramatic dictates – story arc, rising action, three dimensional characters persevering against impossible odds – are valuable attributes in developing the story thread in any social context.

With such a heavy emphasis on online and digital tactics these days, what can marketers do to focus on their offline touch points?

Pick up the phone, meet face to face, send a personal letter. All three, common a decade ago, are a rarity now. If someone calls me I talk, if they want to meet I’m willing, if they send a personal letter, I’m impressed. Keep it personal, one to one.

What are your thoughts on the future of word-of-mouth and social media marketing as it relates to brand culture within an organization?

Ranking and reviewing organizations, products and services online has become commonplace. No place is exempt. Sites that offer anonymous comments on “inside” information are also proliferating. There is no such thing as “off duty” anymore and increasingly external and internal communications are intersecting. This is the age of transparency, and social media is speeding the crumbling of walls that divide and determining brand culture in a company. It’s a real dilemma – corporate culture demands adherence to code and fealty to the organization. Social media demands individuality and open access. We’re still grinding our way through this new world.

Nan Dawkins, Founder/CEO, Serengeti Communications

By Nan Dawkins, Founder/CEO, Serengeti Communications

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) defines an influencer as “a person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace.”

Influencers are generally understood to be a crucial factor in creating successful WOM marketing. As a result, much has been written about where to look for influencers and how to engage them. Numerous commercial products offer some form of automated influencer identification, especially for the online environment.

Currently, many of the automated tools that identify and rank influencers rely heavily on the size of the influencer’s following. More sophisticated approaches are emerging, including:

• Analysis of interaction dynamics (i.e., how far an influencer’s post is likely to spread across Twitter or how often, on average, an influencer’s content is shared and propagated by others),
• Analysis of relevance (i.e., is the influencer truly relevant to a particular topic)
• Sentiment analysis (i.e., determining the sentiment of content shared by the influencer)
• Real-time trending of rapidly accelerating influence events (which may point to previously unidentified influencers).

This may sound grandly ambitious and very cool (and it is, in many ways) but the practical reality we face, as a group, is that influencer analysis is very much in its infancy. The companies working in this area (mine included) are facing many challenges, such as the technical issues of dealing with large amounts of data, the difficulties of asking computers to make human judgments about relevance and meaning, and the stark reality of a Black Swan Internet environment which produces influential people and scenarios that could not have been predicted based on past observations (think United Breaks Guitars or any number of other examples).

Simply put: it’s complicated. So perhaps now is a good time to put aside all our network-theory and graph-analysis tools for a moment and consider the possibility that the underlying problem is that we need to view influence in WOM settings as a social fact. Instead, we seem to be framing the concept of influence in a way that assumes it is a natural fact, like pi or Avogadro’s constant. Maybe it’s time for us to go back and read a bit of Émile Durkheim, and then consider suicide.

No, not committing suicide; I mean, suicide as a “social fact.” Durkheim was a French sociologist who made huge news in 1897 with a study that showed suicide rates were much lower in some European religious communities than in others. There was a great rush (at least among academics) to conclude that human behavior might largely be explained in terms of a small number of beliefs and values. More than a century hence, most sociologists now understand that the differences Durkheim found in suicide rates were in fact attributable mainly to the way these different religious communities defined and documented the act of suicide.

Durkheim also pioneered the acceptance of social facts as valid scientific insights, on a par intellectually with the Pythagorean Theorem and E = mc². But he also pointed out a crucial distinction between social and natural facts: what may be an observably and demonstrably true social fact for a specific social group may not be true for any individual member of that group, and will almost certainly not be true for many in that group. If that seems counterintuitive to you, I agree entirely. But let’s have a bit closer look.

In 2009, the average US family had 3.14 members. I’m going to give the Census Bureau its props and concede that this metric is probably accurate, even though I am confident that I will never, ever find an American family that is exactly that size.

Back to influencers. Consensus on a fully quantifiable, replicable and consistent definition of influence and its impact on WOM may be an ideal worth striving for. But we would do well to consider the possibility that some or possibly all aspects of what we call “influence” may be reflective of influencers in aggregate, but rarely observed on an individual level. So, while it may be true that on an aggregate level, an influencer can be defined as any person with greater than average reach or impact within a relevant marketplace, consider the following:

• Joe has average reach and average influence among a small network. However, Joe’s network has extremely high value to my company. Average influence in an extremely high value network is enough to put Joe on my influencer list.
• John has high reach and influence among a very relevant marketplace of gourmet food lovers. In addition, John has mentioned my brand, (a line of gourmet nuts). Unfortunately, John has a nut allergy. Here is the context in which John mentioned my brand: “Nuts follow me wherever I go. A jar of Brandx gourmet nuts fell on my head while I was shopping in the grocery today and it very nearly killed me.” John might be an influencer in the gourmet foods category, but he probably does not belong on my influencer list.

Another inconvenient characteristic of social facts is that they are fluid. They have a shelf-life and a use-by date. The reality is that the definition of an influencer for a particular brand, product, or company probably will (and should) change based on marketing goals:

• If the goal is to stimulate new, incremental sales (i.e., new buyers), WOM created by less loyal customers who are not opinion leaders, and occurring between acquaintances (not friends) may be more effective (see “Firm-Created-Word-of Mouth Communication: Evidence from a Field Test,” Marketing Science, Vol.28, No. 4 by David Godes and Dina Mayzlin, 2009.
• If the goal is increased brand awareness, someone who mentions my brand often and who has high reach among a relevant audience is an influencer. Someone who has high reach among a relevant audience and mentioned my brand only once, more than a year ago (and rarely mentions competitive brands) may not belong on the target list, at least for this campaign.

These considerations oblige me to consider that, even if a given individual may qualify as an influencer in my product category, he or she might not qualify as a target. And, vice-versa. At the very least, the relative value placed on the criteria used to rank a given influencers’ value (reach, influence, relevance, etc.) may vary significantly based on audience and goals for a particular campaign.

My point? Perhaps we all need to take a breath for a moment and turn our attention to technologies and best practices that discover and incorporate the way different groups define and experience influence. On a practical level, we should at least consider the possibility that the tools are rushing to develop must be flexible — allowing marketers to adjust the dials on the criteria for defining and ranking influencers – in order to be truly useful.

Nan Dawkins is the founder and CEO of Serengeti Communications, a Washington, DC based marketing firm specializing in search, social media, web analytics, digital marketing measurement tools and training. Serengeti recently launched a new social media measurement tool, Social Snap, to provide marketers with in-depth insights into the results of social media programs.

Originally posted on 22squared’s blog

By Brandon Murphy, EVP & Chief Strategy Director, 22squared

Advertising is in a tough situation.  Two converging forces are changing the textbooks on how to make great work.

1) There is more clutter than ever.

2) Brands grow through advocacy.

Breaking through the clutter isn’t easy.  In today’s attention economy, it takes extraordinary measures.  Agencies play on very provocative emotions to grab attention and elicit action.  Emotions like pride, guilt, fear, worry and doubt. While these strategies may be successful in breaking through and memorability, they often set the brand up for failure.

For brands to be successful once they have a customer, they have to build trust. They have to earn a relationship that can result in word of mouth…because everyone knows that prospective customers respond best to peer recommendations, not advertising.  So attention and trust often work against each other.  It creates an inescapable self-fulfilling prophecy.

The more successful agencies are, the harder it is for brands to be successful. Crazy, isn’t it?  But, trust building levers like respect, support and authenticity don’t make advertising that breaks through the clutter (typically).

How can advertising break the cycle? Our planning and research tools are designed to produce strategies that lead to attention-getting work.  Work that leverages pride, guilt, fear, worry and doubt.  But, we now have a higher bar.  We have to grab attention AND do work that inspires conversation.  Because social media has magnified the effect of word-of-mouth.  Now, advertising has to spark that word-of-mouth to be successful.  We can’t rely on problem identification, brand archetypes and positioning to be our main strategic tools. We need a new planning tool.  A new way of looking at brand or communications strategy. Evolving advertising starts with evolving strategy.

In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss 8 paths to “talkable work”.  Strategies that brands have successfully leveraged to both grab attention and earn conversation.  It may evolve with more research, but it’s a start.  A start to breaking the cycle, and making advertising more useful.

Read Part 2 - Talkable Work Strategy 1: Make New Rules

About the Author

Over the past 15 years, Brandon Murphy has developed a diverse knowledge of brand strategy. As Chief Strategy Officer at 22squared, he leads all strategy development, including brand, digital, social and engagement.” Please let me know if you need any additional info for his Feb. 15 post on the All Things WOM blog.

Originally posted on PROMO.

By Molly Flatt, Word-of-Mouth Evangelist, 1000heads

Word of mouth is valuable only because of what causes it and because of what it drives. It’s time to move the conversation about conversation away from a focus on ‘buzz’ and toward an investigation of innovative strategies to shift what consumers feel and do, not just how they talk.

Emotion is the root cause of word of mouth. Conversations about brands and products occur when consumers feel something strongly enough to want to share. Many marketers make the mistake of focusing on spreading the conversation—pushing a press release to bloggers, or asking people to retweet a link—rather than stimulating the emotion behind it. Conversation without emotion is meaningless, and of limited value to a brand; the whole reason people turn to their peers is because of that personal engagement, that opinionated slant that makes a recommendation relevant and influential. Neutral or regurgitated word of mouth may boost a brand’s visibility (although even that is questionable considering the deluge of content out there), but it is unlikely to change behaviour.

And that introduces the second valuable aspect of word of mouth: the behaviour that it drives. The conversation may be spreading by word of mouth, but if it isn’t actually influencing people to behave differently toward your brand—whether buying for the first time, buying more, or staying loyal—it’s simply empty talk.

So, word of mouth is simply the potential indicator of two valuable processes: emotional advocacy and behaviour change. This is why conversational success measurements such as level of participation; depth and range of emotion; strength of recommendation; and audience relevance and resonance are in fact much less fuzzy than those that look at reach figures alone. They indicate how the brand has changed the people behind the conversation—and it is this alchemy alone that brings true word-of-mouth return-on-investment.

However, the lack of understanding about the real value of ‘conversation’ threatens to hamstring the social business industry before it has evolved. At the recent Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit, Jeremiah Owyang presented Altimeter’s research on the Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist. This demonstrates that many early adopters of corporate social strategies are now in danger of being relegated to a ‘social media help desk’ role. Having failed to demonstrate the full value of their nascent programs and having met fierce internal resistance, they are becoming short-term, reactive respondents to consumer conversation, a sort of customer service offshoot siloed from the rest of the company.

In his new book, “The Conversation Manager,” brand consultant Steven van Belleghem offers one solution—that modern marketers must retrain as Conversation Managers, versed in the listening, engagement and integrated strategy skills that a social world demands. This is a great idea, but suggests that, first, consumer conversation should be the preserve of marketers, rather than everyone in the business; and second, that it is the conversation, and not the conversers, that count. Word of mouth is the essential mechanism that gives them a way into engagement, and a way to measure whether that engagement has worked, but not the focus in itself.

So instead, I suggest that training in emotional and behavioural triggers becomes part of every job role. We must all become scientists in how to use our given specialism (be it product development or customer care, human resources or public relations) to affect the feelings and actions of our company’s target audience. And this applies cross-industry, whether you work in charity, government, B-to-C or B-to-B, moving your audience is what will bring you both money and mindshare.

Initially, all employees need to start listening to consumer conversation about their brand. They should learn to use ongoing social media monitoring, but also head out to stores, suppliers or the street and listen to how their customers feel and behave, discovering the impact of their own work. Everyone should do a rotation within the customer service team each month; consumer packaged goods companies should have away days to supermarkets; product developers should be closely watching Twitter feeds.

They next need to listen to people who truly change emotion and behaviour for a living; but this must go beyond a lecture with a consumer psychologist and incorporate learnings from some disruptive, inspiring sources. Who better to help you design an immersive consumer experience than a theatre director? Who better to help you transform a complaining customer than a crisis arbitrator? Who better to help you add a bit of magic to your new product than a magician, or to create a case study than a film editor, or to create a technical manual that even a kid could understand than a school teacher?

Yes, there is a need for companies to continue to explore the tactical role of social tools and platforms in disseminating their voice, and a social strategist role is still valid. But to build valuable word of mouth into a business—word of mouth that comes from somewhere and does something—every employee needs to start thinking in terms of emotion and behaviour.

The joy is, we’re all experts in this stuff—we’re human beings, after all—yet we somehow lose these instincts when we walk through the office door. This isn’t about understanding how to get more visits on Foursquare, it’s about understanding how to connect and influence in a seriously primal way.

Otherwise, it’s all so much blah, whether it’s on Facebook or in the park. Words are signifiers of what we feel, and spurs to what we do. We need to treat them as means, not ends.

Originally posted on Brains on Fire’s blog.

By Geno Church

I’m lucky to be the grandson of a storyteller. My grandfather told me a ton of stories growing up; they were a combination of tall tales and family stories. Often the storytelling took place in usual environments - in his garden, or sitting on the hood of his car eating hot dogs on the edge of the Greenville Downtown Airport.

And so it goes… I seek out storytellers for our clients.

I’m captivated by how people use stories to connect, especially when un-prompted. As fate would have it Brains on Fire is now working with the granddaddy of storytelling… Colonial Williamsburg.

John Moore and I had the opportunity to sit down with veteran Colonial Williamsburg costumed interpreter James Ingram (this is what the characters in the living museum are called). James plays the role of Gowan Pamphlet, an 18th century slave that also was a Baptist minister to a congregation of over 500 slaves.

James shared a story with us about a blond headed ten-year old boy from Alabama that came to Colonial Williamsburg with his parents… but he wanted to go to Bush Gardens. That day James was playing a man named Peter who was asking the Colonial Williamsburg guests if he should run for freedom? The young boy got caught up in the story and followed Peter around all day. At the end of the day Peter was caught on the Governor’s Palace grounds and taken to jail. The young boy came up to Peter before he was carried away and asked if he would be here tomorrow? Surprised Peter answered yes, I have no other place to go.

The next day the young boy informed his parents he didn’t want to go to Busch Gardens he wanted to go to Colonial Williamsburg. After visiting the colonial store he arrived at the jail in Colonial Williamsburg wearing a colonial outfit, holding a toy musket and a bag of candy and cookies. He asked the folks at the jail where is Peter? They asked him if they could help him, why did he want to see Peter. He replied I want to take him to freedom.

James sees it everyday… it’s the stories that hook ya. They made history come alive and connect the dots to a ten year old boy from Alabama. We all tell stories about our lives… and on that rare occasion we even tell a story about a product or an organization we’re a part of. These stories connect us to people, place, and product. Yet storytelling escapes so many brands, their stories become old to them, or worse yet they’re afraid their customers might not care. Too often conversation creation about a brand is the focus instead of enabling your employees and your fans to simply share their stories.

David Reis, founder and CEO of social media agency DEI Worldwide

Originally posted in Promo Magazine.

A client recently told me they wanted 500,000 “Fans” on Facebook by the end of the year. When I asked them why, they just looked at me blankly. When I pushed, they just hemmed and hawed—ending up mumbling something like, “it is a good round number.” When I further pushed to ask what they wanted to do with all those fans, and if they were prepared to spend the significant budget to manage a community of that size—”You’re going to have to have lots of conversations with them, you realize.”  They recoiled with alarm—“I thought social media was free!”

While most social media platforms are free to use, establishing a successful social media community takes thoughtful management and daily monitoring. It’s more than a one-time investment or an afterthought to a marketing campaign; instead it should be seen as a living and breathing long-term communication channel.

Unlike traditional forms of media, which tend to send one-way messages, social media enables a two-way dialogue, creating a dynamic brand-to-consumer conversational platform. This invitation to converse creates countless opportunities for brands to listen and gain valuable insight from their customers, that is, if you are prepared to effectively manage the community. In order to provide value and serve as an effective marketing tool, brands must understand and embrace the real-time, authentic and conversational nature of social media and be prepared to invest adequate time and budget.

Of course it’s important to have fans, and the more the merrier, right? This is not always the case—especially when the goal is to build a real community. The question should not be how many people “Like” you on Facebook, but rather how many really like your brand and choose to express it via their social networks. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s often quality over quantity and in social media it’s no exception. Sure, you can pay your way to build a large fan base, but are you simply paying for numbers rather than meaningful connections?

Most likely if you are advertising fancy promotions through multiple media outlets; you will attract a plethora of “gamers” as opposed to true brand loyalists. Although you will accomplish a wide reach and increased numbers in the short-term, this is far less valuable than a smaller but long-term community that was earned through organic word of mouth, highly targeted promotions and incentives, and careful, specific, social ads. Remember, social media is about connecting and engaging with loyal consumers, it’s not meant to be a traditional billboard on a social platform.

If you’re looking to build a truly engaged dynamic community, instead of buying fans through heavy advertising, fancy, overly broad, promotions and reach blocks, a better strategy is to be patient and slowly and carefully grow a targeted and influential fan base. Maintaining small and relevant promotional incentives (e.g. product giveaways or coupons) and valuable content/conversations, you will provide real value to your community of fans. By offering more relevant promotions that appeal to your specific consumer-base and promoting them through word of mouth and highly targeted social ads, you’ll be able to successfully, over time, attract long-term valuable fans and witness far less post-promotion fan attrition.

Your most valuable fans are the ones who, given the slightest encouragement (maybe a product coupon or even just social recognition), will shout from the rooftop (or more likely their personal Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.) about your brand to their established networks of followers. These passionate fans will help to organically spread the word about your brand through their own personal networks, which is the beauty, and true power, of social media.

With careful community management, brands have the ability to foster and enhance organic word of mouth about their products and services through these channels. What good does it do to get a whole slew of fair-weathered fans who are only there for the freebies and will abandon you as soon as they spot a better promotion that comes along. The focus and attention should be shifted to those highly engaged and influential consumers who, with careful nurturing can be changed from brand enthusiasts into brand advocates.

It’s important to listen to what your fans are saying and encourage their engagement. Fans generally “Like” your page because they already enjoy your products/services; don’t try to hard sell to them or push your marketing objectives. Social media should reflect a natural flow of brand/consumer conversation. Instead of pushing branded messages, offer engaging and valuable content that they will want to share with their personal networks. Always monitor for trends or opportunities to address their feedback, complaints and compliments; it’s important to show that you are listening and value what they have to say.

In order to get people excited to talk about your brand you must have a presence and a voice in the space; it’s essential to make these communications two-way. Brands must interact beyond posting updates and static content; fans want to be acknowledged and recognized by the brand and have a genuine exchange of dialogue. Take a look at the percentage of fans actively engaged on your page. If you’re not satisfied, simply take a look at who “Likes” your page and to determine if you are attracting the right audience. By increasing the proportion of engagement posts (conversation starters) you’ll likely witness an increase in interactions among your engaged fans. The more interactions you can encourage leads to higher impressions, which in turn, spreads social currency about your brand.

Brands already in the social space and those who are thinking about it need to look at social media as an independent channel. It’s far more than a traditional marketing platform and if you are only looking at the number of fans, chances are you’re not realizing the real potential of social media communications. Once the value and opportunity are realized, brands will begin to shift their thinking from pure numbers of fans to the more important quality of fans and engagement with their social communities.

Slow and steady should be the mantra of social media. Perhaps if we were to look at traditional advertising—based on the 30-second spot, and immediate gratification, as an attempt to get you out on a date that night, social media should be looked at more as the less dazzling, consistent over time, commitment to a long term relationship and family—perhaps less exciting in the short term, but infinitely more satisfying, and valuable, in the long term.

David Reis is founder and CEO of social media agency, DEI Worldwide.

Chuck McKay is convinced Word of Mouth marketing doesn’t exist. Writing on AllBusiness.com, Chuck believes Word of Mouth is not marketing because it can only happen person-to-person and the message that gets passed around cannot be controlled.

Chuck does believe customer experiences can lead to great to stories and those stories can have tremendous influence when shared from one person to another. However, as Chuck explains, “Word-of-Mouth in any of its forms is always about the experience of the buyer. Only indirectly is the seller involved.”

I totally agree with Chuck that marketers don’t decide what is talkable, people decide.

We do think differently when it comes to defining how marketing can spark conversations.

WOMMA defines Word-of-Mouth Marketing as giving people a reason(s) to talk about products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to happen. The playing field for businesses to give customers reasons to talk is wide open.

Perhaps one of the best, most long-lasting ways to give customers reasons to talk is WOM TRUTH #11:

When I talk with businesses about word of mouth marketing basics, I begin by telling them that a company’s personality will always be its best form of advertising. A case study example I use is Pizza Patron.

Pizza Patron is regional, 81-unit pizza chain based in Dallas, TX. As you now, the pizza business is crowded with lots of options. Pizza Patron separates themselves by catering to a Hispanic customer base. They also have separated themselves from every other pizza place by accepting pesos as payment. Accepting pesos personifies the unique personality of Pizza Patron.

Apple Inc. also follows this WOM TRUTH. Yes, Apple spends millions on traditional advertising. They also spend millions on non-marketing activities like product design, software design, and store design in order to showcase Apple’s unique personality.

Method Home is another example. Method also spends money on traditional advertising but most of their “marketing” efforts are about adding style to the staid product category of cleaning solvents.

Word of Mouth to companies like Pizza Patron, Apple, and Method is less a marketing issue and more a business issue. By focusing on developing and personifying a unique style, these companies strive to do business every day in such a way that encourage people to talk.

So Chuck and I do agree. Word of Mouth is not marketing.

Word of Mouth is about designing a business to showcase its unique personality in ways customers are compelled to tell others about.

That’s the fundamental WOM Truth. Deception is ultimately counterproductive. Dishonest word of mouth marketing will always be exposed and deplored.

Urban Nutrition has learned this lesson the hard way. The New York Times recently reported Urban Nutrition knowingly mislead consumers by failing to disclose it paid bloggers for online reviews and by marketing websites as being from independent voices when they were from undercover company shills.

Tipped by a complaint, the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ERSP) investigated the marketing activities of Urban Nutrition and discovered the deception.

The ERSP has asked Urban Nutrition to prominently disclose bloggers have been financially compensated for their online reviews and to be forthright in disclosing the websites the company owns and operates.

According to a lawyer representing Urban Nutrition, the company is in the process of making all the changes the ERSP is recommending as well as other changes to become more honest in its marketing efforts.

The lesson is simple: Don’t Fake Your Marketing. In today’s Googlized, the truth can be discovered through savvy searching. If you insist on hiding the truth, someone somewhere will find it and expose it.

A paragraph in the WOMMA Ethics Code says it best…

“Deception, infiltration, dishonesty, shilling, and other attempts to manipulate consumers or the conversation are bad. Honest marketers do not do this, will not do this, and will get caught if they try. Sleazy behavior will be exposed by the public and backfire horribly on anyone who attempts it.”