Social Networking – Changing the game of word-of-mouth

The Holy Grail for any brand is to attain positive word-of-mouth buzz from its constituents. Through all of my schooling and experience as a marketer, word-of-mouth has been deemed the pinnacle of any marketing strategy.

In the years before the Internet, word-of-mouth was a difficult marketing ploy to initiate and manage. However, today, digital social networking has absolutely made the integration of a word-of-mouth strategy attainable. With the advent of such Internet sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, and the incorporation of comment bulletin boards and product rankings tools in virtually every e-commerce site, integrating social networking into your marketing plan has never been easier…and it’s actually become a critical means to accomplishing your marketing objectives.

Barack Obama showed the world how powerful social networking is to creating a movement. By the end of his campaign, Obama had almost 3-million Facebook “friends”. He put millions of dollars into online advertising, and he raised millions online at $10 or $20 at a time…all through social networking and online platforms. Now, we look to this new way of campaigning to transcend to a new way of governing, where Obama will continue to leverage – and grow – his vast network to gain public opinion around his initiatives.

As I strategize around my clients’ own challenges, I am constantly looking at how social networking can help achieve the goals of game changers. A LinkedIn group around your point-of-view is an excellent way to pull people into the conversation, and deliver your message. Creating a blog and commenting on blogs are ideal ways to make a presence, and showcase your credibility. Allowing site visitors to comment or rank your products and services provides you with valuable feedback, and a customer lead you can follow-up with later. Your goal is to create a following for your brand…a movement of people that will advocate for you, talk about you, pull others into the conversation for you, and ideally purchase from you.

There is no stronger vehicle than social networking – word-of-mouth. If you haven’t considered how it works into your marketing plans, then you’re missing a huge opportunity to deliver your message and create a passionate following.

Jon Milenthal is vice president of The Milenthal Group – a strategic marketing firm focused on helping "game changers" transition from ideation to commercialization, or from public unawareness to mass movement by helping develop their missions, create brands, establish persuasive selling propositions and find a powerful voice in today's new ideology and new economy.
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