But You Already Knew That!

My son is an introvert. He thinks long before he talks and rarely wastes words. He’s not one to volunteer extraneous information. Ask a question and you’ll get exactly the answer it takes to fulfill your request. Some days that makes conversation a bit of a challenge. A digital native by age, birth, and technological era, he would never be a social media maven. It’s just not his personality or his inclination.

However, if you get him talking about something he believes in, he’ll tell you exactly why and how you should be participating. Then he’ll tell the person sitting next to you, if he thinks that person might listen. If he knows how to do something faster, make something easier, or has an insight into something more meaningful, he’ll share it because it feels good to do so.

That’s the definition of a word-of-mouth natural. It’s not promoting. It’s sharing what we care about with the people we care about.

World of Mouth and Social Media Aren’t the Same Thing

Recently, Andy Sernovitz and I were talking via email about his new SuperGenius Word of Mouth Conference on December 16th in Chicago. He made some great points worth sharing about the difference between social media and word-of-mouth marketing.

Social media is an incredible tool. But social media is not word of mouth marketing. It’s a tool we can use for the online portion of word of mouth. But it’s not even the main tool there. I would argue that more recommendations go by plain old-fashioned email than all the social networks combined.

On top of that, offline word of mouth is so much bigger than online word of mouth. A tweet still doesn’t beat a personal recommendation from a close friend.

So why are we talking about social media so much?

1. Because real word of mouth is hard. It requires big ideas, long-term commitment, and an honest dedication by a company to earn the respect and recommendation of its customers. You can’t just call your agency and order up some WOM.

2. Because social media gives us an action step. It’s fairly straightforward to do a campaign on Facebook or Twitter. You can call your agency and order up a social media campaign. And your agency, who is totally freaked out by this WOM stuff, can deliver a pretty good campaign. Then you can show the results to your happy boss. Everyone feels good and gets paid.

Except… we completely miss the point.

The point of word of mouth isn’t ecommerce; it isn’t to count clicks and CPAs.

The point of word of mouth is to be a brand worth talking about. To be a company that people are proud to tell their friends about. It’s to replace paid marketing with personal connections. To replace cash with love. To be fantastic.

And that’s what this conference is all about: A revival of TRUE WOM. A home for the simple idea that HAPPY CUSTOMERS ARE YOUR BEST ADVERTISERS.

True WOM is a movement.

Andy didn’t ask me to share what he said, but I agree with every point he made here and I wanted to pass it on.
He offered me a discount seat at the conference and he offered a scholarship code for my readers.

Learn How to Be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing An incredible word of mouth marketing conference. Learn to get more people talking about you the very next day. 12 How-To Classes, 12 Case Studies, 6 Authors Word of Mouth Supergenius! Chicago, December 16

Register here: http://gaspedal.com/supergenius Use the code VIPSUCCESSFULBLOG for a discount of $144.

Andy wrote the book on Word of Mouth Marketing. No, I’m not an affiliate. I think it’s important that we know everything we can about getting folks to talk about the good things we have going on.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of