• Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) – Any business action that earns a customer recommendation through building preference and delivering experiences.
• Speak it – One of the most important aspects of WOMM is paying it forward through recommendations made both offline and online.
  • In America Everyday: 3.3 billion brand mentions in 2.4 billion brand-related conversations
  • 9 in 10 word of mouth conversations about brands occur offline.
  • The typical American mentions specific brand names 60 times per week in online and offline conversations.
• Like it – When individuals talk about a given product or service the majority of the conversations are positive. Odds are, if someone’s talking, it’s a good thing.
  • 66% of all brand-related word of mouth conversations are “Mostly Positive”
  • 8% of brand-related word of mouth conversations are “Mostly Negative”
  • The average online review is 4.3 stars out of 5.
• Hear it – Consumers are always interested in hearing about new and interesting products. Before making a purchase, consumers pay attention to what people are saying about it.
• Driving Forces of Purchase Decisions:
  • 54% Word of Mouth
  • 47% Information from a website
  • 42% Email sent by a friend
  • 31% Online review
• The Most Influential Element Driving Purchase Decisions Today is Word of Mouth

 

• Offline Credibility – 59% of Americans believe offline (face-to-face or voice-to-voice) word of mouth to be highly credible.
• Online Credibility – 49% of Americans believe online word of mouth is highly credible.
• Service Profitability - 55% of consumers recommend a company because of its customer service.
• Experience Profitability – 27% of consumers would pay 15% or more to receive a superior customer experience.

Word of Mouth Marketing is as important as ever in both physical and digital channels. Despite advancements in technology, traditional band interactions and conversations continue to be a significant factor in influencing consumers.

Weber Shandwick partnered with Forbes Insights to survey nearly 1,900 senior marketing/communications executives with digital responsibility in 50 countries worldwide to identify what makes brands social — and how.

Why brand sociability matters?

• Global brand executives attribute 52% of their brand’s reputation to how social it is today. They project it to be 65% in three years
• Global brand executives think the rewards of social media outweigh the risks by more than a 2-to-1 margin.
• One-third say quality of online presence or engagement is a prime driver of corporate reputation.
• A large majority of global executives believe their brand’s sociability is not yet “world class.”

9 Drivers of World Class Brand Sociability

1. It’s not the medium — and it’s more than the message. World class brands are much more likely than the average brand to create original content. 45% of them create content specifically for social media purposes, compared to 28% of all global companies. World class brands depend upon much more than just the medium to make themselves social.
2. Put your brands in motion. World class companies do more than experiment with social media tools. They apply their tools in more social ways than the average global company. For example, they are 44% more likely to offer brand-related mobile content, 43% more likely to participate in “check-in” apps, 41% more likely to do proximity marketing and 40% more likely to have their own branded YouTube channel.
3. Integrate or die. World class organizations are much better integrators of brand personality — they are nearly twice as likely as other organizations to have a consistent brand personality across all social and traditional media channels and are much more likely to include a social media element to their traditional print or broadcast messaging.
4. Make social central. 61% of world class brands have a dedicated social media strategist or manager, vs. 41% of all global brands. “The most important thing we can do is to centrally plan social media activities across all channels to amplify key messages.” — Global Executive.
5. Listen more than you talk. World class companies fine-tune their messages to customers and integrate what is on their fans’ minds into their brand stories. Nearly twice as many world class brands have changed a product or service based on fan recommendations compared to the average global brand.
6. Count what matters — meaningful engagement. World class brands place more weight than other brands on their number of contributors when measuring social media effectiveness. Social contributors are ranked #1 by world class companies but #6 by other companies as a key metric.
7. Think global. Executives managing world class brands consider global reach as important as customer service as a driver of corporate reputation while the average global executive ranks global reach last. “Our social branding goals involve a very firm commitment to increase the recognition of the company’s globalization.”— Global Executive.
8. Go outside to get inside. World class companies are nearly twice as likely as average global companies to engage outside support to enhance and measure their brand’s social performance.
9. Be vigilant. To protect their social brand integrity, world class brands are always on high alert. Compared to the average global company, they are 85% more vigilant since Wikileaks has been in the news and are 58% more likely to be concerned about privacy violations.

His global responsibility is to implement public and large enterprise marketing strategies for Dell.com, social media, communities, and Dell’s Premier portal, discussed seven of the main tenets (philosophies, goals, attributes) of Dell’s social media approach:

1. Start with your goals and strategies overall.
2. Develop a content strategy to support your goals.
3. Identify and listen to existing conversations.
4. Empower and encourage your internal organizations to participate.
5. Create and cultivate conversations and communities where your customers and employees are.
6. Incent participants to create, and share great content.
7. Measure your success and adjust your strategy.

Much of Rishi’s insight is universal and of course can be applied to any social media marketing effort. If you want to hear more from Rishi you can follow him on Twitter @rishiatdell.

Who Uses the Social Web?

- Most online interaction takes place on the social web (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) Here’s the age distribution across the social web:

0 – 17 : 15%
18 – 24 : 9%
25 – 34 : 18%
35 – 44 : 25%
45 – 54 : 19%
55 – 64 : 10%
65+ : 3%

Millennials: The Future of the Internet:

- Millennials, born between 1978 and 1994 (currently ages 16 – 32), were the first generation to be “raised” on the Internet and represent a substantial portion of Internet users. The millennial age cohort is expected to be as large, if not larger than the baby boomer generation.

How are Millennials Using the Internet?

75% – Created a social networking profile
62% – Used wireless Internet away from home
20% – Posted video online of themselves
14% – Use Twitter

23 Minutes – The average time millennials spend online each day.
59% of millennials get their news online.

Average Age of Social Network Users

• The Average Social Network User is 37 Years old.
• The Average LinkedIn User is 44 Years old.
• The Average Twitter User is 39 Years old.
• The Average Facebook User is 38 Years old.
• The Average Bebo User is 28 Years old.

Facebook User Breakdown by Age:

13 – 17 : 11%
18 – 25 : 29%
26 – 34 : 23%
35 – 44 : 18%
45 – 54 : 12%
55+ : 7%

Age-Based Behavior on Facebook:

• Teens has twice as many friends than users aged 30-40.
• Teens make almost 3x as many wall posts as users aged 30-40.
• Users in their early 20′s list the most activities in their profile of any group.
• Younger people express more negative emotions, and swear more than older users. They use more personal pronouns and possessives (“I”, “My” etc.) and talk more about school.
• Older people write longer updates, use more prepositions and articles, and talk more about other people, including their families.
• Users aged 27 and 28 have the most uploaded photos, with an average of 510.
• Users in their 40′s upload about as many photos as those in their 20′s, but are tagged in photos 281% less.

Twitter User Breakdown by Age:

13 – 17 : 4%
18 – 25 : 13%
26 – 34 : 30%
35 – 44 : 27%
45 – 54 : 17%
55+ : 9%

Age-Based Behavior on Twitter:

• 85% of users 18 – 24 follow friends.
• More users aged 18 – 24 follow celebrities (54%) than follow family members (29%).
• Teens don’t user Twitter as much as adults because the service is more about connecting to contacts and brands than interacting with friends.
• Since more adults already use Twitter, more adults are inclined to try it out, so it remains primarily an adult network.

Close the sale with calls to action

Google Adwords Small Business Center states that “ads work better when you tell the reader what they can expect to do (or what you want them to do) when they reach your site. Phrases like “Buy Now,” “Save More,” “Sign Up Today,” or “Learn More” are called “call to action” terms, because they tell the reader plainly what you want them to do next.”

Rich media ads have been around for several years, and have provided a powerful canvas for creative expression, driving greater interaction and response. Until now, rich media ads were small portion of total display ad impressions, but last year they grew by 66%. And now, HTML5 ads bring the same interactivity to people who browse the web from mobile devices such as iOS and Android devices. By 2015, we expect that 50% of all display ads will be rich media ads.

The answer is dynamic advertising.

A dynamic ad is a single ad that runs everywhere but each impression is customized to the viewer. It displays the best combination of visuals for each viewer, including the best headline, copy, images, featured products, shopping locales to buy from, and more. Our data show, dynamic ads get twice the clicks and triple the ROI.

Imagine you own a popular coffee chain in Denver that you want to promote. On Monday afternoon, it’s warm and 80 degrees in the city. You run a display ad campaign online that offers Denverites a discount coupon for an iced cold latte, with a searchable map embedded in the ad to show local branches, and a real-time feed from people who have tweeted publicly about your newest flavor. That evening, a cold front rolls over the Rockies. Your ad automatically and dynamically adjusts to present a photo of a hot, steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of a warm fireplace, together with a home delivery number and an offer for free marshmallows.

Display advertising really is at the heart of what we’re doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network and YouTube. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent. Over 66% of ads on the Ad Exchange are now bought in real-time. On the mobile front, AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day, having quadrupled over the last 12 months. As you know by now, we’re investing significantly to make this better for users, advertisers and publishers

These innovations are happening in 2 major areas:

1. Media solutions: websites, videos or mobile, no matter where your consumers are, you can build a comprehensive plan to reach them with Google.

2. Platform solutions: Agencies and enterprise class buyers can build a comprehensive display ads operation with our exchange, demand side platform and ad serving solutions.

Once you click through to Google’s landing page on creating more engaging dynamic ads, the stats from Dynamic logic prove it’s place in advertising budgets for a long time to come. With the largest global network on the planet, Google reaches 80 percent of Internet users worldwide. Google claims that, “there’s a perfect ad for everyone.” I’m interested in hearing your comments on how you currently are or plan to leverage Google’s display advertising offerings to target and optimize your marketing message.

Addressing the problem of when someone is searching for a message from a friend, a link to a video, blog post, or a digital invitation to a party, Greplin can find that content whether it is in their Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter account.

As TechCrunch points out: There are some really nice touches to the product. Search results are shown before you hit enter, much like Google’s instant search product, and you can also filter by a variety of message types and sources (by people, for example, or Facebook).

• Gmail (not gTalk Chats)
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Facebook (your profile, events, notes, messages, friends, news feed and wall posts)
• Twitter (your tweets, timeline and direct messages)
• Dropbox (titles and filenames only)
• LinkedIn (your status updates, contacts)
• Evernote*
• Google Apps Mail*
• Google Apps Calendar*
• Google Apps Docs*
• Yammer*

With Google recently releasing Social Search, Search Engine Journal points out that:

Google has thrown its hat into the social networks ring. With social networks growing and expanding wildly, Google has decided to get its share of the action. It all started with the launch of Google’s Social Search as a beta for English speaking users. Social Search was previously in the Google Labs section. It displays its results at the bottom of the search window, and searches based on your list of contacts in Google, for relevant information to the topic you are currently researching.

It then posts whatever photos, posts, blogs or links the people in your social network have posted on your topic. An added feature allows your friends photos that relate to your topic to be published.

In a major update, Google has almost completely overhauled the Social Search network. The company has added Twitter, Flickr, and Quora to its servers, integrating all the information available on all those websites into one place. Now Social Search results will appear anywhere in the listing according to search relevance. Annotations will let you know when someone from your social circle has posted any kind of information relevant to your search, and on which website it was posted.

Mashable weighs in on Google’s Social Search by adding:

The first major change is that Google Social Search results will no longer appear only at the bottom of the page, but will instead be “blended” throughout the page. This is done through an annotation system that lets you know when a friend has shared a specific link or search result. If your friend writes a blog about how to create honey, that result will have an annotation that your friend has “shared this,” either via Google or through one of Google’s three major social integrations.

If you want to give Greplin a try I have 5 invites to give to the first five people who leave a comment.

What does it all mean? I leave that open to you for interpretation. As we go further into 2011, it will be interesting to see if Facebook continues it’s slow dominance of all social network traffic.

As an internet marketing consultant I find it more and more difficult to disconnect from the constantly connected lifestyle I have chosen. Soren Gordhamer the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference brings up an important question to ask yourself: Are you going to be constantly overwhelmed by “Stress 2.0,” or can you successfully translate this lifestyle into “Wisdom 2.0?”

The challenge is finding a balance, and living a healthy and rich life both online and off.

A post this morning by Mitch Joel points out that: Life balance is a three-legged stool.

Just like a stool, if you remove one of the legs or when one is shorter than another, everything comes crashing down. Figure out ways to find true balance without sacrificing where you’re at, where you’re looking to go and your plans to get there. Make sure that your goals (short-term and long-term) include tactics around personal, business and community.

Make rules.

If you don’t have rules about your life balance, all is (and will be) lost. Don’t have guidelines. Make rules… and don’t break them. Here are just some of my life balance rules (in no particular order):

1. Family first. Period. No exceptions. Friends next. Everything else after that.
2. Go to bed when I’m tired.
3. Wake up without an alarm.
4. Don’t stress over sleep. My body will sleep when it needs to.
5. Constantly be reading.
6. Creativity and great ideas do not keep office hours. Write as much as possible – especially when the mood hits.
7. I manage my technology. I do not let technology manage me. An example of this? I check email when I want to – not when it comes in. I turn off all email notifications (both online and mobile).
8. Don’t focus on the money. Focus on building wealth and what I’ll do to change the world once I get there (or along the way).
9. Never eat alone.

My rules look more like this:

• Take time to disconnect
• Breathe
• Eat healthy when you can
• Exercise

My Conclusion:

• Focus more on these Social Networking Time Management Tips and
• Learn to surf – “You cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

What are your tips for dealing with the stresses of social media and being constantly connected?

Google – the multinational Internet search technologies corporation, hosts and develops numerous Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising has responded to the EU’s antitrust investigation.

In short, Google says it focuses on users, not websites. So whatever is best for the user is what it does.

Here’s Google’s full blog post on the EU investigation, written by top search execs Udi Manber and Susan Wojcicki:

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first by providing the best possible answers as quickly as possible – and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. However, given our success and the disruptive nature of our business, it’s entirely understandable that we’ve caused unease among other companies and caught the attention of regulators. Today, the European Commission has announced that they will continue to review complaints about Google’s search and search advertising. We respect their process and will continue to work closely with the Commission to answer their questions.

So that everyone understands how we approach search and ads ranking, we thought it would be helpful to state clearly the principles that guide our business:

• Answering users’ queries accurately and quickly is our number one goal. Sometimes the best, most relevant answer to a query is our traditional “ten blue links”, and sometimes it is a news article, sports score, stock quote, video, or a map. Today, when you type in “weather in London” or “15 grams in ounces” you get the answers directly (often before you even hit Enter). In the future, we will need to answer much more complex questions just as fast and as clearly. We believe ads are information too, which is why we work so hard to ensure that the advertisements you see are directly relevant to what you are looking for;

• We built Google for users, not websites. It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this — not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings. The most important thing is that we satisfy our users.

• We are always clear when we have been paid for promoting a product or service. Before we launched Google, many search engines took money for inclusion in their results without making that clear to users. We have never done that and we always distinguished advertising content from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and types of content, we promise to continue to be transparent about payments.

• We aim to be as transparent as possible. We provide more information about how our ranking works than any other major search engine, through our webmaster central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube channel. We give our advertisers information about the ad auction, tips on how to improve their ad quality scores, and the ability to simulate their bids to give them more transparency. And we’re committed to increasing that transparency going forward. At the same time, we don’t want to help people game our system. We do everything we can to ensure that the integrity of our results isn’t compromised.

Our final principle: the only constant is change. We’ve been working on this stuff for well over a decade, and in that time our search technology has improved by leaps and bounds. Our results are continuing to evolve from a list of websites to something far more dynamic. Today there’s real-time content, automatically translated content, local content (especially important for mobile devices), images, videos, books, and a whole lot more. Users can search by voice — and in a variety of languages. And we’ve developed new ad formats such as product listing ads and new pricing models such as cost-per-action. We cannot predict where search and online advertising will be headed, but we know for sure that they won’t stay the same. By staying focused on innovation we can continue to make search even better — for the benefit of users everywhere.

If you look at what the Top 10 Social Networking Websites at this time last year were, you’ll notice Myspace still having a 20% share of the marketplace. A year later they are scrapping for traffic and survival in the social media space.

Top 10 Social Networking Websites – 2009

Top 10 Social Networking Websites – 2010