• 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.

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?

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

Building off their immense success of  2010′s Social Media Success Summit – Guy Kawasaki Keynote and 2009′s Gary Vaynerchuck’s Keynote, SocialMediaExaminer.com presents The Facebook Success Summit 2010: The Web’s Largest Online Facebook Marketing Conference, where marketers can discover how to use Facebook to attract and engage quality customers, and quickly grow your business.

Brian is the author of Engage: The Complete Guide to Building, Cultivating and Measuring Success in the Social Web. He is globally recognized as a leading thought leader in new media. Brian is also principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning new media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and web 2.0 startups.

TOPIC: The Case for Facebook and What Your Biz Needs to Know

By this time next year, more businesses will be vested into Facebook than any other social network (yes even more than Twitter). With more than 500 million active users, Facebook has become the world’s largest social gathering spot. In this session, Brian Solis, author of the book Engage! will show you why Facebook is so essential to businesses of all sizes and what you need to do to benefit from the Facebook explosion.

Tonight’s keynote by Solis: “By This Time Next Year…” was engaging on many levels. Here are some of my favorite tweets from the stream during the call, I tried to keep them in chronological order. If you attended I would love to her your thoughts on the presentation.

If you are new to social media marketing, make sure to follow the rest of this conference hashtag here: http://wthashtag.com/FBSS10

The event is a one-day, citywide social media challenge. Contestants will follow clues to check-in points and complete tasks ranging from simple to absurd, all while interacting with each other and friends on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other sites.

I caught up with Scott Hepburn, creator of the event, to get the story:

RM: First things first: Why would anyone want to play in The Panthers Purrsuit?

For starters, we’ve got some sweet prizes. Grand prize is a trip for two – including tickets, airfare and lodging – to see the Panthers take on the Steelers in Pittsburgh. There’s tons of Panthers gear, gift cards, and other cool prizes, too.

The Purrsuit is a one-of-a-kind event, and that’s a draw, too. No other city or NFL team has done anything like this. Scavenger hunts have been done, but nothing on this scale. The challenges are truly interactive, the sponsors are diving in from a social perspective, and contestants will have a chance to use over a dozen social and mobile apps. We’re shooting for a new type of social media experience.

RM: Where’d the idea for the Panthers Purrsuit come from?

Growing up, I was a fan of road rallies. Teams would navigate from point to point and visit historic landmarks, local businesses or locations to “check in” with race officials. The Purrsuit takes that concept and updates it with today’s social media angle. It’s a truly interactive event – a community event.

RM: How did the Panthers and Allen Tate get involved?

I’ve known Mike Mahoney of the Panthers for years via  – yeah, you guessed it – Twitter. Mike and I were catching up over coffee and I told him about this harebrained idea I was considering. He loved it. He asked me to pitch it to the Panthers, and it was a perfect fit.

Allen Tate is a Panthers corporate partner. They loved the idea, too. Their agents are passionate about social media and how they can use it to help home buyers and sellers. The entire organization has gotten involve in The Panthers Purrsuit, and their social media coordinator Genevieve Jooste has been a huge champion of the event.

RM: Any hints about the check-in spots or challenges.

30 LEGO kits. A giant chicken suit. Two superheroes stuck in a car wash. A rap battle. That’s all I’m gonna say.

RM: Seriously?

Chicken suit, Roy. Giant chicken suit.

RM: Okay…where do I sign up?

Register at http://bit.ly/purrsuit. The Panthers Purrsuit is a two-person team competition, so find a partner. The more team spirit, enthusiasm, and rockstar fandom you display, the better. Good luck!