Word-of-mouth & viral marketing

Social media marketing mistake #3: social media marketing is about the short term

Often advertisers use social media as part of an integrated marketing campaign whereby Twitter, Facebook and other social media are merely a way of spreading a story. There is nothing wrong with that.


These days nearly every online and integrated marketing campaign has a viral component. If the campaign, more specifically the ‘story’ that it tells, is worth sharing, people will share it automatically. That is the very core of word of mouth marketing.


However, if you plan to make social media marketing a part of your overall communication strategy to be where your customers are, social media are about long term relationships and an ongoing commitment.

Some benefits of word of mouth marketing

Word of mouth plays an increasing role in the marketing strategy of many companies and ranks high in the priority lists of modern marketers.

Although word of mouth is still predominantly an offline matter, the growing role of online media, the network economy, the increased focus on the customer and the explosion of communication channels all have an influence on the rise of word of mouth marketing (WOM).

Remembering that word of mouth is primarily something that simply ‘happens’, we know that today word of mouth marketing campaigns can be created, seeded, steered, monitored etc.

And since so many surveys have shown that word of mouth campaigns have a very good ROI it’s obvious that it’s such a hot topic.

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