Ink Foundry - Social Media Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing

This is an extraordinary time in our history. We are in an environment where social media is ubiquitous: it is in nearly every global household spanning young, old, rich and poor. This bloodless revolution has changed the way we read the news, get our mail, talk to our friends, network, decide our dining preferences, and purchase everything from toilet paper to rare automobiles. We do it all online. And it happens in milliseconds.

As of a week ago, there were 60 million worldwide bloggers talking about everything including wigs, wine, wedding bling and grandma’s recipes. According to Technorati, nearly one hundred thousand new blogs are created each day. Consumer generated media is so powerful it helped elect the most unlikely of candidates, President Barack Obama, against absolutely impossible odds.

On the flip side, traditional media as you know it is taking its last gasping breaths. As you may be aware, the Seattle Post Intelligencer has ceased publication and two-thirds of respondents to a recent Nielson survey didn’t care. It was the city’s oldest and most influential news source and it had become obsolete to advertisers and consumers.

The reporters we’ve relied on for decades are going the way of the dinosaurs by virtue of reduced space for editorial, daily layoffs, and the rise of the proletariat blogger. Soon, reporters will no longer roam the hallowed halls of some of America’s greatest news sources but be relegated to fighting for their digital voice among the masses.

The ascendency of the blogger and the ubiquity of social media have transformed the practice of media relations and the very definition of influencer.

About four years ago when we were opening a glitzy Hollywood celebrity-filled restaurant, the Los Angeles Times gave the Italian restaurant a much deserved glowing review. The client’s hopes were very high that the article would fill the restaurant with happy patrons. To everyone’s surprise, the phones were nearly silent. “Odd,” we thought. “It must have been a fluke.” The week after the feature print story ran, we launched the restaurant’s on- and offline word of mouth campaign including outreach to some of our friends who were running restaurant review blogs and an email campaign to Ink Foundry’s exclusive foodie database. By noon on the day that both the email announcement was distributed and a positive review ran in a blog, the not-insignificantly-sized restaurant filled its reservation quota for the entire week.

Oprah talks about the “a-ha moment” and this was it for us. We realized without a doubt that traditional media had lost it standing as the preeminent influencer and that social media was changing the way we do business. We learned from that and subsequent experience with everything from luxury automobiles, organic clothing, travel, and live entertainment that the return on investment for social media marketing far surpassed its traditional media cousins.

Is traditional media totally dead? Don’t count them out just yet. Who doesn’t want to see their brand in the New York Times? I know I still do and our clients feel the same way. But if you are relying on traditional media to move the needle for your brand, or recommending a traditional media-only strategy for your clients, you are clinging to an unreliable and risky proposition.

• Posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009
• 1 comments