On the blog Social Media Explorer, guest blogger Jeremy Epstein recently made the assertion that cultivating one raving fan of your company was worth cultivating 445 people. What I’d like to talk about today is word-of-mouth marketing and how it can be applied to social media marketing concepts.
I recently heard ona podcast from the Duke Marketing Conference’s closing keynote address about Proctor and Gamble’s word-of-mouth marketing programs called Tremors and Vocal Point. Tremors and Vocal Point utilize what are called connectors and enthusiasts in our society. Connectors are people with many friends and certain other qualities that make them ideal for spreading the word. Enthusiasts ar epeople with a deep knowledge of a narrow field. The idea is that if you give products to connectors and enthusiasts together, and give them the power to either affirm or deny the product’s positive qualities, that you can create huge results in sales. The speaker at the Keynote Address said that P & G used Tremors for a certain television program they were promoting, and tripled the television program’s ratings.
Now, how does social media fit into this equation? I don’t think it’s just having a fan page that matters, but especially in the nascent stages it matters who you get to sign up for that fan page. I recently became a fan of the Green Bay Packers on Facebook simply because I had an influential friend who already belonged to that page. Likewise, if you can identify the connectors in your industry and get them to buzz about your product on Facebook and Twitter, you will see huge results. But as I said above, it’s identifying those connectors, and those raving fans with special knowledge of your industry (enthusiasts), and cultivating them. And it will lead you to the other 445 people who you’ve been trying to mass cultivate all this time.