What do you think of when you consider different methods of energizing the groundswell? While you are trying to construct massive online PR campaigns in your head, maybe we could start a little bit smaller than that. According to the text, word of mouth marketing relies on its ability to be believable, be self-reinforcing, and self-spreading (p130). So as an example, what do you do when you have a great cup of coffee? You might tell someone, right? You might invite a friend out to this new coffee shop, and next time they invite one of their friends to the same place. This goes on and on for a while until one day when you are desperate for a decent cup of coffee and find yourself short on time. You round the corner to your favorite shop and the line is out the door and you have to go someplace else. As the saying goes, word of mouth travels fast.
So, how do you do this exactly?
Today, people can take their word-of-mouth marketing online. You probably won’t have to wait to take your friend to the new coffee shop for them to find out about it. You can probably broadcast it out on Facebook or Twitter and accomplish the same thing, but reach hundreds of people instead. If you take a peek at the Instagram post below, you can see the the user’s photo was ‘liked’ over 80 times. That is a lot of attention for just one cup of coffee.
Since we are talking about coffee, I’m going to tell you all about how much I love Brew on the Gridlocated on Franklin Street in Worcester. I despise Dunkin Donuts, and am always looking for a great cup of coffee with a bit of atmosphere. I don’t find myself downtown very often, but after having heard people buzzing online about this new coffee shop, I knew I had to try it.
Something like a new coffeeshop is a great thing to try to energize. Brand enthusiasts within the community have a simple motivation to spread the word – they NEED you to stay open so that they can continue to enjoy your product. Is it self-serving? Entirely, but that is okay. People inherently do things with themselves in mind because they want to be noticed. This form of online marketing allows the original poster to draw in the groundswell for any number of personal reasons, but ultimately it serves as an important tool for the business – it fosters an atmosphere in which businesses can hear what people are saying about them.
Today, it is assumed that if you have a service to provide, you will set up the necessary social media
sites for your enthusiasts to congregate on. But what about the sites that you don’t sign up for voluntarily? Sites like Yelp prove to be helpful because it allows both the stakeholders and the business owners to communicate their views and learn from the experiences of others. However, which Yelp, you relinquish all control over what people out in the world are posting about your product. But why are they there? They’ve probably been energized and energizing your customer base gives you, the business owner, more opportunities to listen to the groundswell, to talk to the groundswell, and then energize these people again from the valuable information you have already gathered. This is a cyclical process that, if executed properly should yield results over time. Ultimately, if all of the cogs (businesses, products, & consumers) in this machine work fluidly, nearly everyone involved wins.
What I appreciate the most about this type of word-of-mouth marketing, is that it has held up against the test of time all the way from Oral traditions to Web 2.0. And while websites and reviews online may come and go, people will always desire the ways in which they can connect to each other in any way possible and when the internet isn’t there for you, a cup of coffee will be.