PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

If you’ve wondered why that old pyramid hierarchy slide continues to appear long after it’s been supplanted in many companies’ operations, CNET Business has just released some great research on word of mouth marketing and how everyone plays some influential role in spreading a word. As conversations with a number of CXOs over the last months have shown me, word of mouth remains the headiest elixir in marketing: it can’t be bought, it can’t be forced, but it moves people to act like nothing else. Everyone wants it, especially as social media channels proliferate, but it’s getting harder and harder to pin down.

As CNET Business notes in its new white paper, Understanding Influence, and Making It Work For You, several myths about word of mouth deserve to be called out:

“Myth #1: The Few Inform the Many
While the size of personal networks varies widely, with some individuals having 10 or fewer connections and some having more than 100, each person wields some influence. Viewing the model as a pyramid discounts the much larger number of moderately connected individuals who can help spread the work about your product or service.

Myth #2: They Share Because They Know More
Influencers aren’t driven to share information for the sake of appearing knowledgeable or to demonstrate their expertise. They’re primarily motivated by a basic desire to help others. They develop a stronger sense of self-confidence when it’s well-received, further motivating them to help and advise others.

Myth #3: A Single-Minded Focus
Influencers aren’t necessarily single-subject experts. Our research shows that influencers have diverse interests crossing a wide range of topics. On average, they are interested in 10 to 12 topics and they actively seek information on these topics. This is true whether they have large or small networks. There are two critical attributes for information to be valued by the influencer, no matter what topic they’re investigating: it must be both unique and trusted.

How to take advantage of word of mouth? Make your word of mouth fodder forwardable, place it in unique and trusted environments, and share your message with moderately connected users, not just the top of the pyramid (make that diamond) types.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Marketing, Measurement, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.