A popular way of constructing social media / Word of Mouth marketing campaigns is to first seek out and recruit consumers with large social networks. The implicit assumption seems to be that someone with 500 Facebook friends will spread your marketing message more effectively than someone with 100.

Here we are in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year, so I thought I would jot down the things that I found amusing, noteworthy or just plain strange about the business we are in for the past year. A personal list and personal opinions...
 

If you are interested in generating more sales through word of mouth programs, there is a research paper that is a MUST read.

"Firm Generated Word-of-Mouth Communication: Evidence from a Field Test" by David Godes and Dina Mayzlin. Marketing Science, 2009, Vol. 28, No. 4. 19 pages.

I found this paper when I was referred to a peer review on the Web Analytics Association website, written by Jim Novo, who also blogged about this fascinating piece.

I sometimes wonder why you would want to work anywhere else in marketing other than social media. It's new, it's exciting, it is online so you have lots of quick data and it's growing in rigour. And as the effectiveness of other channels declines, social media is attracting the attention of sharp research brains. Good stuff!

When we first started managing online communities for our clients we were often confronted with the question; "But how many customers will want to come online and have a conversation about _____ (insert your category here)?" mmmmm.... 'There must be some, you have customers right?"

[caption id="attachment_603" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Mr Natural: the original Key Opinion Leader (KOL)"][/caption]

The debate about the effectiveness of marketing through opinion leaders is an important one for us.

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

- Oscar Wilde

Are there "bad" customers to target when you attempt marketing with & through virtual communities? Are there "good"?

I am sure most of you have read “The Tipping Point” or “The Influentials” where the authors Keller&Berry claim ‘…one American in 10 tells the other 9 how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy’. They both claim that a small percentage of people (10% typically) trigger trends.