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August 2, 2005Word of Mouth Marketing & Blogging
Inspired somewhat by several posts on word of mouth marketing (brand autopsy), and in preparation for my presentation at the blog summit in August I read a great article on brandchannel today.
Randell Frost’s article on brandchannel talks about the power of word of mouth marketing and targeting the influential within your customer community. With only 7% of Internet users authoring blogs at the end of 2004, there is still some discussion about the relevance of blogs to companies. Randell wrote in this article that, “in The Influentials (The Free Press, 2003), RoperASW pollsters Ed Keller and Jon Berry argue that consumers today place more weight on the word-of-mouth insights of their more influential neighbors than on what they hear on TV or read in the newspaper. Just who are these opinion leaders? Is it possible to target them in a marketing campaign?�
According to Randell Keller and Berry’s research indicates “opinion leaders constitute roughly one in ten Americans,� now I am not saying that the 7% of Internet users who are blogging are all influential, but bloggers do exhibit some of the characteristics of the influential, getting involved in their community and complaining about products and ideas. If maybe that few people will actually blog in our society, I think we discovered this when we counted the actual number of Microsoft blogger posts written by many bloggers at Microsoft but many more people are reading blogs 27% in end of 2004 or contributed community content on line 44% in 2004. Blogging gives companies the ability to become an influential voice in their community or influence the influential.
Posted by johncass at August 2, 2005 2:09 PM
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