Word of Mouth

In order to stay up to date with the groundswell you need to continue to monitor social media as it evolves. Following the groundswell begins with listening and as the excitement increases it moves to talking and then to energizing. These categories for following the groundswell also are similar to how people interact personally. The “social techonolographics profile” describes users as in-actives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, or creators. They are each representative of “a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous” and you progress from one to the next as you become more involved (43).

As organizations move towards energizing their consumers in social media rather than listening or talking to them, the power to reach more customers increases drastically. Word of mouth has always been an important tool for marketing and now with the help of social media every individual can talk to a lot more people than they used to. Because with social media everyone can be a publisher and everyone can get their opinions out into the open, opinions are much further reaching; credibility is also more difficult to gage when looking at a website rather than having a personal interaction with someone. Even though word of mouth can be increased with the Internet and social media, the process itself remains believable, self-reinforcing, and self-spreading. As Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write in Groundswell, “Individually, no consumer can achieve the reach of mass media. But word of mouth is a powerful amplifier of brand marketing, achieving results no media campaign can achieve” (130).

Like always in the groundswell it is important to know what people are saying before getting into it. While it may seem great to energize your customers it needs to be positive energy and positive buzz going on about your company. Positive endorsement is free trusted advertising while going viral in a negative way can set you back because of those reasons.