The Social Media is the modern Word of Mouth

“Three hundred years before the news traveled by word of mouth or by letter and was sold in restaurants and cafes in the form of newsletters,” wrote The Economist last month in an insightful article entitled “Back in the cafes’ – on the impact of net news.

Now in the modern era with the internet, the news coincides with the social media and Word Of Mouth, ie how a news travels by word of mouth among users, allowing them to create and produce their own content.

More than half of the entrepreneurs interviewed in the September survey conducted in 1000 SMEs in Greece said they use social media for business purposes, but a majority also said they were not required for their business.

It is true that social media is the modern word of mouth and what surprised me during the research is finding me that, from a small business is indifferent to social media as a tool of marketing, however, they clearly and seek the word of mouth (WOM). So, according to the study, dissemination of the message by word of mouth was considered essential by all operators. At the same time, however, 50% of respondents said that marketing tool they used would not be effective without the Word Of Mouth. Only 4% said the same for social media, even if the goal of social media marketing is the creation of WOM.

I have seen again and again success stories in social media and especially on Facebook, which is used very well for marketing small businesses. Let’s look at three examples to understand why social media is today’s Word Of Mouth.

One school of martial arts use social media to enhance the community, promoting events and competitions. Moreover, trying to attract public and other categories except the usual, targeting women and older people, adding courses specifically tailored to these groups, such as self defense, CrossFit and Yoga. Social media and Facebook in particular have the ability to target precisely and directly the desired market, so the content in a campaign to be distributed easily and effectively in our target audience. How is this done? The answer is more simple than it seems. These instruments have the potential elements which declare in our registration to an account such as gender, age, education, occupation, activity, location, etc., to collect and use them appropriately in an advertising campaign. So for example if you are within these categories you will see the ad above in your profile.

Another example is a diving school, which provides among other things, tourist travel information, event invitations and most exciting of all, photos of students in water education programs. People get excited and like to see themselves in these pictures and in turn share them with friends and acquaintances making diving quickly famous.

Our last example is a school of skydiving, which has become another source of revenue, where the customers actually pay several hundred dollars to have a photographer or videographer who will jump off the plane in front of them and record on their adventure.What do you think is the first thing customers do when they come home and relax? Anartizoun this video on YouTube and Facebook and integrate them into their blogs to show off their fall from 15000 feet to all their friends.

The social media, then, is the Word Of Mouth traveling at a speed that could not even dream in cafes before 300 years. You would say no to something that came to positively change your life?