“There is only one thing worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about.” (Oscar Wilde)
Although he was not specifically talking about marketing, the great Oscar Wilde’s words have absolute relevance to the discipline none-the-less. The key to great marketing campaigns in the modern digital world is talk-ability or, as Seth Godin calls it, making campaigns “remark-able”. And when a marketing campaign is remarkable, people talk about it, they share their experience with their friends, and with a reach like never seen before. Previous research suggested that consumers usually share brand experiences with 9 or 10 people or, in extreme cases, perhaps even with up to 30 people (Walker, 1995). However, although this research is not that old, it it is completely out of date and not in touch with the greatly changed world that has rapidly evolved in that time.
Now, individual consumer reach is far greater. Since October 2012, Facebook has over 1 billion active users. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. If they share a brand experience with these friends, and if they in turn decide to pass it on further, the reach of word-of-mouth could now be measured in the hundreds, thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands.
In recognition of this, many marketers have plunged into the social media world in an attempt to get their ideas to spread faster. Many closely monitor what is being said on their own platforms and as a result they gather useful insights. However, apart from monitoring what people are saying on your own social media platforms, it is becoming increasingly important to monitor what is being said in the social-media-sphere. Reach is not the only thing that needs to be measured; conversation content and its influence is of the most importance.
Many smart marketers are not just diving into creating social media content, but they are using social media monitoring tools like the sophisticated dashboards provided by the likes of Hub Spot and Radian 6, or the less sophisticated free versions like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite (who also offer a paid version), or Technorati (for monitoring blogs), to monitor what is being said about their brands and organisations by those who matter most - consumers. And they are talking - a lot. With regard to Facebook alone, 510,000 comments are posted every 60 seconds and more than 2 billion posts are liked or commented on daily, according to Hub Spot (Sibley, 2012). And why is this important in a modern marketing context? Because, according to one European study, 78% of consumers say they trust and believe recommendations for products and services more than any other medium, many even going as far as saying that traditional advertising is, by comparison, “false”, “deceptive”, and “misleading” (Centaur, 2007).
It is not smart for brands to ignore this online conversation. It is smart to monitor, react (when necessary) and participate in this constant dialogue. So, if I could re-write the famous words that formed the introduction to this short piece it would read the following.
“There is only one thing worse than being talked about,
and that is not knowing what is being said.”
Gavin Fox MSc, MII Grad
E: gavin@foxmarketing.ie
T: +353 87 649 7660
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