Create Stories for People to Talk About
Recently, I have been thinking about what make social media carry so much hype and hope for organizations in the future. One of the reasons social media grew beyond expectation is because of it’s ability to simplify sharing of ideas and experiences with each another.
Organizations understand the power of word of mouth online and is ready to do whatever it takes to get users to talk about their brand.
Small organizations will start joining social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube and publish articles, pictures and videos, hopping that something will stick in the users mind. When it does, they pray and hope that the users will start going online and share the content with their friends.
However most of the time users are not interested in sharing content that is not relevant to them or have no entertainment or educational value whatsoever. Simply put, they cant find a good reason to share your content or talk about you at all.
Larger organizations with substantial marketing budget will try to run social medial contests. Typically the contests will require the users to tag their friends on pictures or share whatever product info and get rewarded for it.
Again this is no difference with creating an adverting campaign and tracking the response rate. You will have to sustain the hype and when it dies down, you will have to think of another campaign to generate the hype again.
Identify Areas People Can Talk About
Besides pictures and videos. People like to share their experiences online. It doesn’t matter if they they are sharing it with strangers. They will talk to anyone who are willing to listen.
Organizations need to start improving their customer service experience in order to deal with the increasing demands of the customers. Most importantly, they need to realize that they are doing it to help their customers find a reason to talk about them.
Brand Story From Nordstrom
For those who don’t know what Nordstom is, it is a high-end department store that spread across the United States. They are legendary in the area of customer service since 1901. In fact, their branding was built entirely through the customers’ WoM (Word of Mouth) experience. Here is an example of building a brand through story telling.
About a a few decades ago, a customer walked into one of the Nordstorm store with 2 snow tires. He walked up to the tire counter, put the tire down and asked for money back. The clerk who started work for 2 weeks, saw the pricing on the tire and reached out in to the cash register and pull out $145 for the man. The thing about this is that Nordstrom never sell tires. According to company lore, the clerk accepted the tire because that is what the customers wanted.
This is just an example of how important customers are to Nordstrom. It is this type of stories, mixed with social media that can really propel your brand on the social web and into brand mortality.
Don’t Confuse Campaigns With True WoM Experiences
At this point, you must be thinking “Why don’t I just run campaigns that get people talking about me?＂ Well, you can do that, but do you have the budget and innovative ideas to keep coming up with campaigns to engage your customers? Most importantly, what is the life span of the WoM effort? 1 month, 2 months or 3 months?
True WoM experience comes from the desire to want to share something good with someone. In this case, it can an unique experience you provide on a consistent basis, or an act beyond the call of duty.
Whatever it may be, the perks of such WoM is the longevity and the cost of maintaining it (zero cost).
Share With Us
Do you have any story you think is worth sharing? Feel free to tell us about it in the comment box below.
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