The Importance of Digital Word Of Mouth

Digital word of mouth is the act of people mentioning your business online. This could be through social media posts, blog posts, videos or even good old forums.

Over 4.3 billion people currently use the internet, a figure that is increasing year on year. If your business is yet to grasp its online presence, that’s a lot of potential custom you’re missing out on. After all, having people mention your business online is what drives sales, not to mention brand loyalty.

The goal is to get people talking about your business (in a good light of course!). If people like what they see enough to share it with their peers, this in itself is a marketing strategy that can go on 24/7, even when your business is closed. It’s all about chasing those likes, follows, tags and shares.

If you are looking to improve your business’s digital word of mouth, here’s a general overview as well as our top tips for success.

What Is Digital Word of Mouth?

Back in the old days, word of mouth (WOM) would have consisted of someone discussing your product or business while in the supermarket, or even down the pub. These days, while having people physically speak about your product can still boost sales, for the most part, it’s moved into digital streams.

Think about it logically. If you mention a product or service to a friend, without digital intervention you can’t pass them onto a location or even a website. However, if the same two people are discussing your business online, they can instantaneously drop each other a link or username to find you and even book with you.

Digital word of mouth is that constant flurry of people tagging their friends in your post, or sharing your page through instant messaging platforms. It’s people writing about you in their blog posts or talking about their experience with your business through their YouTube channel. Any online platform that can be used to mention or link to your business is considered digital word of mouth.

Building A Buzz Online

We are now spending more than 2 hours and 30 minutes online. For some of us, that’s actually longer than we spend at work! Digital word of mouth is about getting in among the action, targeting potential online customers as well as your current ones.

It’s not enough to just have social media accounts for your business. They need to be utilised effectively to build a reach. The goal is to have as many people visit your page as possible, interacting with what you do to the point where they end up spending money with you.

Say you run a competition on your Facebook page, and ask people to follow your page, share the post and tag a friend to enter. Every time someone completes each of these actions, your organic reach is going through the roof.

It’s easy to overcomplicate things because we see competitor pages with millions of followers and want to emulate their success. In truth, it all comes down to creating great content that people truly want to share, as well as listening to what works versus what falls flat with your audience.

The Top Platforms

Any positive mention of your business online will increase your digital word of mouth. However, it’s always a good idea to brush up on the newest social media platforms to see where your core audience could lie in the digital stakes.

It goes without saying that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn are some of the top social media platforms that have reigned supreme for many years now. That doesn’t mean to say it’s not worth exploring new platforms (such as Tik Tok) if it could be relevant to the demographic you are looking to reach.

To increase your digital word of mouth more effectively, you need to make it easy for people to do so. This means having visible social sharing buttons on your website or any other digital marketing you put out. If people are unable to share content or they are taken to broken links, your digital word of mouth will be severely limited.

Measuring The Analytics

To really gauge how well your digital word of mouth strategy is working, it’s time to study analytics. For example, go into your Facebook business page and look at the insights. How much reach has your brand had this week? Other tools such as Sprout are great for measuring mentions and reach too.

At the start of each week (or daily if you’re a large organisation) you should compile these stats into a spreadsheet, to compare this week to last. This is a great way to pick up any dips and act on them, so you can ensure your marketing strategy is always on an upward trajectory.

It’s important to understand the difference between organic and paid reach. Ideally, you’d want a healthy mix of the two as if people are talking about your company without having to pay for the privilege, you know your marketing strategy is truly working.

Conclusion

It can be difficult to wrap your head around digital word of mouth, so the key thing to remember is its people mentioning your business online, which then leads to greater reach and ultimately sales.

Digital word of mouth is a fantastic tool, but it can go sour when negative reviews are left on your business page. Sometimes, it might even be the case they aren’t even genuine customers! Stressful, right? At Stampede, we provide innovative software solutions to take control of your social media reviews, giving you peace of mind.

Sign up for a free trial today, and we’ll provide you with a personalised portal that will allow your business to get more customers and returns for less effort. Sounds like a plan to us!

Marketing