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ENERGIZING THE GROUNDSWELL: Tapping into the power of word of mouth


 You are surfing on Facebook or Instagram and every 10th item in your news feed is advertising. Do you want to tell your friends about the product that you saw?
 I would guess that you don’t! 
But there are such products and advertising that we share with pleasure.
Why is this happening?
Because the brand / product / advertising make us have vivid emotions, and it is our experience that we share. This is called WOM (word of mouth) marketing. This is a way of communicating information in the process of personal communication: comments, advice, assessments, etc. 

 …word of mouth “is the most honest form of marketing, building upon people’s natural desire to share their experiences with family, friends, and colleagues.” It can’t be faked, but it can be encouraged.

 According to statistics, 90% of the world's population trusts the recommendations of friends. This is especially true of areas of "increased trust": jurisprudence, medicine, investment, asset management, consulting, audit and evaluation. Also it applies to cosmetics, cars, food. Imagine that your friend is advising you on a new "amazing" cafe. Would not it be interesting for you to look there to see what delighted her?!

So I decided to consider in details the types of WOM that companies use.

This is when the most exiting events and news are used to create a public resonance and encourage us to talk about a product or brand.
As an example the annual  festival “Red BullJump and Freeze”, during which participants on skis or snowboards jump into a pool of icy water. This event every year attracts a large number of participants who actively share photos and comments in social networks while all local TV channels make the stories about this event.

It consists of the creation of information and entertainment messages, which users actively share in social networks, personal correspondence, and simply in conversations.
For example, a video from Nike Football with Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Hulk, Rooney, which entered the top 10 Youtube 2016, collecting more than 80 million views.

This is the formation and support of communities for an audience potentially interested in the brand. It can be professional clubs, fan clubs, forums, etc. It's like a traditional community on behalf of a brand, only the users themselves lead it.
The unofficial Russian community of BMW fans in VK has more subscribers than the official FB and Instagram communities combined. (1 million folowers, to the official 126 thousand FB and 92 thousand to Instagram). And the international community of BMW on 90% consists of the content generated by users.

It utilizes brand advocates and brand loyalists who are ready to spread information about the company on their own behalf.
The army of evangelists is from Adobe, Microsoft, Netflix and many other large (and not very large) brands. For them, forums and platforms are created, and they themselves daily carry their love to the masses, including through social networks.
This is the promotion of goods using posts by bloggers and opinion of leaders.
Since 2015, the popularity of promotion through famous persons has increased by 2.5 times.

These are campaigns of brands aimed at solving social problems, taking care of the environment or something else.
For example, McDonald's regularly protects the environment by making paper boxes for burgers from recycled materials. Also the company uses the old oil as a biofuel for the company's trucks.
Brand Blogging
This is marketing through attracting users to the company’s blog using interesting content.
For example, on the Russian site Maggi you will find more than a thousand recipes of dishes and you can make a menu for a week.

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