Social Media is the New Word-of-Mouth

I have to admit, reading the New York Times' recent commentary on how word-of-mouth is the future, caught me a little off-guard. Discussing the future of the music business, and the online business model in general, the article argues that Facebook may not last much longer and that word-of-mouth is the future.

A project at Columbia Records invited 20 college students a diverse group of universities you work on various music-related projects and towards the end, asked them to participate in a focus group. According to information gleaned from the focus group,

They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything.

What caught me off-guard is how unaware people are of the power of social media technologies like Facebook and what they can be utilized for. The results can be attributed to the small size of the focus group; what is Facebook if not the fastest and most efficient way to network with a large group of people to share and discuss with them anything you want? As far as music is concerned, with dozens of applications that let you create, post, share, and discuss, you're music-life couldn't be easier.

As it stands, I could go from friend to friend asking what music they like, check it for compatibility with my own music interests, and then ask them what else they like, and so on. On the other hand, I could go to my profile, click on a band I like and look at hundreds of other people who like the same band and look at what music they are listening to. Or, I could let the Last.fm desktop application keep track of my music-listening habits and tell me what other music I would like. 95% of the new music that I discover is through socially driven services (whether it be a social network, or a service like Last.fm).

Fact of the matter is that social media is the new word-of-mouth and it's about time we stepped out of the last century way of thinking about wom.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

LGR Webmaster Blog, October 4, 2007: “Word of Mouth Marketing Still Relevant?” — There was a post over on Pronet Advertising earlier in September that has stuck in my head for a little while now. The post was titled Social Media is the New Word-of-Mouth. Perhaps what caught my attention about the post was how narrow minded the post...

Glen Allsopp, September 10, 2007

Did they state whether these people actually used the internet much or not?

I'm sure word of mouth (in person) does play a huge part in their decisions, but maybe thats just because they havn't experienced anything set out better.

Daniel R, September 10, 2007

You write: "Fact of the matter is that social media is the new word-of-mouth and it's about time we stepped out of the last century way of thinking about wom."

I'd contend that Social Media is the new component of Word-of-Mouth. Word-of-Mouth is a huge space that is defined as:

"Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services [DR: sounds like Linkbaiting], and making it easier for that conversation to take place [DR: sounds like Social Media Optimization]."

WoM can consist of elements such as:

Buzz Marketing
Community Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Grassroots Marketing
Conversation Marketing
Referral Programs

So Word-of-Mouth is so much more than Social Media is. While Social Media is the new growth space and the new trendy thing to do, the ideas and statistics is as old as time.

Indeed, Social Media folks love to talk about how UGC and user reviews are more well trusted than a company website, but that's old new to old school Word-of-Mouth folks.

As I've written:

"it may seem unsurprising (if not low) to those who are acquainted with Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM), which usually see numbers showing that 80% of consumers consider WOM as the most trusted source of information. Those are numbers frequently mentioned by BzzAgent."

See Hey Social Media Marketers, Remember Word-of-Mouth Marketing? http://www.emergence-media.com/2007/04/hey-social-media-marketers-remember-word-of-mouth-marketing/

Jane, September 11, 2007

Hey, great post. I just love LastFm. It's the only social network that I'm using without feeling like it's a total waist of time. It's nice for artists recommendations, and I find new stuff there every once in a while. Another obvious way of discovering new music is by reading blogs.. My favorite one is a tiny music blog which uodates daily and has some real indie discoveries, indier than the regular pitchfork or stereogum.
If that LastFm screen shot was taken from your profile, I think you would enjoy this blog.

Jane, September 11, 2007