I just read a great article in the latest edition of BusinessWeek called, “Social Media is Nothing New” by Steve McKee. I love it when “traditional media” gets it right in the “social media” world and this time they nailed it!
What I am talking about is “Word-of-Mouth” marketing. Their article talks about what we figured out a while back – word-of-mouth is at the core of how social media can benefit a business. When you cut through all the noise and clutter of the latest “tools” and current “hot topics”, it still comes back to one thing – being able to create far more word-of-mouth than ever before.
But the key is that it comes back to word-of-mouth. As Steve so aptly put it in his BusinessWeek article, “If you’re still wondering whether social media is for you, recognize that you’ve been participating in it all along. It may simply be that you need to add the digital component to your analog efforts.” Couldn’t have said it any better – it has always been the “most valued” way of getting more customers, building loyalty with the ones you have and attracting the best employees – hands down. Now we just moved it from “analog” to “digital” through the invention of social media tools.
