I hear this all the time…it is a blessing and a curse…a joy and a frustration. There is now soooo much information available, is it paralyzing us? For example, in 2013, it is said there are 4 Zettabytes (one trillion gigabytes) of information in the internet…growing to 8 Zettabytes by 2015!! How can we handle more information and how can our customers find us and the information we have to share? Social Media that drives Word-of-Mouth…
Customers are literally begging companies to help them wade through this sea of Zettabytes and find just the right information…fast. No one likes to search and search and search and not end up finding what they really wanted…or if they do, they don’t want to spend hours looking. This is where being a Customer Centric organization comes to the rescue.
I shared a post yesterday, “Do You Really Need Google,” that talked about the mind shift from “search” to “word-of-mouth” to reach your desired customers. Think of this as the extension of that concept…only from your customer’s perspective. With this “sea of information” growing at a Zettabyte rate, do you think your customer enjoys spending time wading through all this information and searching for you? They don’t. Their time is incredibly valuable and the more time they spend looking for you the less time they have to really get to know you.
What if you had content your customers really wanted and they could easily find on your site…and it was specifically tailored and written with them in mind? What if they found value in just about everything you wrote? What if their lives/jobs were enhanced by reading your content? And what if they could actually make more money because of your content?
You would win…they would stop by every day if you put content out every day. But more importantly…and this is the most important part of the whole strategy…they would SHARE IT! They would be more than willing to tell their friends and colleagues about you because they are sharing something they found valuable and helpful…not trying to sell them something. And if they find it valuable, so would their network. People know people like themselves…it isn’t rocket science…we gravitate to people with like interests and needs. When they share it to their network, they are sharing it with an audience you want to talk to as well. This is using social media to create word-of-mouth in a way that is a BENEFIT TO YOUR CUSTOMER.
This isn’t about promoting ourselves or as I affectionately call “pimping” our company to an audience. This is just good old fashioned word of mouth, using our social media channels share content that helps our customers. What could be better for your prospective audience to hear than that! And at the heart of it all…your CUSTOMERS BECOME YOUR BIGGEST FANS AND ADVOCATES. This is what drives “word-of-mouth on steroids” using social media channels to deliver the messages.
