Oct 17, 2007 6:04 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Brian Quinton

Advertisers looking to employ word-of-mouth marketing need to stop viewing it simply as a way to promote their products or services for little ad expense, Todd Tweedy, president and COO of social marketing firm BoldMouth, told an audience at the Direct Marketing Association annual gathering in Chicago Tuesday.

“Rather than thinking of word of mouth as just a low-cost channel, advertisers need to listen to what consumers are already saying and to build a foundation for a solid WOM program,” Tweedy said. “You need to be where they are.” Tweedy advised marketers to start by monitoring the dialogues already taking place online that might be good settings for getting consumers engaged with their brands. Don’t just check blog content or rely on a blog aggregator, he said. Advertisers should try to reach user comments in a number of places, including forums and bulletin boards.

Marketers should also distinguish between “connected” and “disconnected” online social networks. Web communities such as Stickam, which lets members stream live video and engage in video chat, is a typical disconnected network, Tweedy said, “made of individuals talking over one another.”

Personal expression trumps advice-giving; users post statements rather than making inquiries. As a result, Stickam and other disconnected groups are not good places to introduce dialogue about a product.

By contrast, a site Tweedy’s firm set up for pet owners mourning the loss of a favorite animal was a classic “connected” community, in which members were greeted when they joined the dialogue. “If no one’s reaching out to initiate connections among users, the network is probably not a viable place for someone like Purina to start a dialogue about the brand.”

Other pointers from Tweedy for fostering word-of-mouth brand promotion:

• Forrester Research suggests that as many as 55% of the online audience may be either “spectators” of a viral campaign or “inactives.” These may not have a present intent to engage with a brand because of viral marketing, but that doesn’t rule out their participation at a later date. Advertisers who expect the full viral effect in a week should be patient.

• Make sure any content in your viral campaign—including blog posts or reviews you induce—can be indexed by search engines and found. Tweedy pointed to a campaign his firm ran for publisher Scholastic based on the “Maya and Miguel” public TV cartoon. More than 22% of the bloggers they contacted created some kind of post around the product, he said. But just as important was the fact that seven of the top 10 results in a Google search linked directly to the blog content BoldMouth had caused.

• Design your URLs with viral linking in mind. About 75% of young adults will spread content by forwarding a link to their friends. But e-mail readers often “break” links with more than 67 characters, rendering them useless—so keep those links short and sweet.

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