Word of Mouth Recommendations

Where do you go to find a recommendation for a good Italian restaurant in a city you'll soon be visiting? Do you check with friends who have been there or do you painstakingly check out all the travel and ratings and review sites online? Those are certainly great places to check, but wouldn't it be nice to have one place to go for the best word of mouth recommendations? The recommendations would be written by bloggers from all over the world. They would write about the best recommendations for their city. It would be like asking a friend who lives in that city. They would be open to comments from consumers who may agree or disagree and of course, they could rate them.

That is the vision for the Word of Mouth Network. Hundreds of word of mouth sites that would be connected with a central directory so you only have to go to one place to find all you'll need. For example, Word of Mouth Phoenix is a place to go for word of mouth recommendations for that city. Check it out and add your comments.

The Power of Word of Mouth

I've been reading Pete Blackshaw's new book "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000". Isn't that a clever title and an accurate statement? If I enjoy a product or service I might tell a few friends but if I get bad service or a defective product, I do tend to tell lots more and include all of the details. I guess we like to be heard. But are the companies listening? Well, according to Pete they better start listening.

In this age of instant everything, the Internet provides us with a megaphone to broadcast our opinions. And that reach goes much further nowadays with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, ratings and reviews and many more. Companies need to be monitoring the Internet for any mention of their company, their products or services and most importantly, be quick to respond. Pete includes examples of companies who were slow to respond and others who responded quickly and as a result, avoided potential disasters.

I read a blog post earlier this week on the Valley PR Blog in Phoenix. The post was entitled "The Power of Brides Online" and was written by Charlotte Risch. She had recently become engaged and quickly became consumed with wedding plans. She personally experienced the power of word of mouth, as other brides were quick to talk about their experiences with bridal shops and wedding vendors. And not all of their experiences were positive. Her advice to many of the bridal boutiques was to brush up on their word of mouth marketing skills. How right she is! Bad word of mouth spreads oh so quickly. Maybe they need to get their hands on a copy of this book.

Pete Blackshaw's book should be read by anyone who provides a service or product to the public. The book is easy to read and makes common sense. Companies need to adapt to today's consumer driven world. They cannot continue to ignore the power that consumers wield.

I highly recommend this book.

Word of Mouth Stats

The Fresh Chat blog has a great list of stats for word of mouth. Jenni Beattie posted the list entitled "The Power of Word of Mouth" on July 10th. It's a very concise list. If you ever had a doubt about the importance of word of mouth recommendations, you must read this post. Thanks for compiling a very thorough list.

The original vision for the Word of Mouth Network was to provide a way for consumers to exchange word of mouth recommendations. We started it in 1999 before the dot com bust. It was originally called the Recommendation Exchange or "Rex" for short.

Consumers could share their favorite restaurants, TV shows, books or hair stylist with others. We developed a new method where the reviewer selects or adds keywords or short phrases that best described the subject and then rated the relative strengths or weaknesses of those words on a one to five scale. A rating of five would be the greatest strength while a rating of one would be the greatest weakness. This rated keyword method provided a more accurate and refined search results. They could also add an optional long form comment. We were eventually awarded a patent for this new method of capturing and sharing user feedback.

We had three large beta sites at media properties that were quite popular. Unfortunately, with the dot com bust we scaled back on our pursuit. Despite the timing, we maintained the beta sites and gained much knowledge about how to motivate users to contribute content, using points as incentives for specific behaviors and as a way to manage the quality of the content.

Quick Comments Patented Approach

The Word of Mouth Network will be comprised of a wide variety of niche focused websites. They will utilize a patented approach to capture and communicate online user feedback. It's a great way to engage consumers and increase revenue. The white label recommendation application is free in exchange for the rights to monetize the recommendations.

The patented rated tags method provides a more structured and simpler way for users to contribute, locate, understand and share recommendations. Keywords or phrases are selected or new ones are added and then rated as to the relative positives and negatives of each. A five star rating would be very positive while a one star rating would be very negative. A visual summary makes it easy to get the essence of many opinions of a subject quickly. This saves the time of having to sort through many long-form comments. It does not replace existing ratings and reviews but offers a new option. Many consumers do not like to take the time to write long reviews and so this method is appealing.

Top rated recommendations become available on one or more of the "wordofmouth (niche).com" websites related to their vertical market and link back to the contributing website for purchases and additional information. A destination directory increases visibility and name recognition for the word of mouth niche sites and will be promoted as "the source for the best word of mouth recommendations on the Web".

We now have a website to get feedback on this new patented approach to gather and understand user feedback. Please visit the site and tell us what you think.

25% of Entertainment Will be Controlled By Consumers by 2012

A new study by Nokia, "A Glimpse of the Next Episode"predicts that 25% of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within consumer peer groups instead of the traditional media groups. They gathered the information from consumers from 17 countries regarding their digital behaviors and lifestyles. Mark Selby, VP, Multimedia, Nokia believes that the trends show that consumers have a genuine interest in creating and sharing their own content but that they also remix and pass it on to others within their peer groups. He described it as a form of collaborative social media.

I love finding studies like this. The empowered consumers have so much more power and reach and companies need to adjust and deal with that. I believe that the Word of Mouth Network can help companies by providing a patented software platform tool to engage consumers, increase traffic to their website and potentially increase sales of their products and services. Check out our website to find out how your company can benefit. www.wordofmouthnetwork.com