Boom360's Blog

Word of Mouth is Now Online - A Story from the Trenches

May 14th, 2012 • Posted by Kathleen Gardenswartz • Permalink

I know a lot of you are thinking,"What?! Not again! How many times have you told us that by now? Everyone knows that word of mouth has moved online. Tell us something we don't already know!"

Bear with me here, I have a point, and I want to make it using a real-life example. It's how I roll.

Last Saturday I was at a bar and grill 50 miles south of St. Louis in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri to hear what turned out to be some fantastic music- two guys, two guitars, who could play and sing anything. They were called 'Those Guys, ' and turned out to be really tremendous performers!

So, I'm sitting at the bar and this place is about 1/3 full which seems odd to me. The owner was tending bar that night and we struck up a conversation. I asked, "Where is everybody? These guys (Those Guys, really) are great!"

He says, "I don't know. I thought word of mouth would have packed this place."

I couldn't help myself and said, "Haven't you heard? Word of mouth has moved online."

He said, "What do you mean?"

Me, elaborating. "At a minimum you should have posted this event to your website, Facebook and Twitter, and set up a couple of reminder posts. Then as a courtesy to your loyal fans who signed up for your email newsletter you should have sent an email letting them know that you had some great music lined up for tonight. And if it was me I would have written a blog about 'Those Guys' - who they are what they do, and I probably would have included a video of them performing."

"Who has time to do all that?," he replied.

"Well, we have technology to help. I work with one that does this, in fact that's all we do. In under 5 minutes, using the Boom360 Marketing Suite, you could have created the event and simultaneously sent it to your website, Facebook and Twitter with automatic reminder posts a week before the event. And by clicking one button, the Marketing Suite would turn the event into an email campaign that you could send to your email list."

"Bottom line? You've got to meet your customers where they are, and that is online. At a minimum you need a great looking website that is easy to update and mobile friendly, a Facebook fan page and Twitter feed. By interacting with your customers online you will create a loyal fan base and build a relationship that will be beneficial to you both."

Real life provides much better examples than we could ever make up, don't you think?


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