Word of mouth and it’s travel power is what has really changed with social media’s explosion and not what defines a personal brand and today i discuss why and why it is important for any company to figure out the power of the NEW Word of Mouth.

In addition to recognizing the critical need to improve how they listen to their customers, brands are quickly learning that the value of social media lies not just in their communications, but has wide-reaching influence across the entire organization:

“The biggest challenge is moving away from thinking about it as marketing and PR,” said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst. “It’s about product development, it’s about IT. It’s got to cut across all functions of the company.”

And as social media impacts each department, it’s the folks in those areas of expertise that are trying to adapt to the new communication style.

Intel’s social-media team is “the glue that makes that conversation happen,” said Augustine Fou, svp of digital strategy at MRM Worldwide, the Interpublic Group agency that works with Intel.

These changes are not only impacting the organizational chart, but also the roles and expectations for the communications expert of tomorrow. John Bell outlines some of the knowledge areas and skill sets required to effectively connect with influencers:

As marketing and communications continue to merge and change (and the post-industrial, corporate organizational forces that drove them apart continue to fade), as technology injects innovation and uncertainty into our lives, and the demands of increasingly global clients get more and more complex, today’s PR professionals must evolve.

Ultimately, I think we’re going to see a continued growth of positions dedicated to the communications expert who brings together a blend of PR, social media, marketing and advertising expertise. Perhaps the biggest challenge though, is how that person and team can effectively share those conversations internally. While Fou mentioned how MRM connects the dots internally, are their other examples of the social media team helps facilitate the internal conversations?

Scion owners are all about customizing their ride, so Scott and his team created scionspeaks.com, which allowed Scion owners to create their own crest which could be painted or adhered to the car, or even added to your social network of choice. Scott breaks down some of the lessons learned, and what made the Scion social media strategy successful:

1. Define the key social behaviors of your target online.
2. Identify your brand’s social behavior and objective in the social space.
3. Create social-media content; don’t advertise on it.
4. Be careful you’re not duplicating established social communities.
5. Don’t hijack consumers’ social networks.

Ultimately, Scott writes that the campaign worked because they understood the culture and how to properly participate:

In other words, we did something most brands wouldn’t dream of doing: We handed it all over to our consumers. We furnished them with tools. We let them play with those tools. We let them talk about it online and spread the word, months before the official campaign launched. We let them take pride in it.

Then—and only then—did we open the floodgates and launch Scion Speak campaign. The point is, you don’t create an authentic social-media campaign. The culture does.

Be sure to check out Scott’s full article at Reveries.

iPhone Helps Turn Marketers into Problem-Solvers
“Up until now, the excitement over mobile marketing had been trying to deliver relevant ads to various handsets. But the iPhone offers up a more relevant and useful platform for brands to develop applications that provide a real value for their users…”

The Word of Mouth Manual
“Perhaps the most important idea in the book is Balter’s argument for brands to learn how to appropriately participate in conversations with customers and strengthen their word of mouth appeal…”

The marketing team worked with MotiveQuest to research and measure what people were saying online about the car and Mini brand, and through their analysis, created the the Online Promoter Score in order “correlate the relationship between marketing and online brand advocacy to sales by measuring the net frequency of people recommending a brand online.”

Mini and MotiveQuest scoured more than 30 million online conversations to find 52,000 people who were talking about Mini. Listening to what online communities were saying about Mini helped shape how the car company works with bloggers, who are now treated as members of the press and are invite to be among the first to test drive new cars or even podcast from events.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to sales. And how does Trudy Hardy, manager of marketing at Mini connect the online buzz with moving Minis off the lot?

“…while Ms. Hardy said the metric doesn’t “tie back directly” to sales, it correlates web traffic and online conversations to actual retail traffic.

“So we definitely see some correlation between online activity and how that affects showroom traffic,” she said. “We look at the spikes that are going on in conversations and see if it measures against an increased amount of traffic to our site, which ultimately leads to an increased amount of leads we send to our dealers.” (Via AdWeek)

Watts finds fault with Gladwell’s claim that a key group of influencers inspire trends, ideas and movements.

And you know what, I think he’s partly right.  Your audience of influentials is never that clean and neat, and rarely do they exhibit the influence to continually dictate each new trend.

But as a marketer, I wouldn’t put Watts and Gladwell at odds with one another. Their two schools of thought should be considered additive, not either-or. Focus on the influentials and be wise in sharing your message with all that will listen.  Guy Kawasaki has a good take:

How does Watts’ thinking square with evangelism? I don’t see a conflict because evangelism is about “bringing the good news” to everyone and then supporting the people who “get it.” Evangelism is not about sucking up to only people who are famous and self-important.

Additionally, Spike at Brains on Fire sees a harmony that can exist between the two models:

…success is to look for those that have the potential to become influencers and empower them.

Whether or not the mavens and influencers are the gatekeepers so many marketers have hoped they would be, this is a good conversation, and I hope it continues. But in the end, it may be that we’re all just accidental marketers anyways.

That’s certainly how living in the social media era can feel. It’s ubiquitous in geography and the clock never stops running. And if you’re a company – big or small – it can feel like the world has been unleashed on your idea, product or brand. Sometimes for good, sometimes not so good.

Jon Greer at BNet.com wonders if you can put limits on social media:

One of the most intriguing and disruptive elements of the social media revolution is that the creation of social media can happen anywhere, at anytime. For instance, I recently researched, wrote and published a Catching Flack post while riding in the back seat of a taxi headed to San Diego airport. You can blog from an iPhone or other PDA with a decent web browser. I blogged on a laptop with a wireless broadband card. You can post photos and videos to the web directly from your phone. At any time.

All of this makes managing social media relations, frankly, a nightmare. Where do you draw the line? Is line drawing even possible or desirable? What are the ramifications of having social media coverage of anything at anytime?

I think he poses some good questions. For the social media relations pro, participating in conversations, cultivating online communities and engagement is a full-time job. And it can seem overwhelming. But by it’s nature, while social media creates new and untold questions and challenges, it also can bring answers and resources in the same wave.

Yes, the social media relations expert has their work cut out for them. But if they’ve done their job well, they will have also fostered a community that is quick to stand up for the idea, product or brand.

Attempting to limit social media is the wrong answer. Cultivating a community of passionate brand ambassadors can be the best solution to help ride the social media wave.

Steve Saenz used to run a 10K race in 36 minutes. But last spring — 20 years, 2 children and 50 pounds later — he found himself seriously out of shape. A new Web site from Nike, he says, has brought him back on track.

Since April, Mr. Saenz, 53, has been running with a Nike+, a small sensor in his running shoes that tracks his progress on an Apple iPod he carries. After each run near his home in Louisville, Ky., he docks the iPod into his computer and posts details of his run on the Nike+ Web site. There, he has made friends with other runners around the world who post running routes, meet up in the real world and encourage one another on the site.

Nike’s famous swoosh is there all along. For Nike, this is advertising.

“It’s a very different way to connect with consumers,” says Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management. “People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we’re not having to go to them.”

And here’s the money quote:

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Quite frankly, I think this chart speaks for itself.

Because sometimes, you just need a gorilla drumming to Phil Collins.

I’m not going to think too hard about it. Just enjoy it for all it’s Tuesday morning randomness.  Cadbury doesn’t seem to want you to worry too much about it either:

Well it just seemed like the right thing to do. There’s no clever science behind it – it’s just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does. And that’s what we aim to continue to do; simply make you smile. So if a drumming gorilla’s not enough, wait until you see what else we have up our sleeves.