Word of Mouth

Have you heard about this? If you haven't you've been spending a significant amount of time off in cave somewhere reading Proust or something.

Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

The passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner. Word of mouth is typically considered a face-to-face spoken communication, although phone conversations, text messages sent via SMS and web dialogue, such as online profile pages, blog posts, message board threads, instant messages and emails are often now included in the definition of word of mouth. There is some overlap in meaning between word of mouth and the following: rumour, gossip, innuendo, and hearsay; however word of mouth is more commonly used to describe positive information being spread rather than negative, although this is not always the case.

Go read the Wikipedia article and google word of mouth because there are rafts of stuff on it.

It's important for us to be conscious of word of mouth (WOM) because spreading awareness about your product or service is the fastest path to growth. It means you have people out their working for you that you don't even have to pay. If news of your product spreads twice as fast as news of a competing product, everything else being equal, your sales are going to grow twice as fast as your competitors. Lots of factors enter into it but learning about what WOM is, how it's generated, and pulling the levers is an important thing for you. Faster growth, more sales, more cash, more news coverage, more investors, etc.

Any ideas on WOM? I'd like to know. Maybe we can get people talking about it. Post a comment.

My ideas on entrepreneurship informs all my professional activities. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blotspot.com