Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

While I know it’s very easy for us marketers to all get worked into social media hysteria, let’s not lose sight of the fact that over 80% of Word of Mouth recommendations happen offline. Twitter might be “sexy”, but face-to-face is still king.
That being said, I find it surprising that more brands aren’t providing simple [...]

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Like countless others, I’ve been glued to my TV for the past few days absorbing all of the Olympics action, from the opening ceremonies to the drama of the women’s snowboard cross final. At first it was fun watching the Twitterverse provide funny side commentary via the #Olympics hashtag (even I’m guilty of posting a [...]

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There still seems to be a lot of confusion about the definitions of “Word of Mouth” and “social media” and how they are similar/different, so I thought I would kick off the year with a refresher. Put simply:

Word of Mouth is the act of people talking.
Word of Mouth Marketing is giving people a reason to [...]

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We’ve been invited by our friends at GasPedal to present at their upcoming “Supergenius” conference (aka “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing”), where we’ll be giving a talk titled “How Random House is Connecting Teen Readers Directly with Authors”. Click on the video below for a preview of what to expect, courtesy [...]

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On the heels of the first-of-its-kind WOM industry study in 2007, The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), in conjunction with PQ Media, just released their Word-of-Mouth Marketing Forecast 2009-2013: Spending, Trends & Analysis study. It’s chock full of great data and insight, and includes the following eye-opening prediction:
Total spending on WoM marketing is expected [...]

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How do you get people excited (and talking) about your great new product or service while it’s still in development? Here are five tips that have proven successful:
Tip #1: Motivation
If you are truly starting “from scratch,” with no existing customers (let alone an existing CRM system or even an email list), you’ll need to think [...]

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