Chatter is the Least Important Part of WOM

Word of mouth is valuable only because of what causes it and because of what it drives. It’s time to move the conversation about conversation away from a focus on ‘buzz’ and toward an investigation of innovative strategies to shift what consumers feel and do, not just how they talk.

Emotion is the root cause of word of mouth. Conversations about brands and products occur when consumers feel something strongly enough to want to share. Many marketers make the mistake of focusing on spreading the conversation—pushing a press release to bloggers, or asking people to retweet a link—rather than stimulating the emotion behind it. Conversation without emotion is meaningless, and of limited value to a brand; the whole reason people turn to their peers is because of that personal engagement, that opinionated slant that makes a recommendation relevant and influential. Neutral or regurgitated word of mouth may boost a brand’s visibility (although even that is questionable considering the deluge of content out there), but it is unlikely to change behaviour.

And that introduces the second valuable aspect of word of mouth: the behaviour that it drives. The conversation may be spreading by word of mouth, but if it isn’t actually influencing people to behave differently toward your brand—whether buying for the first time, buying more, or staying loyal—it’s simply empty talk.

So, word of mouth is simply the potential indicator of two valuable processes: emotional advocacy and behaviour change. This is why conversational success measurements such as level of participation; depth and range of emotion; strength of recommendation; and audience relevance and resonance are in fact much less fuzzy than those that look at reach figures alone. They indicate how the brand has changed the people behind the conversation—and it is this alchemy alone that brings true word-of-mouth return-on-investment.

However, the lack of understanding about the real value of ‘conversation’ threatens to hamstring the social business industry before it has evolved. At the recent Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit, Jeremiah Owyang presented Altimeter’s research on the Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist. This demonstrates that many early adopters of corporate social strategies are now in danger of being relegated to a ‘social media help desk’ role. Having failed to demonstrate the full value of their nascent programs and having met fierce internal resistance, they are becoming short-term, reactive respondents to consumer conversation, a sort of customer service offshoot siloed from the rest of the company.

In his new book, “The Conversation Manager,” brand consultant Steven van Belleghem offers one solution—that modern marketers must retrain as Conversation Managers, versed in the listening, engagement and integrated strategy skills that a social world demands. This is a great idea, but suggests that, first, consumer conversation should be the preserve of marketers, rather than everyone in the business; and second, that it is the conversation, and not the conversers, that count. Word of mouth is the essential mechanism that gives them a way into engagement, and a way to measure whether that engagement has worked, but not the focus in itself.

So instead, I suggest that training in emotional and behavioural triggers becomes part of every job role. We must all become scientists in how to use our given specialism (be it product development or customer care, human resources or public relations) to affect the feelings and actions of our company’s target audience. And this applies cross-industry, whether you work in charity, government, B-to-C or B-to-B, moving your audience is what will bring you both money and mindshare.

Initially, all employees need to start listening to consumer conversation about their brand. They should learn to use ongoing social media monitoring, but also head out to stores, suppliers or the street and listen to how their customers feel and behave, discovering the impact of their own work. Everyone should do a rotation within the customer service team each month; consumer packaged goods companies should have away days to supermarkets; product developers should be closely watching Twitter feeds.

They next need to listen to people who truly change emotion and behaviour for a living; but this must go beyond a lecture with a consumer psychologist and incorporate learnings from some disruptive, inspiring sources. Who better to help you design an immersive consumer experience than a theatre director? Who better to help you transform a complaining customer than a crisis arbitrator? Who better to help you add a bit of magic to your new product than a magician, or to create a case study than a film editor, or to create a technical manual that even a kid could understand than a school teacher?

Yes, there is a need for companies to continue to explore the tactical role of social tools and platforms in disseminating their voice, and a social strategist role is still valid. But to build valuable word of mouth into a business—word of mouth that comes from somewhere and does something—every employee needs to start thinking in terms of emotion and behaviour.

The joy is, we’re all experts in this stuff—we’re human beings, after all—yet we somehow lose these instincts when we walk through the office door. This isn’t about understanding how to get more visits on Foursquare, it’s about understanding how to connect and influence in a seriously primal way.

Otherwise, it’s all so much blah, whether it’s on Facebook or in the park. Words are signifiers of what we feel, and spurs to what we do. We need to treat them as means, not ends.

Molly Flatt is a word-of-mouth evangelist at 1000heads.