#2 - Web 2.0 And Word Of Mouth Marketing
This article explores the relationship between Web 2.0 and word of mouth marketing.
In the first article in this series we looked at the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and tried to define Web 2.0 with a single word, community.
Now we want to look at why the Web 2.0 concept is important to word of mouth marketing.
Word Of Mouth And Web 1.0?
But first, can a Web 1.0 site get word of mouth advertising? Of course! Every good site gets free word of mouth. Sometimes the word of mouth for a Web 1.0 site can be substantial too.
It happened to us once. My wife and I made a site that contained videos of our adventures raising orphaned baby squirrels. It puttered along in the slow lane for awhile, like you'd expect a new site to do.
Then somebody on Stumbleupon discovered us, and started a word of mouth chain reaction on that network. Within a week our traffic jumped from around 30 page views a day, to 3,000. Word of mouth WOW!
As fun as that story is to tell, we still need to understand the major built in advantage a Web 2.0 site has when it comes to word of mouth marketing.
Word Of Mouth And Web 2.0!
Let's continue the example from the first article in this series, a comparison between Nature-Talk.com and BirdCinema.com.
Nature-Talk is by and about us, a Web 1.0 site.
Hopefully some of what my wife and I have to share on Nature-Talk is interesting enough to inspire some word of mouth promotion from our readers. We do what we can to encourage the word of mouth process of course.
BirdCinema.com is by and about it's users, a Web 2.0 site.
BirdCinema.com has many members uploading videos in to their accounts. Each of these members has a psychological, and perhaps business, investment in their contributions to BirdCinema. These members are all telling their online contacts, "Hey, you should check out my videos on BirdCinema!"
The bottom line is, BirdCinema has hundreds or thousands of built-in word of mouth machines that Nature-Talk doesn't have.
Word Of Mouth Marketing Reality Check
Fact of life, most of us are more interested in promoting our own creations than in promoting somebody else's work. On BirdCinema, a Web 2.0 site built around community, there are a lot of people giving word of mouth to their own contributions.
Not only that, BirdCinema has far more content, because it has a large member base creating and contributing that content, not just one or two people like on Nature-Talk. Thus, there is far more nature media to find, enjoy and word of mouth about on BirdCinema.
Uh oh, from the standpoint of a Web 1.0 site like Nature-Talk, this word of mouth equation keeps getting worse over time.
The larger BirdCinema gets, the faster it will get larger. With every week that passes, the word of mouth gap between a Web 1.0 site and it's Web 2.0 competitors will widen, AND, the rate at which the gap opens will accelerate.
Yikes!
As we can see, we really have to understand the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 when it comes to word of mouth.
The word of mouth marketing advantages built-in to any community based Web 2.0 site are too important to ignore.
Web 2.0 sites have strong advantages in other marketing arenas as well. As example, who can create more content to be indexed by search engines? You all by yourself? Or a community of hundreds or thousands of people?
If you're building your site all by yourself, it's past time to take a close look at Web 2.0 concepts and technology.
As the owner of Nature-Talk.com, I face this same challenge. In the next article I'll share plans to convert my site from a Web 1.0 site, to a Web 2.0 site.
