Word-of-mouth has always been a powerful tool for finding and choosing new products or services. Even with advances in digital technology and new ways to reach consumers, word-of-mouth continues to be one of the top consumer influencers.
In a MarketingSherpa poll from August 2015, 57 percent of respondents cited word-of-mouth as one of the best ways to discover new products, beating out a multitude of other sources including search engines, offline and online advertising. However, advances in technology over the past few years have provided word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews a new mass platform: social media. The Internet has infused new reach and power into word-of-mouth and accessing it has never been easier thanks to new search capabilities.
The word “search” automatically evokes the names of Google or Bing, but when it comes to finding word-of-mouth recommendations online, the big players often fall short. Social media platforms, where digital word-of-mouth typically lives, have a variety of privacy controls and firewalls that make it hard for search engines to access them, and due to privacy issues, integrating personal social interactions into search engine results never took off. Twitter has resisted access from Google,
Read MoreWord-of-mouth has always been a powerful tool for finding and choosing new products or services. Even with advances in digital technology and new ways to reach consumers, word-of-mouth continues to be one of the top consumer influencers.
In a MarketingSherpa poll from August 2015, 57 percent of respondents cited word-of-mouth as one of the best ways to discover new products, beating out a multitude of other sources including search engines, offline and online advertising. However, advances in technology over the past few years have provided word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews a new mass platform: social media. The Internet has infused new reach and power into word-of-mouth and accessing it has never been easier thanks to new search capabilities.
The word “search” automatically evokes the names of Google or Bing, but when it comes to finding word-of-mouth recommendations online, the big players often fall short. Social media platforms, where digital word-of-mouth typically lives, have a variety of privacy controls and firewalls that make it hard for search engines to access them, and due to privacy issues, integrating personal social interactions into search engine results never took off. Twitter has resisted access from Google, using technological barriers to block its content from being ranked on the engine. Facebook also resisted integrating its content into search engines, and instead partnered with Bing to power their own internal search technology called Graph Search.
In the absence of data from major players like Facebook and Twitter, Google created its own network called Google+, but few users were motivated to add yet another platform to their list for the simple benefit of having socially integrated search results. This means that established social networks are still the vaults of personal opinions and reviews, and it is not easy to pry that data free and match it up to billions of web pages.
Users have adapted to the lack of social search. Rather than scouring the big search engines and later asking their social channels about the results, they’re going straight to the source and searching their own social networks. This has lead to the rise of powerful new search tools integrated directly into social media platforms. Fragmented data across millions of posts on Facebook is now easily sorted and accessed via an ever-evolving search algorithm powered by the Bing Graph Search partnership. Twitter’s Advanced Search tool lets users quickly see the latest posts from a particular person, place or topic. Yelp reviews of everything from dog groomers to cocktail bars are easily accessed and sorted by time, rating or language. Even music platforms such as Pandora now allow users to access curated playlists created by friends and celebrities.
L’Oreal has taken advantage of these developments, targeting users scouring Twitter and Instagram for red carpet looks during the 2015 Golden Globes. The brand created shoppable images with its products and included the event hashtag, #GoldenGlobes. The how-to GIFs matched stars’ looks with L’Oreal products and garnered 21 million impressions.
Starbucks also took advantage of social chatter in 2014 with the “real PSL” campaign, which capitalized on the pumpkin craze that takes over social media every fall. By replying to fans on Twitter and driving them to a branded Tumblr contest, the coffee-making giant was able to spark engagement for its pumpkin spiced lattes and drive a 22 percent increase in sales over the previous fall.
Search engines are and always will be a powerful tool for finding information, but when it comes to the power of word-of-mouth, social media reigns. When an individual wants to know what restaurant to eat at, he or she turns to Foursquare or Yelp. When someone wants to know what music to listen to, that person turns to Spotify. What video to watch? YouTube. Where to go on vacation? TripAdvisor. What breaking news to read? Twitter. These networks have the kinds of recommendation answers that users are looking for on such a wide array of topics that they have now become a new type of search engine.
Today the dream of social search filtering through one central engine has largely been halted, as social networks are expected to continue resisting the major engines’ access to necessary content. However, searching on individual social platforms is expanding rapidly and getting better each day. If brands aren’t present and engaging on social media through original content or partnerships with fans and influencers, they’re missing out on a whole new world of word-of-mouth. Users are searching their networks for recommendations, reviews and more, so brands must ensure their content is included in the mix.