How Social Media and the Internet have Redefined "Word of Mouth"

Word of mouth, it worked great back in the day, but today? A new business can’t survive in this economy on word of mouth alone. 

Times have changed since the days of the old Faberge ads, where two friends told two friends and so on and so on. Now, just phoning up a friend doesn’t work. Everyone has thousands of people at their finger tips via social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs - everyone has an opportunity to broadcast their point of view.

Since the dawn of time, people have had a need to get their message out, to communicate to others - either  through cave paintings on walls, graffiti on walls, or posting a rant or comment on someone’s Facebook wall. 

But, we’re also a nosey society, we also need to know what others are doing. Now, gossip has gone from mouth to ear, to tweeting about who’s going out with who or what your Facebook status is. People want to hear, people want to receive. They want to give opinions, hear opinions and criticize opinions. 

Picture this: a young upstart moves in next door to your established business, pushing the same product. They get on social media networks and with a few simple strokes on the keyboard, they can now potentially reach a larger clientele with a simple post or tweet. In a shorter span of time than what it took for many established businesses to build a rapport in their industry and/or community by reputation of word of mouth, this young business has now done within minutes.

The Internet is not a fad that’s simply going to go away. Just like colour television, the Internet and new social networks are here to stay. They may change in the future, but pandora’s box has been open and there’s no way to close it. So learn to use it, you don’t have to love it. But realize that there is the potential to broadcast all the good things that your business has to offer.