Marketers are usually challenged to justify word of mouth social media marketing programs to the finance department. With economic challenges ahead, your job doesn’t get easier. I posed a question on LinkediN question to my marketing peers and colleagues: With the economic downturn, how will you convince the CFO that "social" marketing is a priority? I’ve summarized the 25 answers to the question into these 8 tips: Provide financial leaders with hard facts—give numbers repres

While the concept of community — and assumed relationship to WOM and customer loyalty — is attractive, the realized business impact of community is a far reach for most companies. I launched a community of baby boomers back in '97. Chat and forums made Thirdage.com a community, but even within these environments, unpredictable sub-communities around topics of passion formed. That's when I realized that a community has to be founded on common interests, passions and goals. A c

Sean Moffitt at Agent Wildfire, author of blog Buzz Canuck, just published a list of top 23 U.S. Word of Mouth bloggers. As described by Sean… "…these broad-minded bloggers and company heads have distinguished themselves by trying to understand how ideas spread, online and offline, through a range of different strategies and tactics. In my opinion, they are much closer to the purpose and benefits of web 2.0, co-creation, social networks and other web, cultural and social

I made a few notes to answer the questions the moderator was going to ask for the panel. I’m on a long flight back from London right now…a good time to expand these notes and publish them… 1. What criteria do you use to choose where to spend marketing dollars for new technology companies? Start with sales first. You need very little marketing in the beginning. They are the most productive form of research and recon for the market, because they’re selling at the same time, ad

The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO …and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. #josephjaffe #wordofmouth #WOM #jaffejuice #Miami #WOMMU #WOMMA

This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in em