The Podcaster

Archive for the ‘social networking;Word of Mouth Marketing’ Category

Latest research published in the Harvard
Business Review shows influence is greatest through ‘closer matched’
people and once past the 3rd degree that influence levels off.

Rather than the concept of the long-tail of influence it seems to support the notion
that closer people in a network influence the most.

What is interesting though is to look at the ‘ripple effect of numbers. Take a retail
client I worked with a year ago. They now have almost 1000 Facebook ‘friends’. We
know that over the last 12 months that the average number of ‘friends’ each person
had rose from just over 100 to over 110. What that means is that a WOM has a 1st level
potential impact on 1k, a second level of 100k and a third level 10m (1000 people
each with 100 friends who in turn each have 100 friends).

Even allowing for significant failure to pass any promotional information on at each
level the potential for free WOM marketing is huge.