Bloggers Word of Mouth Matters

There is an article making the rounds on social media, Whose Word-of-Mouth Matters?. The article, a summary of a study conducted by Mintel is being wildly misinterpreted and makes me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.
Here’s an excerpt.

Real friends more believable than online friends.
Word-of-mouth recommendations can move consumers to make a purchase.

Word-of-blog, on the other hand, is far less persuasive

OK. Yes, of course! That’s what I would expect a study to find. The article goes on to say:

While bloggers may bring buzz to a product, converting the buzz to sales is another matter—unless, of course, the blogger is a friend.

“It’s interesting to find that as much time as we spend online, we still prefer a personal recommendation from someone we know and trust,” said Chris Haack of Mintel.

Well actually I don’t find that all that interesting AND I don’t think the study found anything remarkable. Simple math would tell you that the vast majority of people reached by a blog review post would have been told about the review from someone else…a friend or family member who had read the post or a friend or family member of someone who was a friend or family member who had read the post…you get the drift.

That’s how word of mouth works.

Do we not understand how bloggers fit into the PR mix? Do we not understand the concept of buzz? Think about it. Why do we call it, “buzz”.

Let me take a stab at clarification here. I’ve always believed that blogger outreach programs are just an online version of the traditional media relations program that includes press releases and outreach to print and broadcast media.

The goal of a traditional media outreach plan is to use the media to spread the word about your particular brand, product, service, etc. When we measure the impact of a traditional media campaign, we measure not only readership or viewership, we also measure who finds out about it from those who read or saw the campaign message.

That’s the aspect that is glaringly absent from this piece.

And so it is with blogger outreach campaigns. We reach out to bloggers because we know they have a significant number of readers and those readers have friends and so on. The blogger is at the center of a web of potential consumers.

The blogger is more like the opinion editor or new products editor at a publication. That’s what makes blogger outreach programs so effective. Bloggers are also early adopters, influencers, people who tell their friends about new products.

So does this study show that blogger outreach programs are not as effective as we thought. Not at all. The morale of this story is not “word-of-blog” isn’t effective” but rather…it’s easy to take research results out of context…so watch your wording in those press releases!

And so it is with blogger outreach campaigns. We reach out to bloggers because we know they have a significant number of readers. The blogger is at the center of a web of potential consumers.