[Welcome back to our Word of Mouth Marketing Lessons newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using this handy form.]
Everyone says that when it comes to word of mouth marketing, content is king. But when it comes to actually coming up with the stuff, many people freeze up. They don’t know that a lot of the content they can share is already written for them — it’s just locked up somewhere.
Here’s where to find it and how to release it:
1. Get it out of the weird format
2. Get rid of the form
3. Get it on YouTube
4. Get it from the help site
1. Get it out of the weird format
Most of the time, your best stuff — whitepapers, how-to’s, and reports — are stuck in a format that’s hard for your audience to share. Ask yourself these customer experience questions: Does the PDF allow for copying and pasting? Is the only photo of your stuff tiny? Can customers easily steal your infographic? Are your slides or videos password protected?
2. Get rid of the form
As a word of mouth marketer, it’s your job to make sharing content as easy as possible — to remove every obstacle. A common obstacle most folks miss (one even we’ve been guilty of): forms. This extra step to getting your content is where most of your customers will stop. Plus, the information you get from these forms usually isn’t worth the audience you lose because of them.
3. Get it on YouTube
Videos are fantastic word of mouth tools — but only if they’re made to be shared. If you’ve embedded them in your site with some obscure video player, you’re not only missing out on getting your video shared, but also having it live in more places than one. Just think of how many times your friends have showed you a video they found on YouTube vs. how many times they’ve shared a video from a business’ website.
4. Get it from the help site
You probably have great advice that’s hidden somewhere for customers only. Your FAQs, troubleshooting tips, and other cool stuff are all great content for a public-facing blog. Why hide them behind a registration or login? People love sharing knowledge. The more of this kind of stuff you share, the more they can learn and tell their friends.
