[Welcome back to the You Can Be a Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]
Topics are what fuel your word of mouth program. They’re the experiences, features, and moments that drive conversations about you — and it’s important you’ve got a plan to keep them going. The three stages your plan should include:
1. A topic you can use today
2. A campaign worth talking about
3. A commitment to making everything buzzworthy
1. A topic you can use today
The beauty of word of mouth is that you can get started, right now, with no budget or extensive preparation. The first part of creating your topics plan is to dive in and start experimenting. When you see what gets shared (and what doesn’t), you’ll start to develop a good idea of how to get your talkers excited. So give it a go. Try something, see what happens, and try again.
2. A campaign worth talking about
You can create fantastic topics from campaigns specifically designed to generate word of mouth. This is stuff like repeatable advertising, content with viral potential, and the occasional goofy stunt. These will require a little more planning, but you can probably get most of them going in just a few weeks.
3. A commitment to making everything buzzworthy
The best topic of all comes from fundamentally being a brand worth talking about. This is why we love Apple, Southwest Airlines, Chick-fil-A, and Moleskine notebooks. It’s a combination of great products, uniqueness, personality, remarkable brand experiences — and a fundamental commitment to word of mouth.
