Social networking, forums, consumer reviews, Web 2.o and the long tail. Add all these up and what do you get? Word of mouth advertising opportunities! WOM (Word of mouth) is the oldest form of advertising there is. Today some call it Buzz Marketing. HUGE changes are coming to the Internet due to the whole social networking phenomenon that will impact merchants and affiliates in a way that many are not capitalizing on yet. There are lots of new opportunities opening up for smart marketers and I am researching several of them, to see how they can be leveraged for affiliate marketing and blog marketing.

When you look at the top talent that is flocking to WOM start-ups, it’s easy to see that this is a marketing opportunity worthy of attention. I will report more as I uncover ways that Internet Marketers can leverage this paradigm shift of power from corporations over to the consumer.
Grokdotcom – my favorite newsletter about online marketing and conversion rates has a good article titled Word of Mouth Meets the Internet.

“The proof that word of mouth has hit the mainstream? As Pamela Parker reported, top marketing minds are jumping to word of mouth companies: Jupiter’s Gary Stein has joined word of mouth research firm BuzzMetrics and Forrester’s Jim Nail has joined Cymfony, a company that tracks consumer generated media. And Sam Decker, who led the growth of Dell.com into the world’s largest ecommerce site, has announced he left Dell to join word of mouth startup Bazaarvoice (still in ‘stealth’ mode).”

Additionally, in more WOM news, BzzAgent just landed $14 million in new funding which made Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The Church of the Customer Blog has more info about the The word of mouth bubble and a list of other WOM companies.

*Advertising Disclosure Policy*