Viral Marketing Metrics?
Filed Under Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing has become one of the hot topics in internet marketing circles for the last year or so.
The concept of viral marketing is intricately tied into the concept of Web 2.0, which describes the new cycle of web communities through which consumers are able to generate content on any subject, company, service or politician. Any company that ignores the power of the people in the blogosphere and beyond, do so at their peril.
The power of social networks can work for or against a company. I have been contacted by large companies after posting comments about them on this humble blog. This just goes to show that large companies have learned to monitor what people are saying about them. They try to engage anyone with negative comments and see if they can remedy the problem. I have to say from my own personal experience that it is empowering to know that a large company will come to you when you have a problem. That, my friends, is the beauty of the blogosphere.
While keeping a lid on negative “buzz” is desirable, creating positive buzz is just as appealing. Marketers have been talking about how they can create positive “buzz” about their company for a number of years.
A successful viral marketing campaign has become the holy grail of marketing. It is not easy to get consumers excited enough about your company to make them want to tell all their friends about it. Study after study has verified that the most trusted referral is a face-to-face recommendation. So it is no wonder marketers endlessly toil to come up with ideas that will get people talking about them, online and off.
Entire marketing agencies dedicated to web buzz have cropped up. One of them, Webbed Marketing, just released a free tool for use by the general public (PRweb).
This tool is called the Webbed-O-Meter and claims to rate the buzz you have generated about your website in the blogosphere and the social networks. It gives your site a score between 1 and 100. The higher the score the higher the “buzz factor” you have been able to generate.
You are probably wondering how it works. You simply enter your domain name into the search box and the system checks 10 authoritative social networking sources for mentions of your site. Here is what they say about the algorithm:
Algorithms calculate a site’s online buzz by utilizing ten authoritative sources such as: Yahoo!, Digg, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia. The Webbed-O-Meter is free and available to anyone at http://www.webbedmarketing.com/webbedometer.
I may be wrong, but I think this is the first viral marketing metric available, and it could prove a useful tool. While checking references to a domain is a start, I think there is room for improvement. There is currently no way to tell if the buzz that your site has generated is positive or negative. I would recommend the developers work on this. On the other hand, Bill over at Webbed Marketing has written that even bad buzz can have some benefits.
One Response to “Viral Marketing Metrics?”
Hi Craig,
I’m Bill Balderaz with Webbed Marketing. I’m writing to thank you for your coverage of the Webbed-O-Meter. Your feedback hits right on the direction we are moving…right now, the WOM tells how much buzz a site has, but it does not tell if that buzz is good, bad or indifferent. I can tell you that we’re testing a variety of ways of measuring the type of buzz a site receives and you’ll be among the first to know once we launch the next version.
Also, I’ve spent the better part of the last hour reading your blog, there is some great advice here. You’ve got a heck of a track record in affiliate marketing.
Thanks again Craig,
Bill