Word of mouth shouldn’t supplant other elements of your marketing mix, rather it works to complement them. Heck, we’re a fee-for-service company selling marketing communications services! As such, we know first hand the value of our tools and services and that they do move markets.

I merely wanted to point out that in addition to, rather than in spite of, existing marketing activities, word of mouth may significantly impact your bottom line. For example, Paranormal Activity would not have garnered the attention it did were it not for more traditional media channels carrying paid marketing messages; that got the ball rolling and sustains interest when perhaps the initial burst of conversation dies down.

There are plenty of tools – especially in the realm of social media – to help “share the joy” as you so aptly put it. Determining what mix of those tools is right for you is something that companies like ours help our customers to determine.

A great example of word of mouth being captured by social media is currently playing out in our comments on a recent post of Francis’ about a positive experience he had at a local restaurant. He blogged about it, readers have commented that based on his blog post they’ll be dining there as well, and just this morning we found out that the blog post made it to the restaurant owner’s attention and he shared it with his staff. While the channel may not have belonged to the restaurant, the message made it back to the powers that be. What would be interesting to know whether the restaurant owner found out about the blog post because of social media tools or because of word of mouth.