Research Friday: Talk The Talk or What?

When Will You Use This? 

 

Generating word of mouth for your brand. Different channels might be more effective for spreading messages about your products or services.

What’s On The Front Page Today? 

 

Consumers communicate through a variety of different channels: face to face and chat over the phone (oral communication), texting, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other online channels (written communication). But do these channels affect what people talk about and, if so, how?

The current series of experiments* analyzed more than 20,000 real-world conversations and revealed that communication type influences what gets discussed. Compared to oral communication, written communication leads people to talk about more interesting products and brands.

Furthermore, written communication gives people greater time to construct and refine what to say. Simply giving people a pause before they communicate orally led them to talking about more interesting products and brands.

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks  

While planning your word of mouth campaign, remember that different channels may bring different results.

• If you aim for more online discussions, frame the product in an interesting or surprising way. Content that evokes interest, surprises, captures attention is more likely to be discussed and shared.
• If you aim for face-to-face word of mouth, consider which benefits or features of your product might trigger people's thoughts about it – this might help to generate a live discussion.

*Jonah Berger and Raghuram Iyengar. “Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message.” Journal of Consumer Research: October 2013. {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share which strategy you found most effective for generating offline and online discussions? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on directing your reviews? Let's do this together.