Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

In this month’s HotHouse podcast, Yooster founder Justin Kirby talks about how the company helped Australian natural healthcare company Blackmores create word of mouth for one of its supplements aimed at arthritis sufferers.

Yooster recruited 1,000 people to try samples of the product, and by the end of the campaign 85% were converted to the product – and all of those converts had told their friends and family and had convinced at least one person to use the product. This niche product, which was not suitable for traditional advertising, had a noticeable lift in sales as a result of the campaign.

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By Simon van Wyk

In the same way that digital technology helped convert the world’s oldest profession into the booming global industry of Internet pornography, word of mouth, probably the oldest of all marketing techniques, has emerged as arguably the most powerful selling tool of the 21st century, thanks to the Internet.

Traditional advertising and marketing is in chaos as people turn their back on advertising messages and turn to recommendations from their friends, via social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, when deciding what products and brands to buy.

Businesses who can use online tools to cleverly and ethically leverage the power of word of mouth will be able to successfully make the transition from traditional marketing .

Word of mouth marketing online can even be a successful business model in itself. Yelp, a US-based service where people write reviews of restaurants and other local service providers, recently knocked back a US$500 million offer from Google to buy its business.

Justin Kirby, interviewed for this month’s HotHouse podcast, is the founder and CEO of both one of the UK’s first digital agencies and Australia’s word of mouth marketing firm Yooster, and is a globally recognised expert on word of mouth marketing.

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Earlier today Twitter launched a guide called “101 for business”. As the name suggests, it’s designed to explain to businesses how to use the popular Twitter service and  how to get the most out of it including  case studies.

“Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.”

Some of the case studies are facinating:

Dell - uses Twitter (@delloutlet) to raise awareness about the brand, increase sales by selling product through special Twitter-only deals, and connect with customers via any one of their 80+ Dell branded Twitter accounts. Read the case study here.

JetBlue the US arline was one of the first major brands to join Twitter (@jetBlue) in 2007. They set out to help customers with travel problems, and also to provide customer service. Today they have more than one million followers and are often pointed to as an example of “smart corpoate twittering”. Read the case study here.

Teusner Wines is a boutique vinyard in the Barossa Valley “producing kick arse wines from some of the oldest vines in Australia”. For Teusner, Twitter (@Teusnerwine) is about building trust and loyalty with followers - and not selling to them. Teusner reach out and connect with people talking about the vinyard. They find out what they like and don’t like.  They provide third paty reviews of the wines. Read the case study here.

Pepsi is using Twitter as a faster and more personal way to connect with soda drinkers (the brand twitters as @Pepsi; the corporation twitters as @PepsiCo). They use Twitter to listen and talk to customers in an attempt to humanise the brand “and make it more accessible to consumers”. Read the case study here.

Read more case studies on Twitter 101 for business guide.

Paul Smith, who has been called the Twitchhiker, made it all the way from England to New Zealand in less then 30 days without purchasing a single ticket. He did via the kindness of social media strangers on Twitter. Read the full article at the Daily Mail UK here.

Treat your marketing like a garden and you’ll survive the economic downturn.

Have you seen the classic film Being There? The main character Chauncey (played by Peter Sellers) is a mentally-challenged gardener who through a few twists of fate ends up being a respected political adviser and commentator (I can heartily recommend you getting it out on DVD – a funny film with pointed social commentary that still stings today).

Anyway, when he’s asked his opinion on world events, Chauncey starts talking about the only thing he knows – gardening – and he slowly and deliberately describes the process of planting seeds, watering them, pulling out weeds, pruning, and harvesting. Everyone who listens to him puts their own spin on what he ‘really’ means, and he quickly becomes an internationally respected political guru.

Chris Abraham, interviewed for our recent HotHouse podcast, says Chauncey Gardner’s gardening analogy is particularly apt for online social media marketing today.

Abraham, online PR specialist and president and COO of online consultants Abraham Harrison, based in Washington and Berlin, argues that despite the right-now, viral nature of the Internet, building a company’s brand through social media takes time.

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I went to the Coldplay concert at Acer Arena last night - Chris Martin and his crew rocked the house!

But here’s the interesting thing: enroute to the concert I posted a Tweet saying “Going to Coldplay tonight woohoo!”. Then when I checked my Twitter account this morning I found a Tweet from “ColdplayHQ” who presumably harvested Twitter to find me talking about the band, and subsequently invited me to connect with them. Smart.

If you want to learn about what’s happening in the corporate social media space and how companies are using new digital tools, a great way to get your feet wet is to follow the leaders. Here are some lists that were prepared earlier:

• 10 PR People to Follow on Twitter: A list compiled by Danny Brown, published on the Social Media Today website
• Ten People all Twitter Beginners Should be Following: If you’re not yet familiar with Twitter, check out this list before the one above (from the TwiTip website)
• Top 10 Marketing Blogs (and a few distractions): Developed for Blogs.com (if you can’t trust blogging information on a site called Blogs.com, what can you trust?)
• Top 10 CEO Blogs and Top 15 Corporate Blogs: Both from Marketing Nirvana
• Top 100 Australian Blogs: To understand your customers better, find out which Australian blogs get the most traffic - you might be surprised