Whether you are a big time marketeer or small business owner or simply a blogger, Word of Mouth Marketing must be on your mind.

But, when does real word of mouth happen?

There are 3 important things to focus for making word of mouth happen on your site.

1. Grab the attention of people who can spread

Everyone who walks into your site is a prospect for spreading your content. It is not necessary that this person be a subject expert or an evangelist or even a blogger. It is simply enough, if the visitor thinks that your content is of relevance, need or entertaining for someone known to him/her.

“People who talk about your stuff are closer than you think” - Andy Sernovitz

Positioning Tell-a-Friend button around your content (page, post, news item, product image) helps draw the attention of the site visitor and make them think for a moment about some to talk to. Make this an important Call-to-action, next only to say Add-to-cart (saying, if you are not the buyer, see if you know someone who might buy). Don’t put it at the top of the page, side bar or deep under, as user eye movement on the page is centered around the main content.

That momentary attention before the visitor leaves the page is very important. The reason why we designed a catchy logo. Many different button images are to help to pick the one that suits your site layout and styling.

2. Give them reason to talk

Nothing can help, if the content does not provide a reason why someone should talk to a friend about. The reasons why people may talk about are numerous and sometimes very simple. However, providing enough data and context for the visitor to get motivated is important. Hi-res picture or video, user reviews or nicely presented blog post, will get spread much more.

Word of mouth is all about the REASON why someone is communicating your content. This is not the impersonal saving to a bookmarking site, where there is no chance to communicate this reason.

The opportunity for the user to write about the reason why he/she thinks the friend should look at this content is the key. Attention is scarce otherwise.

3. Make it easy for them

When a user has to remember his friend (contact) or go somewhere else to find that, reduces the chances of WOM. Helping him find contacts of friends on various channel will make it easy.

Next to email (the good old communication channel), Facebook is the second most popular WOM channel. Replace the old Email-this-page link and popup with a widget that gives options for users to communicate.

Tell a friend is useless, unless the friend come back to check your site.

A nicely drafted information about your content/product (potentially with a good image), to which a user simply needs to add the reasoning behind this communication, will be very useful. Sending a link alone, sometimes does not grab the interest of the friend

Analyzing these aspects from your target audience viewpoint can help in getting better results through WOMM.

This post is inspired by Andy Sernovitz’s book WOMM.