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1.  

   

   Anon, May 6th, 2009 @ 6:40am

   
   

   I would suggest this is not an either/or dichotomy. The middle way is to propose innovative ways of promotion, than let people decide.

    

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2.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, May 6th, 2009 @ 7:46am

   
   

   not managable

   I was in a marketing course a couple of years ago and someone asked a question about word of mouth advertising. The instructor said that the problem with word of mouth advertising is that it cannot be measured or managed. He used the counter example of coupons. You can target who you send the coupons to, and you can measure how effective the coupon program is by looking at how many coupons come back and analyzing what else the customer bought when they redeemed the coupon. He complained that you never knew whether or not word of mouth had caused a customer to come into your store; even doing surveys doesn't give you reliable information about word of mouth.
   
   I think that may be one of the underlying problems of modern business. The prevailing philosophy in many large businesses is that everything has to be rationally managed. If something cannot be measured then businesses will tend to ignore it. If it can't be controlled then businesses will try to stamp it out. Things like twitter are relatively unknown in terms of their marketing impact, and they certainly are not controllable. Things like Twitter tend to blindside management.

    

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3.  

   

   refe, May 6th, 2009 @ 8:56am

   
   

   Re: not managable

   Not only is the idea that 'word of mouth' marketing like what you find on Twitter is less desirable because it can't be tracked unfortunate, but it is also bogus. I have no trouble at all tracking who is talking about my blog on Twitter. Every link I post is from Cli.gs, a URL shortener with analytics. I can see how many people clicked and from where. I can also just search for the name of my blog, the topics I've been writing about, etc. I can see when people retweet my messages or reply back to me. Twitter has made word of mouth extremely easy to track.
   
   More importantly though, the whole reason for tracking anything is to figure out your return on investment. It makes a lot of sense to make that a high priority with most marketing campaigns because they are extremely expensive and logistically complex. But with word of mouth and peer-peer marketing, the investment is usually very low. So the ROI should be worthwhile simply because of how little you have to put in, right? So who cares if you don't know exactly who is saying what? Are people buying your product or hitting your site? That's what's important from a business perspective.

    

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4.  

   

   Stephen, May 6th, 2009 @ 10:53am

   
   

   amazon's twitter feed

   I don't use twitter, but everyday I check Amazon's twitter feed to see what sale they're running. Great range of things for $.99 to $3.99. And no DRM. I can't recommend it enough.
   
   http://twitter.com/amazonmp3
   
   Note: I don't work for Amazon or have any stake in this. I just think it's awesome.

    

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