Word of Mouth Made Measurable: Quantifying Internet “Buzz” :: nelson schmidt

Word of Mouth Made Measurable: Quantifying Internet “Buzz”

Word of mouth is your best form of advertising. And the web is your most measurable form. Buzz measurement acknowledges these two truths and seeks to make measurable the online word of mouth your brand is receiving.

There are two types of buzz measurement, and as their names imply, these count either brand-specific links or mentions:

Backlinks — This metric looks at how many web sites are pointing to your site through hyperlinks. One way to generate this count is to look for clicks in your web analytics reports. If someone has clicked through to your site from a particular directory, online forum or bookmarking site, you can be sure there is a mention on that site about yours. You can also use Google’s “link:(web site address)” or “site to (web site address)” commands to see a portion of the sites pointing to a web address.

Text Mentions — This metric counts the number of people who are talking about your brand on various social media sites. Social media sites include online forums (example: Yahoo Answers), blogs (example: AutoBlog) and social bookmarking sites (example: StumbleUpon).

In both types, there is a wide variety of sites measured. Some carry more weight than others, in terms of reputation, and ultimately, the impact on your brand.

There are also several reasons for conducting the research. These include ranking high with search engines, gauging public receptiveness to a product feature or characteristic, or simply to compare your reputation to your competitors.

Talk to Nelson Schmidt about adding these and other web strategies to your marketing toolkit to ensure that your best form of advertising is no longer measured by pure anecdote.

Nelson-Schmidt

Word of Mouth Made Measurable: Quantifying Internet “Buzz”