Becoming Recommended: How to Build a Business Others Love Recommending

Do you rely on word of mouth to promote your business?

Are you wondering how to get more people to recommend your product or service?

To learn how to build a business that's highly recommended, I interview Paul Rand.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Paul Rand, the CEO of Zócalo Group, an agency that specializes in digital, social and word-of-mouth marketing. He's also the chief digital officer at Ketchum and former president of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Paul authored the book, Highly Recommended: Harnessing the Power of Social Media and Word of Mouth to Build Your Brand and Your Business.

Paul explores how your business can become highly recommended.

You'll discover what motivates recommendations, the importance of targeting the right influencers online and the six steps to getting more positive recommendations for your business.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Build a Highly Recommended Business
Know why your customers would recommend your business

Paul tells a story in his book about his first encounter with a popular East Coast grocery chain, Stew Leonard's.

He learned about the company over dinner from clients who not only gushed about this beloved retailer, but also insisted on picking him up the next morning to take him to Stew Leonard's so he could marvel at it in person. What an incredible word-of-mouth recommendation!

Paul discovered that Stew Leonard's does a great job connecting with people and that they built sociability into their business from the very beginning. He felt like he was truly part of a special experience when he was in the store.

There are some fairly consistent things, particularly in the age of social media, that companies should do to take advantage of this level of brand affinity. People love to share.

When people discover something that they think might help someone else, they really want to share it. If you can figure out why your customers would recommend your brand, you have great ability to help them to do it.

Listen to the show to discover what businesses should consistently do to become highly recommended.

The power of online recommendations

Online recommendations have a dramatic influence and a bigger reach than face-to-face recommendations. Word-of-mouth recommendations have always been the Holy Grail for marketers. Social media basically puts that power on steroids.

Now when someone says something positive about your brand, that endorsement has the potential for reaching millions of people.

Paul describes two types of recommendations: implied or explicit. An explicit recommendation is told directly in person, through a post or from an online review that something is great. An implied recommendation can be as subtle as liking a Facebook page or sharing a post, yet it can be just as powerful and influential, depending on the source.

Listen to the show to find out how recommendations, even from complete strangers, can drive people to your product or brand.

What drives recommendations

There are many reasons people are eager to accept and offer recommendations. Very simply, we humans take our cues from other humans. If someone tells us a product, brand or service is good and we notice them benefiting from it, we assume it will benefit us as well. However, it's all a matter of influence.

Most people have a certain degree of knowledge or passion for a specific topic or interest and tend to make recommendations around it. They often become the go-to person to ask about that particular topic.