There has been a lot of talk around our office recently about ethics in word of mouth marketing and what implications unethical practices can carry. Don’t worry, we aren’t trying to launch an unethical campaign, but there have been some instances we’ve seen that have struck a nerve and thrown up the ethics red-flag for us!

The reason social media and word of mouth marketing works is that it is honest and transparent. You can give me 100 more reasons why it works, but I guarantee that if you take away the honesty and transparency of your campaign - it will fail.

Social media is about openness and showing who you really are. That is the power behind it. Sure, you can get ahead (temporarily) by faking love for your brand, but it will catch up with you. People are smart, and will begin to see through it.

This is what sets WOM apart from all other forms of advertising. It is real people discussing your brand openly and honestly. It relies upon real relationships being built. Of course, you as a brand want to foster those relationships as much as possible, but you cannot manufacture them!

I guarantee the effectiveness of social media will die just as fast as it has come into relevance if more brands betray consumers’ trust. Sites like Twitter will become overrun by nothing but corporate identities hocking their products. Taking the real socializing out of social media just makes it media.

To serve as a reminder, here at MGH WOM, we are bound by the WOMMA code of ethics. The essence of this code comes down to the Honesty ROI:

* Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for
* Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
* Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

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I don’t need to try and sell you on the idea of signing up for a LinkedIn account; I’m willing to bet that most of you’ve had one for months now. You’ve already filled out your profile, uploaded a beautiful picture, and connected to your colleagues and friends. So…now what?If you’re like most professionals, you’re still using LinkedIn as nothing more then a glorified online address book. What you need to know is that LinkedIn is already a good tool for marketing yourself and your company, and in the past year it’s made some major strides in becoming an excellent tool for this purpose. The reality is, with the state of today’s economy, you can’t afford not to make the most of every tool and connection available in order to create new business opportunities.

Here are 3 LinkedIn tools and features that you should be using, effective yesterday:

Q&A: This is the one of the best areas to increase your chances of scoring new business because it’s where you get to position yourself, and your company, as an industry expert. You can use the search tool to find questions relevant to your field and then dazzle the audience with your infinite wisdom. You can post links in this section, which makes it an excellent tool for driving traffic to your blog or site, and, in some cases, you will have the opportunity to recommend your company services - just be careful not to come across as too self-promotional.

Groups: Like Q&A, LinkedIn groups offer another location to position yourself as an expert by participating in industry discussions, posting relevant news stories, and connecting with others interested in your industry.

Status Updates: Yes, I’ve heard of a little thing called Twitter. MGH WOM uses and <3’s it so I realize this isn’t a groundbreaking concept; however; LinkedIn status updates are a great way to broadcast important professional announcements (new projects, travel itineraries, job postings and so on) to your contacts, including current and potential clients who are not using Twitter. Your status change will be posted to all of your connections as an update in addition to being displayed on your profile.

Here are some new features MGH will be carefully watching, which means you should too:

Applications: LinkedIn currently offers several applications for use, such as the ability to sync your blog into your profile, pull in Twitter feeds with keywords related to your company, collect data through polls, etc. All of the applications are great ideas, however, they still need some work. I’ve experienced trouble when trying to get two of them to install and show on my profile. I recommend you check out these applications, but realize you may run into a few bugs…at least for now.

Company profiles: Currently, LinkedIn pulls in information from third party sources. However, in the future, companies will be given more control and will have the ability to customize their own profiles, creating even more opportunities for you to effectively market your services.

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With everyone from moms to CEO’s jumping on the social media bandwagon, it’s important to remember the golden rule-”mind your manners”. Bad manners are creeping into social media sites, and brands are one of the main offenders.

Customers take note of their bad practices on these sites and react. According to this recent poll, only 18% of social media users trust social networking profiles from brands, showing that these brands are not succeeding in engaging their customers.

Below are a few guidelines that will help brands re-engage their customers through social media.

1. Be yourself- transparency is key. In order to gain trust from other social media users and establish yourself within the community, it is important for people to know who you are and what you represent. Appoint someone to manage your social media profiles, and allow for their individual personalities to shine.
2. There is no I in we- it’s important to think outside of yourself/brand. While linking to your brand’s website and/or blog is acceptable, continually doing this without providing other valuable content will cause users to wan. It’s important to remember you gotta give a little to get a little.
3. Lend an ear- both Southwest Airlines and JetBlue monitor social media sites such as Twitter for mentions of customer service related issues. By monitoring these sites they are serving as an around the-clock help center for their customers. In doing so, Southwest and JetBlue establish themselves as a pro-active customer focused company.

WOM is about standing out… Well, really it’s about fitting in. Ok, ok… so ultimately, it’s all about standing out while fitting in.

Take, for example, the newspaper boxes in the photo above. Which one stands out to you the most? The “Worldwide Short Film Festival” is unique among its peers. That’s why it stands out and that’s why it works.

So… what does this have to do with WOM? Well, if word of mouth is about sending a message by verbal or written means, then it’s got everything to do with WOM. The short newspaper box is sending the same message as all the other boxes- “read me”, but it is doing it in a unique way that speaks perfectly to its target.

With increasingly widespread competition in the global marketplace, in order for your business to succeed, you need to stand out. This doesn’t mean a bigger, brighter logo that sings and dances; it means finding that one unique quality that makes consumers form “friendships” with your brand. It’s a lot like positioning a product, but for your business.

Here are some ways to create that friendship:

• Find out what your competitors lack and offer it.
• Keep open lines of communication with consumers and respond to feedback immediately.
• Maintain a positive employee environment. They are the first line of communication between a consumer and your brand.
• Exceed the expectation of consumers in regards to customer service.
• Look for new and unique ways to talk to consumers.

Online reviews. You can live or die by them, particularly if your product is sold solely through the Internet. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the significance of these online reviews will continue to rise as consumers turn to the web to shop, in hopes of avoiding the ridiculously high gas prices.

Personally, when I go online shopping, I won’t even give a product the time of day if it has less than 3 stars. And you know you do the same.

That being said, here are some tips you can begin implementing right away to boost your online review presence:

1) Keep up: The reviewers spent the time writing the entry, so make sure you spend the time reading it. I’ve said it over and over again, but the worst thing you can do is ignore your customers’ opinions - particularly those of the people most passionate enough to write about you (either positively or negatively). So be sure to constantly stay on top of reviews by Google Alerting yourself and constantly doing random searches.

2) Get them talking: If you can’t find any reviews of your products online, then you’re doing something wrong (meaning that no one cares enough about you, or no one knows where to review you). To solve this, provide your customers with direct links to sites where they can review you, and ask them to give an honest critique.

“OMG! But what if they write something bad about me?!” Well there’s a certain level of risk you must be willing to accept by putting the power in the hands of your customers. And that’s what word of mouth is all about: you’ve got to be confident enough about your products before you can expect anyone to talk positively about you.

And that leads me to my third and final point….

3) Give them what they want: For the most part, negative reviews are rarely isolated incidents. Many times, they represent serious issues with products or customer service… serious issues that should neither be ignored nor passed over.

Respond to your critics by fixing the problems. It sounds so simple, but you’d be surprised at how regularly this just doesn’t happen.

The ease at which word can spread across the Internet makes ignoring consumer complaints dumber than a box of coal (I learned that term on a Russian-American slang translation site…don’t ask)!

To be clear, I’m not saying that you have to constantly bend over backwards every time someone makes a picky complaint about you, but you’ve got to be open to your customers’ serious, honest criticism, and respond quickly.

A company that takes the time to read and respond to their online reviewers will produce products that collect more stars than Super Mario (name drop).

That’s all for now. Did you try Pownce yet?