Word of Mouth is 78% trusted – Now On Steroids

In their October, 2007 Trust in Advertising Global Report, Nielsen reports that

“78% of respondents said they trusted – either completely or somewhat – the recommendation of other consumers.”

Word of mouth has always been an important source of information, but it is perhaps more important now than at any time in the history of modern economies, because “word of mouth” has been put on steroids through the Web – and especially as a result of Social Media (blogs, twitter, BigTreetop) – where people are highly connected to each other. Here’s how we got to today’s world:

Telephone – allowed consumers to tell one friend at a time about a product or service

Email – allowed consumers to tell one friend at a time + tell a group of friends at a time about a product or service

Social Media – now allows consumers to tell one friend + a group of them + to publish their own opinions for millions of friends and other random people to search and discover