Today, word-of-mouth through social media can help make or break a business.

Have you heard about the Twitter effect? This is when someone posts about something on Twitter and that tweet directly results in a deluge of traffic to a website.  The Twitter effect refers to the quick spread of information online. The Twitter effect does not only make things go viral or drive traffic to a website, it can also help propel a product to success.  The Twitter effect is the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth. Someone with influence on his followers could tweet that a product is amazing which could then result in people retweeting the message or purchasing the product.  A person could rant over a poor service and this information could also spread quickly online.

In the last few months, Twitter has had a direct effect on the box office.  The new horror movie Paranormal Activity earned outstanding box office receipts despite supposedly being made on a budget of $11,000.  Paramount, the company that bought the movie held screening for the movie and fans just started talking about it online through Twitter, and other social media. When the movie Bruno of Sasha Baron Cohen was finally released, the film did not exactly receive glowing reviews from regular movie goers who tweeted about the film on its first day of release which caused the movie’s box office to sink the following day.  In the past while word-of-mouth had positive or negative effects on a business, the effects were not as quickly felt as they are today. Twitter, Facebook and other social media really make it easy for information to spread quickly all across the globe.Before the advent of the internet and social media, it was impossible for multiple people who leave in different parts of the globe to take action or react to information almost instantaneously.

Companies must always think about the capacity and power of social media and think about how they can harness these. A company must think of ways to make good information spread quickly online so that they can really benefit from word-of-mouth. Just as the company would want good information to spread online it should also monitor what’s being said about them online so that they canal so do damage control should anything negative about the company spread online.

Visit our virtual personal assistant sponsor: www.catchfriday.com

Follow us on Twitter: @catchfriday