“Word of Mouth” is defined as the passing of information from one person to another.  “Word of Mouth Marketing” is the act of building better communication methods between consumers, or between consumers and corporations.  With the advent and wide adoption of social media on the internet, communication between people, interest groups, organizations and corporations have become easier and more powerful.  Examples of Word of Mouth Marketing include:

• Buzz marketing (the use of high profile entertainment or news to generate conversations)
• Viral marketing (entertaining and informative messages designed to be passed along electronically)
• Community marketing (user groups, fan clubs, discussion forums)
• Grass roots marketing (organizing and motivating volunteers)
• Brand blogging (sharing information on a blog that the community may be interested in)

Examples of word of mouth marketing campaigns would include:

• Creating communities
• Developing web sites or web applications where people can share opinions
• Using advertising and publicity to create buzz
• Researching and tracking online conversations

Word of Mouth Marketing is a very powerful channel for marketing a brand or a cause.  In 2005, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) was formed and has about 400 members today. The two main social media channels for Word of Mouth marketing are Facebook and Twitter.

There are a number of conversational monitoring tools and services.  Examples of self-service tools include Radian6 and ScoutLabs.  And examples of full-service vendors are JD Power Web Intelligence (Umbria), Nielsen BuzzMetrics and MotiveQuest.  There are also a number of WOM partners and vendors, especially in the digital marketing space.   Examples of these include Federated Media, Glam, Bazaarvoice, BlogHer, and The Social Medica Business Council.

Internet marketing is the marketing of products or services on the Internet. It brings together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Components of internet marketing are search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement advertising. Search engine optimization (SEO) seeks to improve the amount and quality of traffic to a website from its natural  or organic search results. The earlier a site appears in the search results, the more likely visitors will go to that website.

SEO considers how search engines work and what people are searching for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance for specific keywords and improve its indexing  for search engines.   Web standard HTML coding and site design are important for improving search results, and therefore  SEO tactics need to be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” is used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that allow for search engines to efficiently crawl and index a site.

Web 2.0 Marketing Strategies include blogging, podcasting, social Networks (such as Facebook), microblogging (Twitter), and user generaged content (YouTube and Flickr).