Web Marketplaces + Social Media = Powerful Word-of-Mouth Marketing!

Julian — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:49:51 +0000

Check out this review of Book of Cooks by the renown French blogger Fred Cavazza. I agree with his proposition that the emergence of new web marketplaces (“a second wind” as in the title of his post) could be in part a direct result of the the economic crisis, and of consumer trends such as crowd-sourcing, ultra-localism, sell-sumers, among others.

And to build on his commentary, I think another important reason why service marketplaces are proliferating so rapidly (think AirBedAndBreakfast, SchoolOfEverything, ZimRide, FitOrbit, etc) is that they make good business sense for consumers, pro-ams (as Fred Cavazza calls them), wannabe caterers or chefs, as well as to culinary professionals. It’s a win-win-win.

For wannabe caterers/chefs or for culinary students, it is a great, cost effective way to start out and test the waters, without investing a lot of money.

For professionals like personal chefs, private chefs, caterers, food artisans, bakers, and even restauranteurs, it provides an opportunity to build customer relationships in a much more friendly/social/human way than for example what’s possible with web-databases, yellow-pages, etc (which can sometimes be colder, more distant, and transaction oriented).

And then there is the beauty of Web 2.0 (or Social Media to use a more current term that may no longer be current by the time this post reaches you), which makes word-of-mouth marketing exponentially more powerful. With the social networks being so integrated (e.g. when a user sets a cook as a favorite on Book of Cooks, he/she can choose to publish the story to the Facebook stream and share it with all his/her friends) those strong new relationships can rapidly translate into new clients!

Book of Cooks » Social Media

Web Marketplaces + Social Media = Powerful Word-of-Mouth Marketing!