Interesting word-of-mouth case study at U.S. Cellular

Here’s a refreshingly different take on using influencers to generate word-of-mouth and thereby increase revenue for a cellular telco.

U.S. Cellular: Local Relationships Support National Goals, presented by Sherri Maxson and Jessica Masterson from SocialMedia.org on Vimeo.

Too often we think of social influence in large-scale terms.  Here’s an example of a mobile operator doing influencer marketing – starting small and building a community around influencers at local level.  Now, it strikes me that that this success won’t be easy to copy – it requires a person like Sharif with strong social media and leadership skills to make the project work – and even then, I’d bet that even U.S. Cellular found it difficult to repeat the success in other locations.

However, I particularly like two points: firstly, the mix of social media activity with real-life face-to-face events – and secondly the fact that the program increased revenue markedly (a measure missing from many social media case studies).

A strong, focussed social media approach fits very well with the use of Idiro’s Social Network Analysis technology to identify the key influencers.  This knowledge should be combined with local knowledge by (in this case) the local store manager to identify the high influencers who will ensure the program generates the maximum word-of-mouth.

Big thanks to the folks at wordofmouth.org for their post which alerted me to the story.