Is social media, and the data it produces, overvalued? As companies continue to struggle the ROI from their social initiatives, some are starting to suggest that social’s impact might have been overestimated.

But social media proponents say not so fast: social media is the digital channel for word-of-mouth, and although word-of-mouth has historically been hard to quantify, its importance is rarely questioned. Which raises an interesting question: instead of talking about social media, should we be talking about word-of-mouth?

According to Ed Keller, the CEO of Keller Fay Group, we may be doing just that in 2013.

In an AdAge piece, Keller suggests that word-of-mouth is going mainstream, and that “marketing’s not-so-silent partner” is now more measurable than ever. He points to a study conducted by marketing analytics firm MarketShare, which concluded that offline and online word-of-mouth “increased marketing effectiveness up to 54%, and a 10% increase in [word-of-mouth] resulted in a sales lift of up to 1.5%.”

The big question for marketers: how to harness and measure word-of-mouth conversations.

Media, or product?

Keller notes that traditional platforms, such as television, “are the dominant drivers of word-of-mouth”, but suggests that the rise of social media has finally encouraged companies to think about the “shareability” of their messages. In fact, Keller predicts that “in 2013, shareability will go mainstream as all forms of media trumpet their power to drive word-of-mouth.” – href="http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/62062-word-of-mouth-focus-on-the-steak-not-the-sizzle?utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=blog">Word-of-mouth: focus on the steak, not the sizzle by Patricio Robles

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