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April 7, 2010, 1 p.m.

Word of mouth trumps advertising for the kids these days

This chart sums up as well any the kind of shift that the “engagement editor” in your newsroom is trying to address. It’s from the April issue of the book-industry newsletter Publishing Trends (copy posted here) and it’s survey data asking book buyers how they became aware of the books they’ve purchased. Each bar represents a different age group, moving down from oldest (61-plus) to youngest (under 20).

For the oldest cohort, new books get discovered twice as often from an in-store display than through a recommendation from a friend. But for the youngest group (age 21 and under), a friend’s recommendation is a more common the path to a sale than those nice tables up front at Barnes & Noble. And the same trend line applies to the generations in between, too: The younger you are, the more likely it is that you learn about books through your social networks — online or in person — rather than through traditional promotion channels. (Note that print book reviews, bestseller lists, and direct email marketing from publishers and retailers also get less effective the younger the target audience — while a recommendation from an in-store sales clerk gets more effective.)

This shift is obviously a challenge for book publishers in particular and marketers in general, but it’s also a challenge for the news industry. Getting your content into the personal streams of your audience — where they can and hopefully will want to share it with their friends — is to 2010 what those “Make this site your home page” pleas were to 2002. And it’s more evidence that speaking with an institutional voice rather than a human one is not going to be effective with younger audiences.

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).
POSTED     April 7, 2010, 1 p.m.
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