Forget about SEO and all the fancy optimization methods, word of mouth is probably the most powerful thing an artist or a business can ever have.

Word of mouth is not sharing through social media. People don't generally trust anything that's shared through social media, even if it's done by a friend to a friend. Word of mouth is real life sharing!

According to a study by McKinsey word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.

“[Companies] live or die by word of mouth.”

Jonah Berger

Marketing masterminds Seth Godin and Ryan Holiday agree. Godin, e.g., in his book This is Marketing, has written that he rather have people find his blog using a keyword “Seth” than by the keyword "blog.”

How to create word of mouth? Well, that’s another story. This is what everyone who knows how powerful it is, is trying to do. The problem is, it’s incredibly difficult.

However difficult, a successful word of mouth always starts with a single customer. As Seth Godin has written in his book Tribes: “Sell one.”