Six Ways to Create Buzz with your Employees

August 31, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I am doing a speech at a Rotary Club tomorrow and will be handing out something with tips to go back and get your employees to create buzz and word of mouth. Here is my first pass at the handout.

  1. Get employees with a computer to post to a blog or message board once a week, with the link going back to your website. Be clear on what they can and cannot say.
  2. Have your employees call one past client per week and check in with them. They can ask how they liked the product or service, find out how they are doing, and let them know you value their patronage.
  3. Have employees stop by in nearby businesses they have never been in before. They can introduce themselves and let the people they meet know they work by. They can invite those people to stop in some time if appropriate.
  4. Have employees write a letter or email to an author, reporter, or some other media professional and let the person know they appreciate their work. Offer to be a source of information if they ever need information on your industry.
  5. Spend some time talking with employees to teach them what your core competencies are. What makes your business special. Find out good customer service stories and let everyone know the stories and that you encourage them repeating the stories at every opportunity. Have them let you know when they spread a little word of mouth. Be sure they know what kinds of people you would like to meet and what are ideal prospects.
  6. If your employees have email, have them “ping” at least one person per week. This is a quick “Just checking in” email to someone they know but do not know too well.

This list of buzz challenges are good for individuals, but even better is you can get every member of your organization involved. Recognize people’s effort and reward people that get results.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Small Business, Employee Advocates, Blog 

Cost of a Word of Mouth Campaign

August 30, 2005 | Leave a Comment

What is the cost of a word of mouth campaign? Nothing if you have a good, buzz-worthy product, good customer service and some very happy customers.

But what if you want to actually do a formal, measurable word of mouth effort that will expose you to new markets?

I was doing some research, and this is hard to pin down. Consider your options:

1) A formal design and implementation of a Buzz Campaign will cost nearly $100,000 (minimum). This should include the careful crafting of the message, the development of an advocate base and the dissemination of the message in organic ways. (Buzzoodle consulting services can do this)

2) DIY with Buzzoodle is when you create groups, get your employees and other advocates to spread the message, and craft your own message. This is inexpensive but takes a lot of time, careful crafting of the message, and training of the staff. The cost for the word of mouth campaign can be as little as a few hundred dollars a month.

3) Build your own wom campaign and ask people to start talking about you more. This is not much different from referral networking but if you go into it with the idea of creating some buzz and word of mouth, it becomes a little easier. Just ask people to talk about you. Create more stories that will get passed from person to person. You can try asking some employees to do this as well, but we created Buzzoodle because we found employees do not usually participate unless it is a controlled, measurable environment.

Of course, the easiest way is to create the coolest, hottest must-have product. Then you just let the world do it’s thing.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Word of Mouth Marketing, Blog 

QvQ - Connecting online

August 29, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Lots of people are talking about QvQ. Quantity vs. Quality.

It is the number of people you connect to in an online social networking system.

Quality means you are stuck up and only connect with people you know well. Quantity means you are a bad person and try to connect with everyone.

The true issue is how much time and how committed you are to creating, maintaining and growing your network. If you cannot drop an email to every person in your network every six months, you are probably over extended and do not have as valuable of a network. But how valuable is it if I am only connected to people I know super well? Not very.

manageable is different to everyone. Keep your network manageable for you, and you will have a quality network no matter what the size.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Blog 

Be a Connected Twinkie

August 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment

How fresh is the memory of you with your contacts?

Become the twinkie. You have to stay forever fresh in their mind or they will think of the person they just met and refer them, buy from them, etc.

It is just plain human nature to think of people that you just met or communicated with lately. It is why I have had five lawyers in six years in business. I tend to meet a lot of them and if something is on my plate that day, I may have them do it for me. Lawyers I have met tend to work hard to get a new account but do not realize that unless they follow up regularly, people tend to drift away. You have to be the Twinkie Lawyer is you want to retain more accounts.

I just ran into David Ramsell, a graphics designer I have known for years. He is very good and inexpensive, but I have not talked with him in a long time. It turns out we should have been using him for some graphics work, but I’d just plain forgotten about his prices compared to other people we are using.

He made a point to reiterate his pricing to me when we ran into each other, after talking for a while. Excellent move, because I assume everyone is in roughly the same range.

It has been my experience that a few emails a year is enough to create a lasting impression instead of fading into the sunset of another networking event. Keeping your network of connections fresh is what nights and weekends were made for.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Small Business, Blog 

Set some articles free

August 25, 2005 | Leave a Comment

To help create some Internet Buzz, I published that last article in a free article directory.

I know some writers are fiercely protective of their work, but if you are trying to get noticed and create some buzz, give some stuff away.

I submitted an article here and will continue to post it around the web. As long as it has my author info attached to it I am happy. I published it on the blog and here:

Create Free Internet Buzz with Your Workforce

This is just one of the many challenges in the Buzzoodle system, which gets you higher visibility.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Internet Marketing, Blog 

Create Free Internet Buzz with your Workforce

August 22, 2005 | Leave a Comment

There are many different ways to increase your traffic on the web. Just as there are get rich quick schemes, there are get traffic quick schemes. These can backfire on you just like any other shortcut to results.

As part of your overall strategy, it is possible to create a plan that will get your steadily increasing traffic, increasing visibility and results. The more employees you have that use a computer the better.

Here are the key elements to getting your employees to create some Internet Buzz for you.

# 1 – Prepare
The first key is to create a clear document on what your employees can and cannot say about the company. What is the vision that you want to make public? What is unique about the organization? What stories can they tell? Collect examples of good and bad posts from employees in other companies.

#2 - Coach
Once this is done, have a meeting and explain that if everyone spends a short amount of time each week participating on the web, they can significantly increase the visibility of the organization and all its employees. Clearly state if this is to be done on the clock or outside of business hours.
Explain that this is not sales. Each employee should participate in online communications and add something of value to wherever they are posting information, and work in where they work if they can. Links are the best, but do not force it.

#3 – Set Minimum Goals
Ask each employee to commit to doing a minimum amount of online buzz each week. Some examples of online buzz are:

  • Post comments on other people’s Blog
  • Create or maintain your own Website or Blog
  • Email a friend and tell them something interesting on your organization’s website
  • Write an article for another website, with a bio and link back to the organization’s website.
  • Set up a profile on a social networking site and participate in discussions
  • Email an author or writer that you have read and introduce yourself, and let them know you like their work.

#4 – Collect & Reward Efforts
Have employees email you or record their buzz in a central place. (Buzzoodle does this.) Have someone review each buzz effort and recognize excellent buzz creation. Talk about how buzz effects search engine ranking and traffic. Give rewards to those top buzz creators and publicly thank them for their effort.

#5 – Review and Renew
Periodically give your employees new talking points about the company. It might be an exciting new product line coming up, it could be a great customer service story to work into a forum post, but keep giving them fresh new things to talk about.

If you give employees exciting new buzz-worthy stories they can repeat plus stress the value of their participation, you will find you have more inbound links and internet buzz than any SEO firm could have generated for you in a legitimate way. And it was basically free.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Small Business, Internet Marketing, Employee Advocates, Blog 

Raving Fans

August 20, 2005 | Leave a Comment

There is no substitute for having a good, memorable product if you want word of mouth to spread.

Three days ago I was at a party where some people were raving about Kalahari resort in Sandusky Ohio. They compared it to Disney, which I found hard to believe.

But the very next day a friend got a call from his cousin from Detroit. They were coming this way and wanted to know what the best place to take their small children was, and sure enough I suggested the resort.

Memorable name and raving fans made it easy for me to recommend it even though I did not have first hand experience.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Interesting Buzz, Blog 

Extra Effort

August 19, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Consider the power of a little extra effort.

I am cleaning out my address book this week and it got me thinking.

In the course of an average week, I probably meet 20 new people on average. Why do I make a good connection with some and not with others?

It really boils down to one of us deciding it is worth knowing the other person and then doing something above and beyond the typical “Nice to meet you” email. There is a level of things that make you say “that was nice” and forget someone, and then there are those things that make people reply or follow up.

We recently mailed some shirts out to people we met, just as random gifts. Within days I got very nice phone calls and have set up some meetings with people that otherwise would have become a memory. People, including myself, love random surprises like that.

It does not have to be a product though. Send someone the contact info of someone they will enjoy meeting.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Word of Mouth Marketing, Blog 

WOMMA Conference Pictures

August 18, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I did not take pictures but someone else did. It was a good conference.

For those that wonder that I look like, here are two pictures of me on the WOMMA website.

http://www.womma.org/metrics/photo/imagepages/womma058.htm

http://www.womma.org/metrics/photo/imagepages/womma108.htm

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Word of Mouth Marketing, Blog 

David Lorenzo and Buzz

August 18, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Funny thing happened today with Mr. Lorenzo in NYC.

I have never met him in person, but we have exchanged some emails and have mentioned each other while blogging and such. Seems like a sharp guy with an interesting job. He also gets buzz, networking and how to build a business.

He introduced me through email to someone he said was in my area. I emailed that David Every and it turned out we are only one block away from each other.

So we had lunch, and it was a really good connection to make. It is just funny to me that, despite my best efforts to meet everyone in Ohio, it took someone in New York to hook me up with a neighbor.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Buzzoodle, Blog 

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