Having worked in Internet Marketing for many years and now in word of mouth marketing and Buzz Marketing, I find there is one very simple and useful piece of advice most people can benefit from.

Have a voice

If you are working extremely hard to make your website generic and look exactly like everyone else’s in your industry, you are not going to upset anyone, but you are not going to catch anyone’s attention either.

Buzz is about catching people’s attention. Bite the bullet and accept some people will not like you or agree with you, and then have a unique voice. Don’t go off the wall and alienate too many people. Don’t say things that will jeopardize your credibility, but do not be afraid to be human and have an opinion either.

People talk and write about people and companies that are outside the norm.

Online spending to double in five years

What does that mean for you? This is the average trend, but many eMarketers put up their site and wait. How do you grow faster?

Traffic and results on websites are not hard to grow. They do take an ongoing effort, and this is where many webmasters drop the ball. Every week you should have different online and offline buzz about your website and drive traffic to it. You can experiment with your site and easily measure the results.

Don’t set it up and wait. Don’t wait because you are not ready to set up the perfect site.

Boil your website down to its primary goals and create a solid core. Then continuously grow it through more content, more buzz and more inbound links.

Your sales can go up much faster than average. Although average is not bad in this case.

Seth Godin has clarified his his Akron remarks and I consider the issue is dead. (People of Issue, please do not send me hate mail. If there is a city called Issue, I do not mean you.)

I think none of this would have happened if it would have said “Judging by the hotel I stayed at, Akron is dead.”

While this blog is dedicated to Buzz and not to any region, it just so happened we are close to Akron, Seth Godin’s Blog creates lots of Buzz, and sometimes the way you write something can create a lot of negative or positive buzz. I think if you look at the track backs of the blogs involved and do a technorati search, you will find it interesting how many people got involved in what was really just Sunday and Monday.

My ultimate goal was to get some people in the city to stand up for the city and show it was alive, and they did. Thanks.

For those of you that said you would never read him again, I still will, but you have to decide for yourself.

One interesting thing to consider is that there are plenty of Blogs that are negative about North East Ohio that are written by people from here. When someone that is recognized from the outside makes comments, it sparks a different reaction.

Another blog is talking about the Akron Issue. Selling Is Dead – Revitalizing the All-American City

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary Did anyone tell the mayor that blogs don’t matter?

David Lorenzo in NYC wants to see this issue between Seth Godin and I played out in backyard football. Here you go Dave.

Seth Godin is the second person in the last two weeks to say that what is being said on blogs is not all that important.

“Anyone who decides to write off Akron because of my blog is the sort of person Akron wouldn’t want anyway!” – Seth Godin in comments on an earlier post on this blog.

Compare that to Tim Russo on the Brewed Fresh Daily blog not long ago:

anyway, ron….i seriously doubt that anything i or anyone else ever says on a blog is going to be a deciding factor in “costing people jobs”, or “leaving people without jobs”. if that’s how a business decides where it’s going to locate, by reading comments on a blog, then good luck staying in business.

Really? Anyone working in marketing right now knows that the biggest movement in marketing is word of mouth. The way most marketers measure word of mouth is with software that scans blog posts and comments. And these kinds of comments do not go away in a week or two. This is part of the buzz we teach companies about.

That said, I love Mr. Godin’s books and blog. I just wish he would have worded things a bit differently.

Hurricane Seth Godin Hits Akron, Ohio

According to Seth Godin, Akron is nearly dead. [If you do not know Seth, trust me, this post is bad for the city]

Stale bread and some sad hotel employees are all it takes to know there is no hope for a city. We might as well have the Red Cross send some money so we can rebuild from scratch.

Did he meet the most innovative people in the area?

Having lived in Washington, California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and Guadalajara Mexico, I can honestly say the Akron area is not the most energized place I have ever lived, but it is far from dead. Ohio has many great features and is going through an evolution from manufacturing to technology and from bigger business to smaller business. It is filled with opportunity and people that want to get on board with exciting opportunities.

The most bothersome thing I find about Seth’s post is that right above it you will find him complaining about stereotypes in advertising. If he is going to judge an entire city by one day, we can certainly judge all people of a particular race by one bad experience with one person. It is the same broad, ignorant stereotype.

In fact, I have decided I do not like bald people based on his post. (Until I am bald)

Seth’s posts have the same effect on an image as Alan Greenspan would have on the economy if he said the crash was imminent. I wish Seth would use his influence with as much care.

There is a good, interesting article in clickz that talks about the box office results for the summer and how hollywood marketers need to pay more attention to Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing. Well worth the read.

With the budget and high visibility of an upcoming movie, this stuff should be easy.

Seth Godin has a great post about a novel approach to getting more from a retail customer.

I am surprised he did not mention that many of these people probably called their friends and told them to get down there that day.

Since the promotion was not posted, it could end any minute. If I knew a friend also liked to shop there, I would have pulled out my cell and told them to get down there right away.