Make it Great - Best Blog List

December 31, 2005 | Leave a Comment

The Make it Great blog has a list of the best blogs in various categories and we got noticed in the marketing category. Thanks Phil.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle 

DIY Word of Mouth Marketing

December 30, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Our friend David Lorenzo is talking about something that fits nicely with what we said a day or two ago.

Word of Mouth Marketing has short cuts, but if you want sustainable word of mouth, you have to commit to is as a philosophy within your organization.

His post is called Do It Yourself Word of Mouth

(I am sure what he meant to say was that you should hire Buzzoodle to help your create a word of mouth campaign. )

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Word of Mouth Marketing 

The Brand Builder Blog

December 29, 2005 | Leave a Comment

The brand builder blog has an excellent set of ideas for making the new year more buzzworthy.

The entire post is right in line with our philosophy of how little, remarkable actions build up over time.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Interesting Buzz, Blog 

Buzz Story

December 28, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Here is a post on PR vs. Advertising by Tom Hespos. It is interesting to me because of what Tom says about wine, Ernest & Julio Gallo and his college newspaper.

I also think he would be an interesting person to talk to. By posting here, Google, my online errand boy, will send him an email letting him know I said something about him. He will visit this site, read this comment, and maybe post a comment saying thanks for mentioning him.

Read his post and you will see why that will happen. It is important to understand the tools that can create buzz for you.

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

Bzz Agent

December 28, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I like Bzz Agent. For those of you not familiar with them, they have people that willingly promote products via word of mouth, and those people report back to them when they do it.

While we are definitely in the same marketplace, Buzz and Word of Mouth Marketing, I do not feel we compete because our approach is so different. We focus on making your current advocates buzz more, and developing a long term approach to building a strong advocacy base.

I see Bzz Agent as more of an advertisement, and us as more of a long term marketing strategy. They both have their place and there is no reason not to use both approaches, if the budget and time allows for it.

The reason I bring it up in this blog is that people confuse us so often. They think that because we do Word of Mouth Marketing, we must have 1,000’s of people on street corners this instant waiting for us to tell them what to talk about.

Our approach is to transform an organization into one that understands buzz and word of mouth, that has a true strategy to grow it and has tracking to make it measurable. We are not a quick fix, but we have a great long term ROI.

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

Cancun Mexico

December 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I look at my stats more than I should. Somehow, even if checks are not coming in every day, I still feel like I am accomplishing something if readership is high.

To the many people that read regularly, I would like to say thanks.

Next, there is someone in Cancun Mexico that reads almost every day. I lived in Mexico when I was younger and enjoyed it a lot. To that person I just want to say gracias and please shoot me an email. I would love to hear about how Buzz Marketing is being used in Mexico. Ingles o Espanol, no me importa.

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

Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing for Restaurants

December 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment

As promised, I am going to be trying to do some generic Buzzoodle Strategies that you can use in specific industries. Today a couple of ideas to get restaurant staff to talk about the restaurant and invite more people in.

1st: Almost every employee has family, many in the area. When you hire someone, get a list of family members name, address and birthday and send every family member on their birthday a free meal. A steady flow of employee’s families visiting will help you retain employees as they feel better about the job, and will create more buzz from the visitors. They are more likely to talk about your restaurant if they know someone who works there.

2nd: Devise a way to have coupons people can give out when they talk about the restaurant. Not the traditional coupons, but something that is just for your buzz. (Maybe each employee gets a check book and can write a check for up to $5 off, redeamable in food, at the restaurant.) Employees sign them as they meet people and pass them out and the one that gets the most in each week, wins the pot, which might be cash or whatever you think your employees may like best.

These are just two ideas that could help take a local restaurant to another level. In both cases, it goes beyond what the industry norm is currently.

If you give either of these a try, I would love to hear about it. If you have other buzz ideas for restaurants, please post them in the comments area.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Employee Advocates, Blog 

Buzz Marketing from Boston

December 26, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Stephen Labuda from Boston has a post that pulls together some nice content on Word of Mouth.

His blog was just different enough to make me surf it a bit longer than I normally would. Just from the technical prospective I am not sure if it is a blog or article archives.

How did I find this site? It generated traffic to my site, and anyone that cares about what people are staying about them is going to keep a close eye on referral links. If you take the time to link to someone, make sure that you click the link and visit their site from it as well.

Better yet, email them. Posting about someone is a good excuse to reach out and say hi.

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

Buzz Readiness

December 24, 2005 | Leave a Comment

One of the things I have noticed lately is the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. If you create some buzz and get noticed, you have to be prepared for things you did not plan for.
We have had some unexpected situations crop up in the last nine months, and we have done the best we can to learn from them.

The biggest one is how Buzzoodle itself has evolved. We built it as a small business and maybe a medium sized business tool that would help people on a limited budget. However, because it takes some effort to set up and use effectively, not many of these time crunched small business owners take advantage of it.

On the other hand, some of the biggest companies in the world have called us and asked us about our services. The first couple of times this happened, we dropped the ball. We’d not even considered what it would take to help a company implement our philosophy across 10’s of thousands of employees.

It took us months to adjust to this different model for our business. Now we have a clear understanding of how our services could best be utilized in these kinds of organizations.

If your goal is to create big buzz, you also have to be ready to deliver big. And maybe not in the way you thought.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Marketing ROI, Buzzoodle, Blog 

Deep Breath: Look at the Small Things

December 23, 2005 | Leave a Comment

It is easy to get caught up in the creation of new buzz, but in the last week two people have pointed out our short comings, and they are obvious stuff that just gets overlooked.

One is how we answer the phone: Our office manager is on vacation and we are just all answering it any old way. One person thought they got the wrong number.

Two is our eMagazine sign up form: Someone pointed out we are not asking how people heard of us. (Trust me, I look at plenty of data every day, but it is a good point.)

The point of this blog post is that it is good to take a deep breath and look at your every day processes, before you worry about the next big Buzz Marketing coup you can pull.

Ask yourself: How can I make every day activities buzzworthy in our oganization?

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

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