True Story—

My brother in law went back to Mexico some years ago and visited his brothers and sisters. Many of the older kids settled in the surrounding fishing villages about half way between Mazatlan and Puerta Vallarta.

He was visiting one brother and a nephew was coming back from fishing. He’d caught a lot of shrimp. My brother in law, being polite, offered to purchase some shrimp and the nephew agreed to sell him one kilo at an inflated price.

The nephew probably thought it was his lucky day. His uncle, from the US, was dumb enough to overpay for shrimp, and he made a nice buck or two that day.

Years later, that same nephew sent a letter to his uncle and asked him for some help to try to get a visa and come for a visit. The letter went unanswered. $2 worth of shrimp five years earlier probably cost him a chance to realize a major goal in his life.

It is better to go through life assuming people are more sensitive and less stupid than you think. The little favors you do today may be the life changing opportunities of tomorrow.

The Anecdote Blog had some wonderful things to say about the Buzzoodle software. It is nice to hear people appreciate your effort.

Thanks Shawn

Buzzoodle also publishes an eZine that you can sign up for here.

It usually goes out monthly and has some “best from the blog” stuff and at least one new article. It is also a good way to get reminded that we exist.

No SPAM, no sale of your info, I promise.

Imagine the power of really knowing your audience and knowing what makes them tick.

In our other business, Outstanda, we just helped a new business release an eNewsletter. We have done lots of these, but this one was something special. A new business with an email list of a little over 500 people.

The message was crafted to appeal to this highly targeted national list.

Results were a 60% open rate, over 25 calls and 500% opens. (The unique person, reopened it and average of 5 times.) The results have been incredible and the client stands to make enough money in the first week to support the business for the first year.

Now the Buzz. People in this industry all seem to know each other, and he is hearing that they are calling and emailing each other and discussing his remarkable new business that is going to save them money. If you can create a highly targeted message that has clear benefits, it can go viral in a hurry.

I had the privilege to talk to some of the staff for Kent City Schools today. This May, they will have a levy on the ballot and instead of doing paid advertising to try to pass the levy, they are looking to use Buzz to create more interaction with the community and broadcast their success stories with the staff who have witnessed it first hand.

After one of the meetings today, a group of employees got together and dove right in, discussing who they could contact, how they could contact and what successes were best to talk about. In 15 minutes, we accomplished a great start on getting the whole town buzzing about the school successes and reaching audiences that were not obvious.

This kind of community engagement and connection is going to be very powerful. The school system has 600 employees that we have challenged to connect with two people per week. It will result in over 15,000 word of mouth and buzz incidents between now and May.

Powerful and authentic stuff.

Word of Mouth Marketing is nothing more than carefully constructed coincidences.

• Get every employee talking and interacting more.
• Get every customer telling their friends.
• Get every publication or blog to mention you.
• Make your stories viral by providing remarkable products and services.

Then one day a funny coincidence will happen. Someone will need a widget and mention the need to a friend. The friend will remember meeting someone that worked for a company that sold widgets. When they mention your company name, the person needing the widget will remember hearing about you…. or reading about you… a while back.

And when they call up to order your product or service, your carefully constructed coincidence is complete.

If you have a little money and like thoroughbred breeding and racing, what do you read? The Blood-Horse

And what do you read about in that exclusive magazine? Buzzoodle, of course. Buzzoodle has been prominently featured in an article entitled “It’s Not Your Father’s Marketing” by Dr. William Shanklin in the December 2005 issue.

They do not publish the content online, but electronic versions can be ordered.

This came about not because of fabulous connections or because I am a horse breeder, but because I follow our own philosophy by creating buzz and looking for opportunities. This could just as easily have been your business.

This post at Guys blog is on Branding, but the tie in to buzz and word of mouth is obvious.

#5 is Cascade the message – Buzzoodle if I ever heard Buzzoodle.

Did you know you can get an RSS feed from google blog search? I have used this in two ways.

1) I subscribe to it in bloglines to keep an eye on when Buzzoodle gets mentioned by someone.

2) In my Squidoo Lens I built a module with the query and it integrates any posts from anyone into my lens.

Below is the url of the feed for Buzzoodle:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=buzzoodle&filter=0&num=100&ui=blg&scoring=d

To change it to your search, replace the word Buzzoodle with your word or words. If you have multiple words, put a + sign between the words and do not leave spaces.

What is going on with Buzz?

The interesting thing for me about this article is how we have evolved as a company. We started out trying to mechanize it (albeit with employees, not the public) and now we have learned and are focusing on how to help people create the relationships as mentioned in this article (albeit with employees, not through marketing gimmicks)

We also had venture capital people call us less than a month after our release.