Seven Deadly Mistakes that can hurt a small business

April 27, 2006 | Leave a Comment

We have been in business seven years. Here are seven things I have learned not to do in that time. Several of them have a strong tie to Buzz Marketing.

Unfortunately, it is hard not to be guilty of some of these some times.

  • Taking Customers for Granted
  • Not watching trends in your industry
  • Not knowing what young people are into, because it is coming your way
  • Not knowing what the latest hot technologies are for promoting yourself on the web
  • Giving up after one failure
  • Over Promising, especially when a client has an unrealistic timeline
  • Under Pricing

Avoid these and you will be very successful.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Hunters, Gatherers and Buzz - How do you do a Career Fair?

April 26, 2006 | Leave a Comment


Today we did a career fair. We are fairly desperate for employees due to fantastic growth and it was an important event for us.

This time we did it right. We assigned a hunter, a gatherer and created buzz. The hunter walked the room sizing up the other booths as possible clients, talking to applicants in the aisles, and did everything she could to draw people’s attention to our booth.

Another person was the gatherer. She stayed at the booth and was friendly and encouraged people to talk to her. Then to create buzz we gave away cooler things than everyone else. 10 Copies of Career Intensity, Buzzoodle T-Shirts and fortune Cookies (courtesy of David Lorenzo.)

Not only did the applicants want the book, but so did many of the vendors there. I guess a lot of people want to upgrade their jobs. If you are thinking about doing a career fair, do it well and make sure you give at least one copy of this book away. It brought a lot of people up to the booth.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Do you do Back Scratch Marketing?

April 25, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Today I was training someone on how to stand out better on the web. He was shocked when I told him to drive traffic from his site by linking to other people. Just did not make sense to him. Here is how I explained it.

Nearly everyone on the web is promoting something. Themselves, a book, a service, something.

People appreciate it when you help them by linking to them and saying something nice about what they are doing. Many times they will link back to you, if not that day, eventually.

This seems to be especially true with authors. Authors of one book rarely feel competitive with one another, because if someone reads one marketing book, chances are they are going to go out and read another.

So if an author lists other author’s books they like, they are creating a valuable resource center and not necessarily hurting long term sales, although that day it may seem like it.

This is Back Scratch Marketing. Embrace the fact that you are promoting something and so are other people. Link to them, email them and let them know you linked to them, and watch some of them link back. It is a win-win-win. Your visitors benefit from a more diverse resource, other resources benefit from the links, and you benefit from more people finding you through the links back.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

8 Year Old is Business Conference Featured Speaker

April 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment

How does an 8 year old get a speaking gig at the conference? Just like anyone else, doing something remarkable that people want to hear about.

Visit the conference links here.

Kids Roar released their first products today as well. Oooo, night lights!

Bravo to the conference committee for taking a chance.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Mr Career Intensity - Mrs Career Intensity

April 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Mr. Lorenzo is getting married at the end of the month and wants to offer a special on that day. Here is what he emailed to me:

I’m getting married next Saturday – April 29, 2006!

That’s right. It’s my big day but you get the gift.

On that day, and that day only, everyone who orders Career Intensity through my website will receive a free one-hour coaching session with me. During this session I’ll help you begin your own personal situation analysis. Here are just a few of the things I’ll help you with during our call:

  • Uncovering your passion.
  • Identifying potential barriers to becoming a Superachiever and teaching you how to begin to destroy them.
  • Identifying potential accelerants that can propel your career to new heights.
    The three tips that will help you boost your positive attitude and create great career karma.

Here’s how it works:
Go to this page on April 29, 2006 – http://www.careerintensity.com/buy.html and click the order button.

You will receive your book in about a week. In mid-May you will receive some information via e-mail (a career audit packet). Once you fill out the career audit packet, my team will call you and schedule our coaching session.

This offer will be valid for everyone who orders Career Intensity on April 29, 2006. It’s my wedding day, but you get the gift.

——–

We wish David the best of luck on this new adventure.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Personal Brand

April 21, 2006 | Leave a Comment

David Lorenzo has a post about improving your personal brand over at Career Intensity. It is really a challenge to reexamine yourself and make improvements.

To add to his recommendations, consider how you can create a little more buzz for your organization each day. If every employee did that, you would be working for a much more successful organization.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

The Four Steps to building Buzz with Advocates

April 21, 2006 | Leave a Comment

If you want to build a strong advocacy base, there are four broad steps to consider. Failure to do well in any of these four areas will result in failure in your overall goal. Don’t worry, it all comes down to good products and good customer service.

Build something worthy of buzz - If you are selling something everyone else is, at least create a new, exciting package plan. Anything to make it worth talking about, before and after using it.

Recruit Advocates - By recruit, I do not mean hire. I mean cultivate relationships, find people who like to talk about thing, especially thing in your line. Treat these people special and make them feel like an important part of the product development and evaluation.

Treat the customers they bring in like gold - If someone takes the time to refer someone to you, you’d better not drop the ball.

Recognize and Reward Advocacy - Recognize and reward people that are out talking about you, brining you referrals, being your free sales person…. Doesn’t this just make sense.

This all seems very obvious, but it is easy to get caught up in one area and forget about the others. Assess your efforts in all four areas.

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Accidental Bad Buzz - Andy Birol

April 20, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I had a funny conversation today. A client of ours called and asked if I’d heard about how Andy Birol went nuts and sent out a nasty email to everyone.

I’d gotten the same eNewsletter back on April 1st. When I’d first read it, I was shocked as well. Then I clicked on the link and saw it was an April Fools Prank.

What is not so funny for Andy is that many people skim eNewsletters and do not click on the link. It turns out people are talking about how he went nuts and closed his business. That is not funny at all.

When we write something, especially on the web, it is important to realize many people will just skim it. Are skimmers getting the right message from your writings?

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Phil Gerbyshak

April 20, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Creating great channels and flows that lead back to your blog and website are important for creating buzz and getting noticed. The funny thing is, the more of these you build, the more you have additional lenses, articles, pr to cultivate also. We no longer care just about website stats, but blog stats, Squidoo Lens stats, diggs, etc.

A friend of mine that is a fellow blogger went above and beyond when he not only helped out with our squidoo lens by visiting it, but posted it on his blog too. All from a quick email

He is one of those people that I have never met, but because of his blog, his 2 lens: Make It Great and PhilGerb, and being a very positive, communicative person, I have gotten to know him fairly well. We will be meeting at the Book Expo next month thanks to David Lorenzo, another great blogger, who is getting us tickets.

How well do your blog and website visitors know you?

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

Advocacy Systems

April 19, 2006 | Leave a Comment

It is one thing to focus on creating word of mouth, it is entirely another thing to get to the point where you create sustainable word of mouth with proper systems in place.

To get that initial jumpstart, just create more buzz, more word of mouth, more stories people like to repeat. But at some point, if you are successful, you will have to create a system for strengthening the word of mouth process. Consider building a system that:

  • Tracks word of mouth
  • Creating stronger advocates
  • Rewards referrals
  • Makes every employee a strong advocate
  • Creates a strong relationship among advocates
  • Encourages customer generated media that promotes you authentically.

There are more, but blogger has an outage in 2 minutes so I better post!

Posted by Buzzoodle Ron | Filed Under Blog 

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