If you have a group of products you are looking to test, try a charity auction. I just attended one tonight were we had several similar products people could bid on. Some people paid more than the list price for and others sold for about cost.

It was an auction where people write down the bid, so we hung out and listened to people discuss the products and watched the reaction. Very insightful and for a good cause.

The cost was the donation of the products and the resulting observation of the interaction and the final prices things sold for was fascinating to watch.

Dan Tudor at Landing the Deal has been saying a lot of nice stuff about us, and adds important comments on what we write. His latest is about our campaign effort. We couldn’t agree more.

• Landing the Deal – Campaign Comments
• Landing the Deal – Career Fair
• Landing the Deal – Career Fair & Trade Show

While Dan’s site is a little heavy on the ads for my taste, it is worth it because he is putting up a lot of very interesting stuff. (Even when he is not talking about us.)

Thanks Dan!

Obviously word of mouth is powerful in elections.

I am just overjoyed that our first work in that field was successful. The local school system here passed the levy, thanks to a lot of people.

We did a limited engagement and met with most of the 600 employees to talk about the importance of creating a positive connection with the community. Most of them were already aware of the effort, but we helped put it into a brighter light and gave them goals and stories to work with.

The levy passed last night by under 500 votes, and the staff reported 1,677 instances of creating buzz and word of mouth over the last 3 months. I am sure a lot were not reported as well, since creating buzz can easily be slipped into one’s life but filling out forms cannot.

Whether our effort tipped the vote is hard to judge, but in a close one like this, it must have helped.

Ben Yoskovitz sent me a link to a site that sends out custom, funny news to the person you designate. Could be just one more thing in your arsonal to keep in touch with people.

Check out http://www.igotnewsforyou.com if you enjoy that kind of thing.

When building a web strategy to get you noticed online, there are two broad approaches you can take. Which approach you choose depends on the client, the product or service and what you want to accomplish.

Resource Center – This is building up your website with so much great information that people come back regularly. They benefit from your free information and at some point will buy something from you, but maybe not today.

Rock Star – The resource center is more help oriented. The Rock Star also produces regular, interesting information but is more centered around one person as the expert. This person can be more opinionated and the primary goal is to build up that person as a leader in the industry.

For a company, the safer approach is to have a resource center that can be maintained even if the writer quits. For an entrepreneur, the Rock Star approach is better because they are the face of the company.

In some cases, companies may want to develop a Corporate Evangelist to be the rock star, but they should know what they are going to do when that person moves on.

If you cannot put your website into one of these two categories, you probably have a corporate brochure or a mess. Either way it will not create the kind of buzz you seek.