Here is a challenge for you.  Get outside of your comfort zone at least twice in the next week.  I do not mean eat with your left hand, I mean do something really different from what you are used to.  Keep score and make yourself do it.

It is universally not easy.  But what happens is unexpected things will happen, and they will more times than not be good.

I am on a constant search to get the right packages and products together to help people create a buzz for their product or service and have it fit within their budget.  I just hate to tell people I cannot help them because they do not have a big budget.  Creating buzz does not take a big marketing budget, but having me spend weeks working with you does. That has been the reason for the book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing and this blog, where I spend a little bit of time each day giving away my knowledge.

The problem with the book and blog by themselves is motivation and uncertainty.  People can read about it and understand it, but they are intimidated by new technology or they do not have the motivation to keep at it for a while. You need to have someone motivating you to create buzz every day.

So while I feel like a cliche, I have gone and reworked our original coaching program to be effective, accessible and within most businesses budgets.  You can read about it here: buzz coaching program.

The goal of this program is to help a small group of employees become very skilled at creating buzz.  The coaching is part training, part accountability and goal setting with assessments each month.  I will also track the buzz your group is creating on the web and see how it compares to other trends and maybe how it compares to your competition.

Once the Buzz Marketing coach gets the group buzzing, it will be time to take the next step.  The team will be challenges with coaching others in the organization to create buzz.  They will attempt to infect the staff with the same sense of enthusiasm for creating buzz. 

The coaching is sensitive to your limited time.  How to documents are prepared in advance and all coaching sessions last one hour.  The rest of the coaches job is done without taking up staff time so they can get their job done and still have time to improve the visibility of the business.

If you are unsure if this program would increase your sales and marketing, fill out the short buzz marketing coaching request form and I will give you a call to discuss the details. 

I did several presentations today and in one I was asking people what they wanted to do when they graduate from school.  One guy wants to be a marketer in the alchohol beverages industry.

Cool, I though.

Later he had the chance to explain it better.  He met someone that worked for Guinness and did nothing but go out to bars and get people to try Guinness if they are drinking something else.  To this guy, it was a dream job.  Unlimited charge card and buying people drinks all night long.

It is probably very effective in converting people, assuming your product is good. What I found more interesting was the fact that they created a job position that made people think about it and talk about it. 

Can you create a position in your company that would stand out?  Corporate Evangelist was not always a reality…. what others can you come up with?

This week, or early next week at the latest, I will reach a blogging milestone.  500 posts!  This post is 491.

To celebrate, check back regularly and be the first one to post a comment on post 500 and I will send you a free, autographed copy of Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing. 

If you already have a free copy coming because you are one of the wonderful people that did a testimonial for the book or blog about me regularly, give someone else a chance.

I am still selling some at the author price as well.  Sign up now to get it for less than half the price.

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Dan Tudor frequently highlights what I write on his blog.  He usually highlights it and makes it better with his comments.

Case in point:  “But Wait!  If you order now you will also receive…”

He is correct.  It was a moral dilemma for me.  I am committed to giving readers of this blog as much good information as I can, but did I want to hype a book that would directly compete with mine?

I did it because I want you to have the best information you can, and also for all the reasons Dan writes about.  Also, Andy Sernovitz is the #1 cheerleader for Word of Mouth Marketing and I owe him a lot more than a blog post.  He is instrumental in building the industry I am able to thrive in.

As a general rule of thumb, I like to create buzz for something before it is available.  However, it is not the same kind of buzz before release and many people trying to do their own Buzz Marketing need to understand the difference.

For example, I started seeing movie trailers for Flicka a long time ago (more than 6 months, I believe) and my daughter has been asking to go.  I honestly thought we somehow missed it and it should be coming out on DVD soon.  The initial excitement (for my daughter, don’t worry…) is long gone.  I do not think it was a huge mistake, but it did create a sense of a let down instead of excited anticipation.

So what should you do before a product is released?

1. Keep some secrets.  Tell people enough to get them excited but not enough to make an I’m not interested decision about the product before it is available.
2. Build relationships – Blogging or newsletters where you can capture an audience of people that are interested in your topic, and you know will be interested in your product when it is released.
3. Build online advocacy – Get people to interview you, link to you, talk about you… but do not leave them with nothing in the end.  If you are talking about your upcoming product and it is not available for 6 months, you would have been better just talking about the general topic your product addresses and getting people to subscribe to your rss or sign up for more information.
4. Remind your audience – In the case Flicka, imagine if they’d sent a poster to my daughter with the release date on it. She would have looked at it every day and the energy level would have grown instead of shrunk.
5. Don’t put all your energy up front - Selling almost anything is a long haul.  Don’t put so much energy up front that you are exhausted once you can really start selling it. 
6. Save your big budget for after people can buy. – Create lots of free buzz before your product is available.  Use your marketing dollars after people can really buy.  – The exception to this rule is in products like movies that have a short life span.
7. Recruit Advocates – Recognize the people that are truly excited about your product and help them be better advocates.  Give them insider tidbits.  Keep their energy level high. Publicly recognize them.
8. Make it a cause – Create a cause around your product.  Sell the cause before the product is available. I could book all my travel online, but I use Coleman Travel because they have a cause.  All profits go to helping people with mental illness. 100%!
9. Have a focus group – The closer you get to release, the bigger your focus group should get.  Have them review and assess your product.  Give them permission to talk about it, but ask them to keep some things secret until the release date.  (No one can keep a secret, don’t worry.)
10. Train every person you can – Do not wait for your marketing or sales team to start building buzz.  Get the designers, writers, programmers and anyone else in the development process excited and give them permission to start buzzing.  If you are not sure how to do that, get my book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing.

I see so many people get all excited and create so much buzz for a product before it is avalalbe and then, when it is not an immediate hit, they give up.  Dreams of best sellers are gone.  The reality is that the pre-buzz is just the start.  If you are not familiar with the Long Tail, read that, pace yourself and set realistic expectations.

Earlier in the week I got a call from a different payroll company than I use.  PayChex wanted to come out and tell me about their service.

I do not like cold calling, but it really is a quest to find people that are mildly annoyed with their current provider.  I wrote a post a while back on the Annoyance factor, and this is a perfect illustration.  My current payroll annoyed me.  Nothing major, but I would like easier online access and they wanted me to pay a set up fee and install something.  Sounded silly and unprofessional to me, so I just dropped it and kept making calls every two weeks.

I didn’t go out looking for other options, but I jumped at the first chance to change.

Cell phone companies must also suffer from this a great deal.  Even if you have the best company, it is still bound to drop your call or cut off a voice mail occasionally.  Thus, when the contract is up, all bets are off.

If you have not read the article on the annoyance factor, take some time and do it.  It is not a lesson on creating buzz for yourself, but it is a lesson in how not to fall prey to other people’s buzz.

Years ago, getting in the newspaper or on TV was big.  It still is, but less so.  I mean, we have that whole web world.

So you need a website, right?

Pah!  Only losers have just a website.

Several years ago, if you asked me, I would have told you the importance of having one core website with lots of useful information.  One place people could go to get everything they need.

Now the world and the World Wide Web are a very fragmented place.  You should have one or more places where you convert, if you are selling something.  And you should have a fragmented array of things that all hype you, let people get to know you, and point to your conversion.  The list of places you can do this for free at grows every day.  It is called Web 2.0.

If you are still thinking just about a website and an eNewsletter, put on your seatbelt.

Andy Sernovitz, CEO of th Word of Mouth Marketing Association, mailed me a copy of his upcoming book, Word of Mouth Marketing.

He did a nice job by coupling it with Dale and Thomas Popcorn.  Made it stand out.  Anything I can take home to the kids makes me happy.

I have not finished reading the book, but it is a very valuable overview of Word of Mouth Marketing with action items in it.  What is funny for me is that his book is 2 pages longer than my book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing.  They will probably come out at very close to the same time and will target the same audience.

The good news is that they compliment each other very well.  Andy gives better examples and research of the why.  Mine targets more buzz actions and employee evangelism more directly.  If you are in the market for these kinds of books and have a bigger book budget than $20, buy them both.  They compliment each other very nicely.

How do you jump start getting your non-sales employees to start creating some buzz?  Here are five quick tips that can impact your effort.

• Publish your success stories and testimonials so every employee can see them.  The more buzzworthy stories you provide your Employee Evangelists, the more ammo they have to spread the word.  Do not assume they already know everything. You could do a weekly email or post them in a public place.
• Recognize top performing Employee Evangelists in a public way.
• Teach employees how to create more buzz.
• Grow Employee Evangelists by growing the expertise of your employees.  The more professional they become, the more they network, the better Evangelists they will be.
• Reward employees for becoming involved in the community.  Support their efforts and encourage them to make a difference.  By actually sponsoring or organizing some of this support, your organization can get considerable buzz.

These are just five quick ways to get your employees buzzing today.  Employee Evangelism is important for improved teamwork, organizational success and rapid growth.  The ROI on having happier, more involved employees is always a high return on investment.