Any time a tool comes out that helps establish you as an expert and create some buzz for you, I get excited.  Visit www.work.com and publish how to guide.  Here is the Buzzoodle one I have started… I will add to it when I have more time.

There is no perfect word in English to describe what you are trying to do with Buzz Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing.  While I think that advocate is the closest word you can use, it does not quit peg it.  Evangelist is a good word, but not realistic for the majority of the people you are talking about.   The truth is, a lot of people caring enough to occasionally talk about you, link to you, mention you in print and refer someone to you is a really good thing.

With that in mind, I wanted to say thanks to this weeks advocates of Buzzoodle.  If I missed anyone, please let me know.

• Landing the Deal - Dan has been very generous with mentioning us, thanks Dan.
• Great Big Podcast – These guys just discovered us, but have mentioned us several times and done a podcast interview with me.  Thanks guys.
• A research site
• Top Lead Generator
• Career Intensity – Thanks Dave
• Sales Intensity – Thanks again Dave
• Make It Great – Thanks Phil for updating the blog role
• Converstations – Updated Blogroll, thanks.

Advocacy is as simple as a link.  Take time to thank people who do little things to help you succeed.?

Enthusiasm and Quality – How they effect your Buzz

In this article I have done a series of graphs that illustrate what may be happening with you and your company in regard to Buzz Marketing.

In order to create buzz individually, you must have a high level of excitement and enthusiasm for what you are buzzing about.  If not, you will not be able to sustain the effort and convince other people to get excited and spread word-of-mouth about your business or product. 

Yes there are other ways.  It is possible to create a product so good, so different, that it generates its own buzz and sales.  It is also possible to do something so newsworthy that you get a lot of buzz from the media.  These are not things you just wake up and push the buzz button one day.  They take a lot of work and some level of luck.

For the purpose of this article I will assume you have a high level of enthusiasm for your business or product and we will discuss how the remarkable qualities of what you are buzzing about will influence the effort you make through your enthusiastic promotion.

Dull Product or Bad Quality

The first analysis is the situation where you have very high enthusiasm but a product that does not excite people.  Your excitement makes them take a look, but few buy and many fewer tell someone else about it.  This is very frustrating for the buzz creator because they are excited but sustaining the excitement when no one else buys into it is difficult.  One of three things is happening in this case. 

1) The product is not the right product
2) The product is of very poor quality
3) The product is very boring and/or a commodity

If you fall into number one or number two, you have to improve the product or move on.

Number three I see all the time with professional service providers.  Insurance, Legal Council, Accounting, Finance,….. they are all services that many different people are selling.  Standing out here is not so much about the product as it is developing your personal brand to the point that people would come to you for whatever you are selling.

Difficult Product but Good Product

The difficult but good product is one that you can sell to people very well but your customers and advocates have trouble selling it via word of mouth.  Thus, you do not get any scale or residual on the buzz effort.  Businesses that try to do many things for many people will have trouble in this area.  They may even have their own customers going out and hiring others to do another thing that they do.  I saw that when another company I am with was hosting an Internet Marketing site and the client then bought SEO services from someone else because they did not know we did that too. 

Quality of the product may not be the problem here.  The quality of your message and your product packaging is.

If this is how your buzz effort looks, consider the following.  First, simplify your offerings.  Make them easy to understand and talk about for the average customer or prospect.  You just have to get them to understand the broad benefits and they will find ways to talk about it.

Next, even after simplification you probably are still more difficult than average, so devise a strategy to educate your customers, employees and prospects in a quick and regular way.

Blockbuster Product

This is the kind of buzz that says the quality of your product is great and your benefits are easy to understand.  It also says your product easily creates enthusiasm in others.

If this curve is how your buzz effort looks, you may have big problems.  Are you going to be able to handle orders and questions that are running out of control?  Is your quality good now but will plummet as you get busier?  People always say to me, “That is a good problem to have…” but they do not realize that the incredible high will be followed by an incredible low if you are not prepared to deliver on your promise.

If you are hoping for blockbuster buzz, have a plan for scaling your company.  If you get busy and your quality suffers, your buzz will be short lived. 

Steady Buzz

What does a good Buzz Marketing job look like?  If you are dealing with a big company that can easily scale and maintain quality, the blockbuster scenario is the best.  For a small to mid-sized company, the steady buzz will win the race.  This is realistic graph for most businesses.  If you have good quality and an easy to understand product with clear benefits, a percent of people you talk to will talk about you, and a percent of the people you have never met will talk about you.  Enthusiasm will not be sustained in most cases very far out, but in a percentage of cases it does because the quality of the product gets talked about, even if it is not the next big thing.

This curve does not seem exciting, but it represents double digit annual growth while maintaining high quality and excellent customer service.  This is a goal that should cost you very little to achieve if you already have good quality.  Simply increase enthusiasm and get more people to start talking about you via everyday channels on a regular basis.

Quality and Sustainable Enthusiasm are the two biggest elements for creating buzz and growing your company.  By strategically making more people enthusiastic and maintaining or improving your quality, you will experience positive growth.

Be sure to read the comments below the Seth Godin vs. Yahoo post.  It has some good info on search engine traffic strategies and some debate as well.  Thanks everyone for commenting.

Looking at my stats for my blog today, the number one traffic referrer was Google, of course.  Rounding out the top 5 was a post on Seth Godin’s blog that is over a year old. 

Yahoo! was not in the top 5.

That made me ask the question:  Is a link from one popular blog more important than your search engine rank in Yahoo?  It would apprear so.

Last night I went to a Jump Start Event locally and ran into the CMO of Jump Start, Thom Ruhe.  When he found out who I was, he said he reads our stuff all the time. It is wonderful to meet people who read your blog before they ever meet you in person, and this happens all the time to me.

I suppose it happens to book authors every day.  But how often does it happen to business owners?  Frequently if you blog and do a good job.

When you are writing a blog post, you frequently do it out of habit, and you do not think about the readers.  You should, because they are reading what you write and deciding on the level of relationship they will have with you.

What are your readers options?

• Read one article and leave
• Read and explore the blog for useful stuff that appeals to them
• Subcribe to your RSS feed
• Subscribe to an email newsletter or updates
• Link to you for their website or blog
• Contact you
• Bookmark you – (see bar at end of post)
• Refer to your work in an article, publication, etc.
• Comment or trackback to your post

The more you blog and the higher the quality of your posts, the more this will happen.  It is also important for generating more traffic, which is more people to make these kinds of decisions.

Jack Hill would like you to take a look at Work Giant.  It is a different way to find employees and has some good techniques to try to create more viral marketing.

We would like to all think that everyone needs our stuff all the time. The Little Mermaid has taught me differently.

You see, about eight years ago my older daughter liked watching the little mermaid. We have the video. However, she moved from cartoons to spy kids to pre-teen shows and I forgot about the mermaid. Now, our younger daughter is hitting the cartoon phase and I am once again reminded about Disney cartoons. Maybe we will buy the Little Mermaid DVD this time….

What does this have to do with you? Just like families have stages in movies they watch, so do businesses have phases in growth and maturity that may make them need or not need what you have to offer. Understanding what phase a business should be in to need your product will help you target your audience better and generate more interest in what you are doing.

For example, does a mature company need to hire a basic web designer? No, they probably need to hire an eMarketing expert.

Does a start up need to hire an ad agency? Probably not.

When our company was in its infancy, I remember hearing lots of pitches for services that I could have used but could not begin to afford. Those people did not profile or pre-qualify us very well.

To create a buzz people have to pay attention. They are more likely to pay attention if you have something that fits with their needs. Knowing not only the size of your target market, but also the ideal stage of a business, will help your message resonate better.

It is always nice to see someone take something you write and make it better.  Dave has a new blog called Sales Intensity and he adds to what I wrote about assumtions.

 Here is my origional post.

We all think of ourselves as individuals.  We are individuals, in fact.  However, take a moment and think about how individual you really are.  Here is a short test to see if you are truly individual:

#1 Do you exclusively speak a language no one understands other than you?  Obviously not, you are reading this.

#2 Do you have mannerisms and attributes that no one else has ever done? 

#3 Do you never interact with anyone else, because of your inability to communicate or understand?

OK, I think that is enough.  You are part of something.  Even if you are a shining light of individualism, of thinking outside the box, of innovation and invention, you are still a part of many things.

If I come to your city and ask you for directions, and you snub me, you are part of the city and have hurt its image and everyone in the city.

If I call your company and you do not handle my call well, you have hurt everyone in the company.

If you make a racist or sexist comment, you have hurt everyone in your race or gender.

Each person you interact with will think of you as a part of a different group, and your actions will reflect on that group.  It does not matter if you like it or not.

For example, when I am traveling in another country I am reflecting on my country.  When someone is visiting my city I am reflecting my city.  When I go to a business event, I am reflecting my business.  Even among all these obvious choices, some people will put me in the white male group, the business owner group, the Ohio group, a presumed religious group, a management group, a heterosexual group, a family group or whatever other group they may see.

Your organization is a group.  You must create a positive group image of your organization.  Outsiders will have an easier time categorizing your organization as a group and remembering details about the group, than they will each individual within.

Creating positive buzz and word of mouth for your organization is a numbers game.  You want to have as many positive interactions with people outside your group as possible.  You want to minimize and diffuse negative interactions.

For this reason, creating a culture within the organization where people understand everyone’s responsibility to creating positive interactions is essential.  Your job is a group of people you choose to succeed or fail with.  If you are not happy representing your group (business, city, club, country) then you should find a new group. Face the fact, you will have to participate with some groups and you might as well be part of more successful ones.