As you build more relationships online, you get invited to participate in more and more group activities.  I am featured in several people’s upcoming books and recently I have gotten involved in a lot of viral blog efforts.

Ben Yoskovitz has invited me (and you) to post one thing you learned this year.  I am guessing he is going to take that list of what people write and put together a great list that will be a valuable resource for readers.  A good idea to get help building a page that will get linked to and create some buzz.

So what have I learned?

I am constantly learning when it comes to marketing and buzz.  Outside of this topic, I have learned to pull the plug quicker on non-profitable initiatives in our business.  By initiative, I mean products, employees and programs.  It is so easy to convince yourself you will eventually make money, and you wake up one morning and realize that after years of effort you are at best just getting by.

As I moved our company away from some of the older initiatives we were pursuing and focused more exclusively on Buzz Marketing, our business became more fun, more vibrant and more profitable.  Not to mention that our clients value what we do much more.

So this year I have learned that just because you have been doing it does not mean you should continue doing it.

Rich McIver of Directory Aviva sent me an email referencing his page, 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups.

It has some good stuff in there, and it is also an excellent example of how to create one page that gets linked to by many people.  What makes this page linkworthy?

• Professional, different look
• Lots of valuable ideas
• Something I may want to come back to – I cannot digest it in a minute
• Something I know some of my friends would appreciate
• I can see that other people value it based on diggs
• The author emailed me an expressed appreciation for my blog

Go check it out.  You will find some good ideas and also check out the big picture on how to build a page that gets linked to.

Creating buzz for others is a good way to create buzz for yourself.  Just like helping people with good quality referrals will result in more referrals to you.

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends wrote about Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing.

“Word of mouth” is becoming one of those overworked phrases. Everyone talks about the importance of having others spread the word about your business or your product.

But rarely does anyone ever stop to explain what you can do to trigger word of mouth.

Here’s the good news: as a business owner you can take steps to increase and accelerate the process of getting people to talk favorably about your business. You can get your staff involved in the process, too.

This illustrates how we all create buzz together.  She talks about my book, and I get some buzz.  I refer to her as a leading expert on small business (she is) and she gets buzz.  She and I have also both referenced a mutual client that wrote a testimonial, and he is getting buzz from both of us.

This is not a gimmick.  I am very sure neither of them would write a false testimonial if they did not believe what they were saying.  It is just the human law of buzz.

Have you offered to give anyone a testimonial lately?

Today I had someone unsubscribe from the email Feedblitz feature on this blog.  You may not think that is a big deal, but I have never had someone leave this blog before.  This blog is like the roach motel.

For me it was a warning.  Maybe I am promoting myself too much and not writing enough posts that people value.  If that is the case, I must say sorry.  It is easy to get carried away after spending more than a year bringing a book to life.  I will make sure to try to balance it.

This brings up a good question to ask yourself.  Are there warning signs you can look for to head off bigger problems down the road?

• More support calls?
• Less walk in traffic?
• Sale value per customer down?
• Regular customers leaving in higher numbers?
• People unsubscribing from your eNewsletter?
• Blog traffic down?
• More complaints about your pricing?

Any of these things could be a warning sign that you are doing something wrong.  They could also be a warning sign of a changing business climate for your industry.  They could also mean your neighborhood is not so trendy anymore. 

If you start to see warning signs that things are changing, don’t wait until it is too late.

If you are thinking about how to get ahead in your career, I strongly suggest Career Intensity.  It is even a great book for entrepreneurs because it teaches you many valuable lessons about how to manage your career, even if you are your own boss.

For the next 5 direct purchases of Career Intensity from the Career Intensity site, Dave and I are throwing in a free copy of Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing.  That is two books for the price of one.  You will have to act fast though, as it will go fast.

A Marketing Blog Called the Viral Garden is leading the charge of listing the top 25 marketing blogs. And another more interesting charge, the notable z-listers. I moved from a Blogspot blog to this Word Press blog a while back and I knew it would hurt my traffic. I accepted it and got on with life. Thus, I am more a z-lister now than before.

The cool thing the viral garden is doing is asking people to put up his list of notable z-list blogs on your blog, if you have one. Just copy and paste. Blogs are given rank by traffic and by links to the blog. I love this viral, grass roots effort to help people find good blogs that have less buzz at this point. I love it more because I am on the list. Here it is.

Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Two Hat Marketing
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
On Influence and Automation
Kinetic Ideas
MSCO
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl

Nice idea and I am looking forward to visiting all these blogs.

PS: Mike at Converstations is the one responsible for getting me on the list and I own him a big thanks. He has some excellent articles over there as well, that fit perfectly with what I write about.?

Just want to thank Jeff “Ski” Kinsey.  He was the first person kind enough to read the book and review it on Amazon. - He was also kind enough to invite me to speak at an event he is working on.  Check it out here.

Reviewer:

Jeff SKI Kinsey (Hilton Head Island, SC USA)

this is it. the “hands on” book to move one to action.

ron has put together a great step-by-step action guide
for people in all sorts of organizations to make a real
difference!

i love his subtitle:

“The success of an organization is
the responsibility of every member.”

want to make a difference in the world? buy this book.
i do… and i did.

-ski

Don’t have $15?  Win a free autographed copy of Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing at the Instigator Blog.  This blog is about entrepreneurship, business and new ideas.  You should check it out.  Ben Yoskovitz is the author and if you are wondering if LinkedIn works, it does when you use it.  I met Ben via our LinkedIn Connection.

When I go out and speak about getting employees involved with creating buzz and word of mouth for the company, I always get a lot of nay-sayers that think it is not possible.  The fact is, involved management that helps a certain percentage of the workforce create buzz will improve employee moral and give employees a stronger sense of involvement with the company.

What does the management team need to do to increase buzz and employee morale?

• Identify which employees will enjoy creating buzz.
• Create some easy to repeat stories that employees know that they can spread.
• Let them know why creating buzz is good for them too.
• Get participating employees each a copy of Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing to give them ideas and inspiration to create more buzz.
• Celebrate success and keep employees moral and involvement high.
• Help employees feed off of one another’s enthusiasm.

Challenge employees to make a difference in all aspects of the company.  This will help management improve buzz, improve employee morale for those that are willing to participate and make the sales guys job easier by generating more leads.

Testimonials are a great way to create a little buzz for yourself.  One will not do it. You are going to have to have a testimonial mindset.  This means you offer to give people testimonials even if they do not ask.

For example, I recently had someone blog about my book.  Here is how it generated more buzz for him.

• I did a one page sheet promoting his blog and what he said to hand out as part of my book marketing package.
• I passed that sheet out at a networking group.
• I linked to it from my blog.
• As I get more testimonials, his comments will be part of the testimonial page.
• I may highlight it in an eNewsletter.
• I will email links to his blog post when I email people about the book.
• I will point his blog out as evidence of our target market embracing the book’s message in reports.
• I will ask him for an advance testimonial the next time I publish.

All of these add up to a lot of buzz for his blog.  I am marketing him because what he says because he is a neutral 3rd party and it will carry more weight.  Can you start giving people testimonials for products and services you like and inviting them to use them?  Absolutely.  And you should.