Does your email message stink?

May 8, 2008 | 1 Comment

The reason you communicate with people is to create relationships.  Maybe not directly, one to one, but connections none the less.

 Before you dash off your next email, consider if you are just answering the question or building a better relationship.

Email mistakes you may be making:

  • Email too short: If you are just replying to a question, you may be losing an opportunity to create a better relationship.  What could you send that demonstrates value and caring?
  • Email too long: If your email is too long, people will just skim it and get what they need.  Send the email with links that point to more information they might be interested in.
  • Personal & Caring:  Address the person and make your message more about them and less about you.
  • Email Signature: One of the ways I frequenly contact people is to look up a recent email and scroll to the bottom.  If you do not have a good email signature, you are missing out.

And lastly, don’t give away the farm.

You should build resources that you can send people to if you get common inquiries.  For example, I could have sent a recent group of inquiries the link to our blog post on 99 ways to create buzz.  Instead, I let them know they get that link if they sign up for our free buzz marketing email course.  The link was shorter, the message was shorter and the relationship is stronger because they sign up for our course.

Don’t get me wrong here - don’t double the time required to answer emails.  Simply have resources available that you can send or link to that strengthen the relationship beyond a yes or no.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Blog 

Deliberate Practice

May 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Steve Rubel has an interesting, if not shocking, post about practice and becoming and expert.

 Read it and think about how that technique could be incorporated in your organization.  Each employee should understand online media and deliberately practice creating buzz a little bit each day.  No, not two hours - don’t worry.  But a little bit every day, measuring it and reporting it.

Some will succeed, some will fail and a few will become rock stars.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Blog 

Care to give me your thoughts?

May 4, 2008 | 1 Comment

See an old post: here along with the comments.  Someone with the same name would like me to take this post down because people might confuse him with this person.  It was a person going around committing fraud.

I got a lot of responses from people after that post about him.  I think I would be doing a bad thing to remove it, but I hate to see someone else feel like their reputation is hurt.

What do you think?

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Are you letting just anyone edit your profile?

May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 Wink.com is special because it helps you create a great profile of yourself and integrate all your other web accounts and profiles together. If you have the feed from your blog, twitter account or other kind of RSS driven account, you can actually tell wink to display your last few updates as well.

Chances are you are already in Wink. Do a search before you sign up, as they may have imported your information from another source.

Downsides of Wink
One downside of wink is that there is more advertising than I like on a site like that.

Another downside is that it defaults to allow anyone to edit your profile. If you are going to take the time to set up a profile, you want to lock it down so only you can update it.

To lock your profile, follow these steps:

  • Choose My Home at the top right.

  • On the lower right under dashboard, choose profile settings.

  • Under permissions, change the edit permissions to only yourself.

One other problem we ran into is that it works better with the Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer.

Wink can be very beneficial in helping you with your online visibility for your name.

Be sure to add lots of websites under “Where I am online.” As your wink profile ranks better, it will also help those pages rank better and drive some traffic.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Yahoo Answers

May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Yahoo Answers is a tool that you may not have heard about, but it is a good tool for some people to build traffic, develop more search engine visibility and position yourself as an expert.

Saying that, 90% of the questions are not all that serious or professional.  But if you take a few moments and find good questions, and give good answers, this tool can be effective - and addictive.Yahoo Answers

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Here is why you want to consider participating.

1.  Search Engine Visibility

Each question becomes a webpage with the question at the top and the responses below.  These pages are optimized for the question and they are on Yahoo, so they rank very well very quickly.  If you have answered a question and it contains a link to your website, you could be getting traffic for years to come.  If your answer is selected as the best answer, it is moved to the top.

2. Traffic

Each time you answer a good question, other people are checking it out as well.  You could see steady traffic from a good and interesting answer.

3. Expert Status

Yahoo will not make you an expert by itself, but it is a good place to hone your Q&A.  Plus, you could always point to your expert site as a part of your answer.  If people like your answer and you have a link like:  Need more information about buzz marketing?  Sign up for my newsletter….

You cannot do this every time as it is rather spammy, but if it is relevant to the question, you should do it.

4. Ask Questions

You can also ask your own questions.  This helps you capture all of the stuff above and keep it at the top.

Note of Caution:  I have found that the less complex a question is the more it will get responses.  Even though the general questions have been asked many times before, it is probably your best bet.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Are you creating LinkedIn LOVE?

April 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Years ago, I worked at a university where we created an online community (before it was super easy) and used it to help students get to know each other before arriving at the school.  It was a big success but with some unexpected usages.  Students were using the site to plan parties and other kinds of activities.  The developers later started referring to it as the orgy board.

LinkedIn was developed to organize your network.  People you really know.  But by nature, some people like to connect with lots of people far and wide.  I see value in either option - having a strong network or having a broad network both have some great positives.

The trick to creating a broad network in LinkedIn is to have your email in your title and LION (Linked In Open Networker) also in your top portion.  These two things are an invitation to connect to strangers.  - See my profile

LinkedIn  could put a stop to this.  It is certainly not their intention, but why fight nature?  Wouldn’t people just find another way to hook up eventually?

Now, if you want people to pay attention to your invitations, write one that shows you took a real look at them.  Today I got this:

Ron

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. I work in a buzz marketing agency in Italy, and I think that Buzzoodle is the bible of word of mouth :)

-Dario

How could I not connect to Dario!?!?  That is how you spend 10 extra seconds and get a much bigger bang for your buck.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Networking, Blog 

Super Hero Cards

April 22, 2008 | 2 Comments

If you are a regular reader or know me personally, you know we have some very unique business cards that are shaped like bee hives.  They get great results and are well worth the little extra to pay for a die cut.

Today I stumbled upon Super Hero Cards.  I am not sure I want to see me in tights, but this is a good option for those people that want to have fun, stand out and have something different.

I usually get two or three people asking me “What ideas do you have for my card…” after a presentation.  Creativity in such a small and portable space takes time, but take a look at that site for a different take on the business card.

Updated:  Benjamin Bach emailed me his Super Hero card.  Here it is and see his comment.Email Super Hero

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Networking, Blog 

Home Improvement Buzz

April 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment

We just started helping a new client with a great new website:  Showroom 411

I do not write about every client here, because I try to keep this blog relevant to buzz marketing.  However, showroom 411 has a very relevant story that could be an inspiration to you.

Rick Maselli is a builder.  Not terribly web-savvy and not a marketer.

Years ago, he improved his project outcomes by using links on the web to help clients pick out the fixtures and materials they wanted.  This grew into an access database, and now has launched a very comprehensive online community around DIY Home Improvement.  It brings together home improvement people, products with public reviews and contractors that are there to help if needed.

My question to you is this:  How many companies are out there sitting on all kinds of great information and simply do not know they can leverage that for buzz, visibility or to launch a whole new company?

Showroom 411 includes:

Take a look and think - do you have another company in the making?

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Small Business, Blog 

Why You Need the Virtual Buzz Assistant Network

April 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

For years I have been saying, “You can do this.”  and I stand by that.

You can create buzz yourself, but you can create more buzz faster with an assistant that really focuses on buzz.

I hear from people all the time that tell me they know they CAN create buzz, but they do not have the time or could not stick to it long term.

In the past, we did not really have options for these people because you either had to hire me, and I work on only a few projects at a time, or you had to train people in the organization, which many people did not want to do.

So here it is:  The Virtual Buzz Assistant Network

We find great people that want to work from home and be your buzz-only Virtual Assistant.

To do this successfully, we needed to work out a system where clients work directly with the virtual assistants.  So it is a placement system where we look at your project or need and forward you our best members for your consideration - and you pay them directly.  This keeps the cost low for the client and puts the pressure on the assistant to perform well or lose the client.

We stay involved if someone requests monthly oversite by us (yes, there is an additional fee) and we also do satisfaction surveys frequently to help everyone get the most out of the relationships.

Best Use - Clear Marketing Goals

The best way to use this service is to set a clear marketing goal, like “I want to increase my email newsletter subscription by 3,000 people.”  If you just say “I want buzz.” it is less likely to succeed.

If you already do SEO, Web Design or Traditional Marketing, you can either work with Virtual Buzz Assistants to offer new products, or you can join and add the services to what you offer personally.

Our current biggest need is to get more Virtual Buzz Assistants signed up.  It takes some time to go through the basic certification and we have several clients on waiting lists for when we have a bigger selection of Virtual Buzz Assistants.

If you have questions about either end of the program, feel free to contact me.  Thanks for reading.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Blog 

Impersonal Buzz Marketing

April 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Even when you have a strong brand, people do not appreciate being treated like a number:  Seth Godin blog post about Forbes.

Remember when you are contacting people - the more they feel like they are the only person you are talking to that day, the more likely they are to respond in a positive manner. 

Does this mean that the Virtual Buzz Assistant Network we run doing the same thing? 

Sure, Virtual Buzz Assistants are short-cutting the relationship - but the point you need to remember is that companies that hire Virtual Buzz Assistants respect and care about online relationships - so much so that they have an assistant that helps them maintain them. 

Caring about the relationships and full disclosure is what makes the marketing services a Virtual Buzz Assistant offers unique.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Buzzoodle, Blog 

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