The buzz about the iPhone is wide spread. If you ever questioned the power of blogging to help springboard a brand, this is an example where it is true. Discussion of the iPhone is wide spread and bloggers in many places are gushing over the iPhone demos on the web.

Some people are a bit critical, but even then, they just have more ideas to make the iPhone better.

Even if apple cannot use the iPhone name, I am sure it will be a success. It is just different enough and interesting enough to make many people want one. And their product designs make people pay attention.

Apple may be a rare company that actually keeps innovating and getting better with age. I’d say it is as rare as a band innovating and consistently making better music.

I did not buy an iPod when they first came out, and I will probably not buy an iPhone when it first comes out, but I have a feeling I will have one soon enough.

I am having a good time listening to the podcasts on the Cullinane and Green Report. They have some wonderful, insightful guests and now I am jealous I am not out meeting more of these cool people.

Could you start doing a podcast or blog and interview cool people? Absolutely.

Sometimes timing just does not let your plans go smoothly. My book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing, just launched and I am knee deep in fixing technical issues with another product we have.

Good thing there is a long tail!

While my buzz effort will be limited this week, please go to Amazon and get yourself a copy. If you have a copy coming from me from advance copies, they should be in shortly and I will get them out to you.

The book is much the same theme as this blog, but more organized and with many more actionable items. It is written for non-marketing people. Marketers and business owners can use it to get more people involved in creating buzz and increase their visibility.

If you buy a copy and send me a testimonial, I will post it on this blog. Be sure to let me know your biggest successes from the book.

If you were my child, and you are not because my kids don’t read my stuff, you would frequently hear me talk about patterns.  I tell them the world is a group of patterns and you cannot control them all because you are a small fish in a big pond.

There are a group of patterns you do have some control over, and that is you.  Who you are.  What you do.  – And the first pattern you need to control is one that recognizes you as a group of patterns and enables you to shape yourself into the most powerful and successful matrix you can be.

That means that you do influence the world around you, although you recognize you cannot absolutely control it. 

The point?  Like it or not, you are a series of patterns.  You do have control over these patterns.  You can pick and choose which patterns to follow every day.  Or you can just stay on auto-pilot.  If you are highly successful already, maybe auto-pilot is a good thing.  You already have those success patterns in place.  But could you be more successful in less time?  Maybe if you get off of auto-pilot and start redefining you.

Word of Mouth/Buzz is a series of patterns.  It is crafting a product or story that triggers enough interest in people to make them pay attention and repeat it to others.

Being successful with WOM or buzz is not difficult.  Learn more ways to communicate with people and make buzz a part of your every day set of patterns.  I strive to spend at least a half hour of buzz every day.  Usually at night or early in the morning.  It is not something I do, it is part of who I am.

Whether you are in sales and marketing or not, make buzz a part of who you are and you will have an important piece of the success pattern puzzle.

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.

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.

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.

One form of advocacy is to get featured.  What I mean about featured is that you start appearing in other people’s stuff.  You may not even know you are being featured.  If you think about it, big name writers get featured all the time and do not know.  They have reached the tipping point where they no longer have to pursue publicity.

I am not saying I am there yet, but in the last month I have been featured in a few places.  For example, in a Squidoo Marketing Group.

Just last night a noted local business expert, Cathy Panzica, was giving a speech to a group of CEO’s and talked about evangelizing your business.  I guess she spoke very highly of us because everyone was telling me about it afterward.  (I’d gone to a different speech about public funding.)

How can you get featured?  There are many ways and they tend to pick up steam the more buzz you create.  Here are some ideas:

• Get mentioned in an author’s book
• Get mentioned in the media
• Get mentioned in a speech.
• Get mentioned on a website or web-based community
• Be used as a success story for your city by city officials
• Give testimonials to your vendors and invite them to post them on their website, with a link.
• Podcasts and Radio Shows. 

If I missed any, please post them in the comments below.

Dave Free is a reader of this blog and asked me to mention Promoterz. Here is what he said about his company and it may be of interest to some of you. (I am not paid to say this, but I have also not used the service as yet.)

Promoterz is a hands-free, word-of-mouth marketing service for businesses. It identifies the happiest customers and gives those customers a megphone to share the good news with their friends. 

Promoterz(tm) does this by asking customers about their experience with a remarkably short survey. Promoterz(tm) then invites customers to become a hero by sharing a valuable offer with their friends. Most customers then request to be notified of other special offers or newsletters. The net result is an increase in word-of-mouth referrals and an increase in repeat business.