This is part 4 of a 13 part series on anatomy of your online presence.

The anatomy of your online presence, the mouth, represents communication.  Not just answering email and phone calls type communication, but creating systems that make your communication more consistent and inclusive.

Talk to anyone that is an expert on sales and they will tell you that following up and following through is where most sales are lost.  Creating a buzz and having people talk about you, link to you and increase your online presence is the same. 

Take this example:  If you got an email from someone and they said how much they enjoy your blog and they ask you a question, you could answer it several ways.

1) Yes (or no)

2) Why would I answer them, I do not have time for that….

3) Thank you so much.  [Answer question] If there is ever anything you would like to see us do…..

Number three is the obvious choice, but are you doing it?  If you have developed your website beyond the basic brochure, and you are adding to it regularly, you will begin to develop a real following.  It will start with a person or two, and depending on how well you feed that flame, it will grow.

Example:  Seth Godin – Seth Godin is a Marketing Guru and author of many great books.  His blog is one of the top marketing blogs and he is always working on a variety of projects, such as www.squidoo.com.  You would think that he would be too busy to respond to the emails he gets (his email is right there on his blog) but I have emailed him at least 10 times and have always gotten a polite and sometimes funny response. – Not long, but personal.  It made me a much bigger fan.

So how do you Be The Mouth and do a better job online?

1. Respond to people every time you get a chance.  If they comment on your blog, if they buy an eBook from you, if they email you a question, take a few extra seconds to send them a personal response.
2. Be prepared with stock materials – I have PDF’s that I can attach with my personal message if someone needs some bio information.  I frequently get those requests when I am going to speak.
3. Reply again a month later – If you have some time, follow up a month or two down the road again.  This always impresses those people that contacted you and then went on with their lives.
4. Take a moment to return a compliment – If someone emails me, before I respond I frequently look at the domain of the email (the part after the @) and if it is their blog or a website they are actively involved with, I will comment on it if I have something to say.  (If it is terrible, I will just not mention it.)  This shows them you have taken the time to get to know them as well.

But wait, we are not done!

We still have a big problem.  You  cannot possibly communicate with 100′s of people every day using this technique.  And the only realistic way to achieve a big online presence is to have more than a handful of people care about you.

Here are a list of tools that can give you a bigger mouth by helping you communicate to lots of people WITHOUT spamming them.

• Set up a blog – It is like having your own, text radio station.  This company makes it very easy and is affordable.
• eNewsletter – Easy eNewsletter and auto-responder tool.  Build a list of people that can and also consider using it to create your own personal list of friends, like I did – click here to see – This smaller list is very powerful because these people have chosen to be my virtual friend.
• Join online groups – There are too many online group options to list here, but join a targeted group that interests you and PARTICIPATE in the online conversations.  Make sure people know from your comment how to find out more about you.

These are just some of the ways to increase your online presence and increase the volume and reach of your voice.

Advocacy at its best!

Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the 4 Hour Work Week.  I really like this book.

I do plan to hire a Virtual Assistant, but here is the funny thing.  Tim Ferriss wrecked Get Friday. (The Indian Virtual Assistant Company he recommends heavily in the book)

Any time you successfully help people succeed, you are creating an advocate for yourself.  On a good day, that could generate a lead or two.

On a great day, your advocate will write a best selling book and tell everyone to buy your service.  Now, Get Friday cannot hire people fast enough and they are experiencing growth pains like very few businesses do.

The moral of this story, and there are two, is:

#1 You could get very popular unexpectedly.  Have a plan for what to do if you experience explosive growth.

#2 Buzz happens at all levels, from barely noticable blips to industry transforming exposure.  Keep at it and you will succeed.

Bonus #3 – Treat every person like they are your future Tim Ferriss.

Buzz is all about the overnight success, right?  Send out a few emails and it spreads like wildfire and you are a multi-millionaire overnight.

Here is a Buzz Marketing secret.  Most overnight successes are actually years of hard work and risks.

Take Rachel Ray for example.  I remember seeing her books years ago, even though she has only recently gotten tons of buzz.  I went to amazon and found her earliest publication to be in 1980.  I am not sure that is accurate, but even if we throw that one out, she was publishing in the early 1990′s.

Can you stick to creating buzz, creating products and creating an audience for 27 years?  If so, you may have the makings of an overnight success.

Matt Heinz has been a reader and supporter of this blog for a long time.  He is also located in one of my favorite parts of the country and I think he and I have very similar marketing philosophies.  So when he asked me to review his book I was happy to.

His book is full of simple online strategies to grow your business.  I interviewed him and here is what he had to say:

1) What makes your book special and interesting?

At HouseValues, we recently launched an exciting new set of Web marketing tools to help our small business real estate agent customers capture more new business directly from the Web.  The book was written as an accompaniment to that product launch, to help our customers accelerate the impact and return they’re getting from these new tools.

But the book wasn’t just written from the point of view of real estate agents.  We wrote the book for all small business, as nearly every step in creating a successful, profitable Web marketing strategy is applicable to accountants, bakers, retailers, consultants and much more.

The book’s format is perhaps its most unique feature.  Instead of offering a large, intimidating block of Web marketing strategies, we’ve broken it down into individual steps.  Each step typically takes just 10-15 minutes to complete, and they’re written in sequential order.  If you were to simply follow the book a day at a time, after 2-3 months you’d have built yourself an incredibly powerful Web marketing strategy, all with minimal time commitment and surprisingly little out-of-pocket expenses.

Or, simply flip through the book and pick out the easy-to-execute strategies you like the most.  They can be working hard for your business by the afternoon!

2)  Was publishing your first book easier or harder than you thought?

Harder.  We had a great printer, and a great team within HouseValues that handled the book design and fulfillment.  But just the act of writing the book (even though it’s only 120 pages) took more focus and discipline than I had imagined.  That said, writing a book is incredibly fulfilling, and I’m even more excited to see it in use.  Many of our customers at HouseValues are already using the book to improve their Web marketing, and drive more customers into their business from across the business.  That’s the best output of this project, by far.

3) How do you use your book as a marketing tool?

At HouseValues, we offered a free copy of the book to every customer who took advantage of and activated our new suite of Web marketing tools.  This included a customized, personal Web site as well as advertising of their real estate listings on their behalf across the Web (driving more traffic and prospective customers directly back to their new Web sites).

The response to this offer was incredible.  Even more exciting is that we’ve been able to use both the book and the content of the book to make Web marketing more accessible to our customers, so that more of them are doing things in their business (mostly for free) to increase the volume of business they’re generating for themselves online.  For us, that’s the best part of this entire project – seeing our customers generate more business and success.

4)  Does it really rain every single day in Seattle?

Well, it is raining right now.  But yesterday it was beautiful.  It’s hit or miss here, but in the summer and early fall this is the most beautiful part of the country, hands down.

5)  How and where can someone buy your book?

The book’s available for purchase by visiting http://www.housevaluesbook.com, or just go to Amazon.com and search for “Move The Mouse & Make Millions!”  But if you’re a HouseValues customer, just call us.  We’ll send you one for free.

You can visit Matt’s blog at http://mattonmarketing.blogspot.com/

I just read the new book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Tim Ferriss and loved it.  Now my daughter and wife are fighting to read it.

One interesting thing that I had happen already.  Being in this best selling book created a lot of buzz for a a company called Get Friday.  It sounds too good to be true, so I contacted them last week.  Then again on Tuesday.  Then again on Wednesday….  still no reply.  Too much buzz can send your business into the crapper pretty fast.

I still hope they call me. I would love to try this service.  However, I am wondering if it is this much work to hire them, how much work will it be to have them do projects for me?

Mark my words, some day the United States will get education right and then there will be a big backlash.  Instead of blaming illegal immigrants and cheap foreign labor for our problems, we will blame our own kids.

How can I honestly compete with a kid that has all of their expenses covered and even gets an allowance?  The web has opened up entrepreneurship and kids are catching on.

OK, Elizabeth Grace is not a Kid.  Sixteen is a young adult.  But still, how many people that young have the drive to build it and the stamina to promote it?  Here is the email she sent me.  (Reprinted with permission)

My name is Elizabeth Grace.  I am 16 years old and recently started a website business called………. BookTestOnline.com   

Recently, I bought your Buzzoodle Marketing book from Amazon.  I love your book, it is great!   I have just started a few days ago really working the challenges.  Thank you so much!

I know this is what I need to get my business started. 

BookTestOnline.com  is an Educational Website for students in the (3rd – 12th) grades. This is a way for me to help other students with their English Book Tests. English is my best subject & I love to read.   

I am adding new book tests each week. I plan to have 50 to 75 book tests by August 2007.  After working for over 1 year, I am ready to get the marketing started. 

If you can Start The Buzz…………..for me!    Anything you do would be greatly appreciated!

Lets see….

• Website with clear conversion – Check
• Buzz Marketing Strategy – Check
• No fear to contact people she does not know – Check
• Long term goals – Check
• Discipline – Check
• Quick response with PR when someone asks for it – Check

Maybe the only fair thing to do is kick kids out at the age of 8 and make them fend for themselves, otherwise we all may be working for them soon.

I am not done with this book yet, but WOW.

I have been doing email marketing for years and I am learning so much from this book. Chris Baggott has written a great book with all kinds of input from other smart people on the topic too.

What I am enjoying the most is the level of detail.  Yes, I have a pretty good idea about email marketing and we have been doing it for years with some clients, but this book is providing me with the details that make me rethink every nuance of the process.  If you want to successfully do email marketing, this is a must read.

I am looking forward to reading the book, The Dip, by Seth Godin.  Guy Kawasaki did a recent interview with Seth on his blog.

This topic interests me so much, because once upon a time we were a technology company building another content management system.  We still have it, and it is fine, but we knew the market was moving too fast and we were never going to own the market.  We also found over the years that the pain people felt was not their inability to find tools to manage websites, it was the difficulty of becoming a popular and effective website.  No matter how many scripts you write, being effective takes a lot of man hours and human effort.

So for several years now we have been moving in fits and starts from CMS / Technology to Buzzoodle:  Word of Mouth, Buzz and Internet Marketing.

What Seth says in the interview is very true.  It is hard to transform and give something up, so you can pursue something bigger, more unique and more remarkable for your clients.  After a lot of pain we are just on the upswing out of the dip, and I am looking forward to the next 12 months.

Kent State University – I had Ben McConnell all to myself!

I had the pleasure of seeing Ben McConnell of Citizen Marketers and Church of the Customer speak at Kent State University yesterday.

It was an excellent presentation and I am a big fan of the book.

However, I am very embarrassed by the turn out.  This was a free event and there was less than 20 people attending.  Kent State did not promote it well, and you have to wonder about the business owners in NE Ohio when they pass up a chance to see a top notch speaker and thinker like Ben.  I sent a few emails and within a day had 4 other people going with me.  Why didn’t anyone else do that?  The people I invited really appreciated it.

It is no surprise that all our Buzz Marketing clients are on the coasts and not in Ohio.

The Velvet Hammer: PowHERful Leadership Lessons for Women Who Don’t Golf

I recently had the fortune of getting to know Elaine Allison and read her book.  Your first question may be why I did it, since it is a leadership book for women.  The answer is that I have all daughters and I am trying to raise them to be leaders, so it was a very important book for me to digest.  In addition to that, when is it ever a bad think to learn about how other people think?

The book is easy to read and thoughtful.  Creating buzz is about confidence, passion and relationships.  Leadership has some of those same elements.

I asked Elaine some questions so that you could get an understanding of how the book came about:

Ron: Why did you write the Velvet Hammer?Elaine: I saw a need in the marketplace. As I spoke at many workshops, seminars and conferences, women would come up to me and say “That would work amazing for me”, you have to write a book just for women. (I was also diagnosed with MS in 2004, thought if I couldn’t get on an airplane anymore to keep teaching and speaking – I needed another vehicle (way), to keep to doing it.