Conference

http://www.womma.com/ is the word of mouth marketing conference coming up. I plan on being there. Buzz and word of mouth are best buddies.

Buzz and Multiple Channels

This is probably obvious to larger companies with big budgets, but for companies that are smaller keep this in mind. Often with a tiny budget you are going to try one thing and wait, hoping it works. However, the most powerful thing that will draw people in is if they have head about you from several sources. Even if it was just in passing. Today the public expects to see a Burger King commercial 6 times a day. They do not expect to hear about a smaller business with much frequency. If you are memorable and reaching people's eyes and ears in different ways, they are going to feel they are missing out on something popular. Something everyone else is talking about. Something trendy. Several months ago I was sitting in a Panara having a meeting. Someone came in and knew the person I was sitting with. He greeted the person and introduced himself to me. It turned out earlier in the week another person I know had mentioned me to him. Now he felt left out. Why do all his friends know me but he is being kept out of the loop? The instant trust and credibility made it possible to move quickly through the process and get right to how we could help each other. This was before Buzzoodle, but very much in line with what Buzzoodle does. It gets people more actively broadcasting messages about you.

PR People and Buzz

I got an email from a PR person last night. He said that creating an army of people building buzz and talking about you was too generic and unfocused. Is he right or does he feel threatened that we have created a system that makes his profession obsolete?

I think there is a place for PR and marketing professionals, especially for a big push or release. However, when is on ongoing buzz building campaign ever going to be a bad addition to your other efforts. When will it be bad to have a better connected, higher energy workforce?

Ultimately, achieving the buzz and word of mouth is going to get you better results and cost less. No wonder he thinks it is a bad idea.

To be fair to PR people though, others have said they did not sleep the night they found out about it because they were so excited about the potential.

Say hi to our friend in Australia

Please send some buzz to our friend Robert. http://www.buzzoodle.com/buzz/steers82.buzz He is very forward thinking and has already begun moving towards coaching companies in Australia on Buzzoodle use. We are looking forward to working with him.

Buzzoodle and the Feedback Form

I got a great question from one of our Australian Buzzoodle users. He wanted to know why we did not add feedback questions such as "Would you be likely to use this product" or some such thing. The answer is that in the paid account, you can add as many questions as you want. We have to give you some reason to upgrade. :) Buzzoodle group accounts are able to customize the feedback banner, exit page and questions for everyone in the account.

David Lorenzo - Advocate

Dave Lorenzo - What are experts saying? David V. Lorenzo is a Partner with The Gallup Organization. He has expertise in integrated marketing communications, brand management and human capital management. As a performance management and process improvement strategist, he designs solutions for Gallup clients that produce economic, bottom-line value. His consulting insights have helped Gallup’s hospitality, retail and real estate clients boost their organizational performance by improving employee performance and increasing customer engagement. He wrote in an email to me today "I’m a big advocate of what you are doing." His blog is at http://dlorenzo.blogs.com/

What if they say something bad?

In case you have not noticed, we are getting a lot of Buzz. One question people keep asking is "What if some of my employees say bad stuff?" or "My employees do not want to do that. They are not sales people" I will write at length on this later, but keep in mind that you have control of how you use buzzoodle. I would not ask unhappy employees to use it, until they had heard from the happy ones that had been using it for a while how much fun it is. If I am in a huge organization, I would do a test with 100 enthusiastic employees at all levels. You can measure the results and see if it works well. (It does, but judge by your own results.) The key with Buzzoodle is it helps people evolve into better connected people that tell stories. Every employee will not use it, and some will use it poorly. The ones that do embrace it will be so powerful that you will not care much about the others. Even if just the sales staff used it, it would build buzz they never thought they could build before. Let me know what you think: http://www.buzzoodle.com/ronmc.buzz

One Month Anniversary

Today is the one month anniversary of Buzzoodle. I have completed over 20 challenges personally and have more than doubled my normal sales in that thirty days. I would really like to post some other people's Buzzoodle success stories. Please email me and let me know how one went for you. ron@Buzzoodle.com

Broadcast your story

Today was an interesting day. Two days ago I wrote a press release and submitted it. It took me 2.5 hours and I'd never done it before. Cost $30. I also sent Seth Godan an email and he posted something on his blog about us. It took me five minutes and he had never heard of me before. Web hits for today have gone up 1,200%. Both things I did were Buzzoodle challenges. We now have users in every continent of the globe and have doubled our client list in the last 12 hours. If you create a good story and broadcast it in many ways, you can get great results. Don't give up when some result in nothing. The ones that catch more than make up for it.

Seth Godin and Buzzoodle

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ Check out Seth Godin once again. He is talking about us on his blog. He is the King of viral marketing. His book "Idea Virus" is great. I should point out that Buzzoodle encourages each person to reach out to new and interesting people. I sent an email to Seth at lunch time today and went home to eat. I came back less than an hour later to more hits in one hour than we get in any two days. Get outside of your comfort zone and communicate. He is not a personal friend of mine yet, but he was willing to mention us on his blog just from an email. Find out who is influential in your industry and drop them an email. You never know unless you try.

Blogs for Business

Buzz is a constant effort. You can use things like this: http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/ to get your blog attention. Ask your self how many five minute things you can do to create more stories about you and trails to you.

In the news

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb254472.htm Here is our press release that went public today. One of the fun things about technology is I can see that people affiliated with buzz organizations are coming to Buzzoodle now.

Create your own challenges

You do not need Buzzoodle to create challenges. It just helps. I go to many events and business get togethers. This morning I was at one where there were eight people. Everyone gets a few minutes to talk and it is usually very sales oriented. While it works, it is often hard to refer people because you are looking for a lead to a specific sales for them. The Buzz Networking philosophy is different. I gave each person in the group my card with my buzzoodle ID on it. I challenged each of them to pass it on to someone, and then pass it on to someone else, spreading an interesting story about me and our organization. It is a chain card, basically. What is in it for the other people? I told them if I get 10 responses (measured by the challenge ID on the buzzoodle card) I would take them to lunch and we would spend that time going though my outlook figuring out who they want to meet that I know. I still got some great referrals that may turn into sales. More importantly I know Guy Shirk ( http://www.buzzoodle.com/theguy.buzz ) was going straight to a large real estate firm and he was going to spread our stories there. He is not selling me, just talking about me. That makes all the difference. It is much easier for him because I gave told stories instead of talked about what we sell. While the typical sales person wants to convert sales quickly, the Buzzoodle way is to build buzz, build awareness, and change the way your staff thinks about you outside of work. It lays a broader, stronger foundation that sets you for future success. By the way, you can find out more about this group by buzzing ron at http://www.buzzoodle.com/ronfink.buzz

Tech and Cities

What can buzz do for you? I know that as a tech company with employees, we regularly have businesses try to get us to move to them. Amazingly, in the last 18 months, we have had Youngstown, Kent, Akron, Lorraine and now Cleveland make us great offers to move our business to their local. Talk about what you do with city officials when you meet them. They like positive buzz and stories that they can repeat and you never know what kind of offer you are going to get.

Buzz Networking

When we created Buzzoodle, we were looking for a word or phrase to describe it. For a while we were saying it is a different kind of Buzz Marketing. Today we got the phrase: Buzzoodle is Buzz Networking. Buzz Networking is creating a group of advocates to create buzz by many different means while enhancing their own network of friends and acquaintances. This adds value to the organization and is also of value to each advocate.

Buzzoodle Challenge - Never Eat Alone

If you use Buzzoodle you will find that it asks you to do many things that may seem like they will not get results. For example, I did a challenge recently where I was to write to an author I admired. I posted to his blog first, figuring some familiarity would be good and a few weeks later I emailed him. Now we have exchanged a few emails and will be getting together. Considering he is one of the most networked people in the world, I feel very honored to meet him. His name is Keith Ferrazzi and his book, Never Eat Alone is great. The moral of the story is that Buzzoodle works. Stepping out of your comfort zone works. Results are only a short distance away.

You in five years Event

Ronald Finklestein is having an event that is going to ask people to envision what they will be doing in 5 years. What is interesting for me is that we will be using Buzzoodle to set up challenges and make those dreams a reality. What percent of those people that attend really work at it remains to be seen, just as we know that every employee in Buzzoodle does not perform at the same level. Should be interesting. I think you can still attend. Visit http://www.buzzoodle.com/buzz/Calendar/event.aspx?eid=53 and read about it.

Shirts - Promotional Items

Some people have trouble seeing the difference between buzz and sales. Certainly sales can be driven by buzz. I just heard a story this morning from Rob Felber that he was wearing one of his clients shirts at a party and a nine year old asked him if it was the painting company. (The logo just had the name.) He was shocked and said yes. Turns out this little girl went to school with the owners little girl and knew the company name and recognized it on the shirt. Did that generate a sale? No. But buzz is when I post something on a blog about oberlan paints because people are talking about it. Who knew that shirt and that little girl would make it in my blog? How many other people has rob told this story to?

For those looking at Buzz and Viral Marketing for the first time:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ I did not discover this author until after Buzzoodle was rolling out, but I really enjoyed Idea Virus and it has changed how we make the software interactive. Required reading for people interested in Buzz.

Germany is buzzing

http://www.connectedmarketing.de/ A buzz marketing group in Germany is buzzing about Buzzoodle. Idea to company is three months, and release to global phenomena in three weeks. We have users around the world already and large companies are coming to find out how to utilize their most under utilized resource. Their Advocates.

Blog and Buzz

Went to a blogger speech at community of minds event last night and saw George Nemeth talk about blogs. It was good, and too short. Blogs are an essential aspect of buzz marketing. Imagine if all your employees were doing blogs and building a following and once a month mentioned something great that happened to them at work. Buzz You can see George's blog at: http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com

Latest Buzz

Buzzoodle got off to a bang with the release party at the end of May, 2005. Crain's said it was reminiscent of the .Com era. It was great. I was surprised it did not click with more people right away. Fewer small organizations signed up right away than we expected, but we started getting huge companies calling us, even though we did not publish the phone number. So instead of hundreds of individuals we will soon have 1000's of users in a few large accounts. I guess we can take that. I am going to start posting to this blog regularly now that the cat is out of the bag. Buzzoodle challenges your advocate base to start building buzz in a measurable, sustainable way. I am going to add stories here and best practice sorts of things. Buzzoodle is free for individual accounts. If you are interested in creating buzz for yourself or someone else, sign up today. http://www.buzzoodle.com and buzz me at http://www.buzzoodle.com/ronmc.buzz