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Lately, I have been reading through the book Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz and have come to really admire how simply he lays out word of mouth marketing. If you haven’t read his book, you should. Without further adieu, here are some ideas offered in the book:

1. Find the people who will talk about you

The people with enthusiasm for your message is a great place to start, but if you don’t already have people willing to talk about you, how do you get them? First, start by doing a lot of commenting either on blogs of in forums. As you build your presence, people will repay in kind and talk about either you or your product. As long as you are open and genuine, you will build a following. After some time this, following will continue to build itself. Another way to get people to talk about you is to have a product that is remarkable. Having a remarkable product can’t be fake. It has to be real, otherwise the backlash will highly outweigh the benefit of trying. People love Macintosh because of the product, not because Macintosh paid them to go out and say good things about the company.

2. Give them a reason to talk

This is the reason that you want to find and target the edge of your market. When you market to the edge, you are offering a product or service that no one else is really doing. When you offer that product, it gives people a reason to talk about it because not many people have heard of it or used it. When a product is good or exceptional, people can’t help but talk about it. Everyone has an opinion and most people like to voice their opinion when it comes to something they think they know better on. Why do people love talking about the newest gadget every time they get one? It’s because not many other people have them yet.

3. Help the message grow

In the world of blogging, this would be the Tell a Friend button on your posts or the easy submit buttons to your favorite social network sites. This would also be the weekly newsletter people can get in their inboxes and easily forward to their friends and family. What about a free coupon for a friend as your customer is walking out the door? Talk about a great way to get either your customers or their friend to return to your store. If they don’t use it, you aren’t out anything. If they come back, you probably have gained a couple customers out of the deal. What have you got to lose?

4. Participate in the conversation

People love to feel special and important. If someone feels like they are in the know or part of a special group like a beta tester is, they will find ways to tell others about their status. So give people that option to be a part of the “in crowd” and tell them all you can about the new features or open things up to Q&A. In turn, they will relay that message and knowledge to others. As the flow of conversation happens, more trust is built and ideas are shared resulting in a better service and product while including your customers in the discussion.

5. Record what is happening

Of course I don’t think it is entirely possible to record or track everything that everyone says about you or your product, but there are a few useful tools out there. I love using Google Alerts (GOOG)to find the new happenings about my selected keywords. Every day I get an email that lists different Google news of blog posts found containing my selected keyword. Some days I don’t get anything from a specific keyword, but when Google finds something it is sure to let me know. Another option is to open up your own forum to help people with their issues or questions. As membership grows, the forum will give you a pulse of the sentiment for your product.

Word of mouth marketing usually takes a little more effort and thought to ensure it is properly executed. Even then, you can’t be sure that it will work out the way you intended. It is impossible to say how people are going to react to different products or ideas, and giving them the microphone can be a double-edged sword. With that said, always remember to be honest in your marketing and tactics. If you aren’t, it will probably bite you in the….

Have you had a successful word of mouth marketing campaign? Go ahead and share it with everyone.

*Don’t forget about the contest for the best business card design for Unconventional Marketing worth $50, you can enter more than once.

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What a great week. The sun has been shining for at least half the week and we haven’t received any snow. Yes, believe it or not, last night it snowed an hour from here. I swear this winter lasted about 7 months. I just wonder how the rest of the seasons fit into the year.

Happy Mothers Day
Face it, without mothers, none of us would be here. I would like to say and give a special thanks to my mother for surviving the Las Vegas heat in summer to put up with me. Thanks, Mom. I hope that I do not have to remind anyone to call or do something special, but just in case. What are you waiting for? Go now and do it.

Traveling
On Monday I will be traveling to the great state of California for a couple weeks where I am going to be helping out some family members. Before you start dreaming of the ocean and sand, I will remind you that I will be in the far north area of California near Mt. Shasta. I have been looking forward to my trip and visiting family. Hopefully I can post some nice pictures next week.

Tools
I finally caved and bought an MP3 player last week. In particular, a Sansa View. I recently did an interview and had the chance to record some of the conversation with a Sansa I borrowed. I was completely blown away by how well it recorded and sounded, not to mention all the other features included. I really wanted to get a decent digital voice recorder. I quickly realized they were about $100 and for a little more I could get a device that sounds just as good recording but also plays music and movies. It seemed like a no brainer.
Alexa
I shaved off 25k from my Alexa stats for this blog. That is a good thing. I really don’t know how much weight I give Alexa anymore. Alexa even admitted that in the last two years it was completely wrong in how it valued websites and now somehow magically it is better. In the end, is your blog expanding or contracting? Do you have more readers this month than last? Do you have more comments and linkbacks? That is what really matters.

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“It’s who and what you know that get you where you want to go.” -Josh Whitford

Most people who are online and trying to make a living from it know you can’t just throw a switch and start making money, at least not for most of us. Many of the top bloggers started blogging because they loved their subject and would blog about it even if nobody listened. These blogger also didn’t get to where they are now by sitting on their hands. 80% of my time online doesn’t involve writing blog posts but rather marketing this blog and ThatMutt.com. Networking is king of the Internet.

Before you call your workweek quits and head home for the weekend, promote your blog one more time in a way you haven’t tried before. I am going to give you a couple examples and if in one week you don’t see an improvement, I will give you the shirt off my back.

1. Get one new backlink to your blog each day for a week, how hard can this be with BloggingZoom, Hubpages, Entrecard, Guest posts and so on?

2. Start an email or message conversation with someone you don’t know in your niche. I tend to pick up conversations and correspondence with someone new every week. All of these relationships over time turn into friendships. Friends help friends, and you find that where you are weak they are strong and much gets accomplished for free.

3. Use networking tools to your advantage. I don’t talk about StumbleUpon and Digg all the time because they are cool to look at. They are networking tools that can generate a lot of traffic and exposure for my blog. Find 5 new friends and add them to your friends list on whatever social networking medium you use. Having 100 friends on Digg and sending a shout to each one when you have a new article is bound to get you your lions share of traffic.

4. Activity seek out guest posts. I try to have at least one guest post per week. This introduces yourself and shows your qualities to another market. Doing a guest post is probably the easiest way to gain RSS subscribers and a backlink to your blog. As a bonus, if you swap guest posts, it changes up your routine a bit so you don’t get bored.

5. Bookmark or subscribe to as many blogs as you can. Eventually you won’t read every post that comes your way, but you will at least know what is going on with each particular blog. When you come across a post you have an interest in, you won’t feel intimidated to post a comment or email the author your thoughts.

6. Along with visiting blogs frequently, comment frequently. Try commenting on every post for a month for those same blogs you subscribed to. It will not take long before the author is frequenting your blog and posting on your site. When mutual posting is occurring, the foundation has already been laid to pursue a closer relationship with another blogger.

7. Join a forum. Forums are everywhere. The only issue you have is joining the right forum for your topic. Scout out a couple different forums and introduce yourself. Make sure to include an awesome signature with your website details. When you find a forum you like, make sure to make yourself a part of the community. You will gain traffic, friends, feedback and much more in a short amount of time.

These are only a few tips to get you started in supercharging your network. Take action and make a difference for your blog and yourself today. If you have any other networking successes you would like to share, leave a comment.

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I like music. I am not a musician by any means and don’t know how to play any instruments, but I enjoy listening to music very much. Often times I use music as a form of motivation. In particular, I listen to techno, or more specifically, trance music. I find that listening to this music at a reasonable level increases my productivity.

Many studies have shown that listening to music does a number of different things, mostly contributing to the emotional state you are in. If you settle down to a nice dinner with your loved one and put on a soft melody, you will probably feel a lot more intimate than say listening to Metallica. As a matter of fact, there is a whole industry built around using music to build emotion. Just look at any blockbuster movie. When I find myself drifting into that afternoon haze, I will put together a nice little playlist to pep up my productivity. Here is a video of one favorite artist.

That video shows DJ Tiesto cut called Power Mix. With closed to 14,000,000 views on YouTube, there seems to be quite a large following. I haven’t seen him in concert, but I have seen similar.

I number one reason I prefer this genre of music over others while working is the lack of words. Instead of words, the primary focus is on the beat. Most trance music has an upbeat tempo that more or less energizes me. In college I would make the journey to the library to work on finals and papers. I would put together my list and away I would go. The funny thing about studying to music is the condition called same state learning, where you remember things the best in the same state of mind you learned them in. While writing an in-class final, I would constantly hear the techno beat playing in my head that I was listening to while studying. I often wondered if I would have done better on tests if I could have listened to music while taking them.

In the end, I am sure most people do choose their favorite music as a form of motivation. In Fargo, even the marathon won’t let you listen to music if you want to qualify for say the Boston marathon. I believe the race organizer’s reasoning is the disadvantage to others without the music motivation. Techno music is one of my productivity tools and if you haven’t used music as a form of motivation, I would highly recommend it.

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Well, the fine people at The SEOtree have done it again. They just released some new tools for you to increase your networking capability. If you don’t know about The SEOtree, you can find my post on it here.

The whole notion of The SEOtree is to build a network around you in one spot. On the site, you can post your articles and add your page to its directory (your site’s stats will be updated automatically). Then for all of your SEO (search engine optimization) needs, you can click on the forum and ask questions. The site is really starting to grow some legs and start walking. It won’t be long before it will be flooded with traffic.

The reason this up-and-coming site is so successful is due to the creativity of the originator. He saw a need for a one-stop-shop site for SEO enthusiasts and newcomers. In order to help promote the activity on his site, he made it even easier to use by creating buttons, Wordpress plugins and a FireFox toolbar. I have installed both the Wordpress plugin and toolbar.

The secret to building a good network and associated traffic from it is directly related to how much you interact within Internet communities. Everyone knows Stumbleupon, Digg, del.icio.us, reddit and the like are great networking tools. The idea is to accomplish as much networking as possible in the shortest amount of time. The same goes with income sites like Social Poster and all of the FireFox extensions and toolbars. When a site comes out in the first couple weeks with add-ons like FireFox extensions and Wordpress plugins, you can be sure its creator means business and is doing anything possible to encourage the site’s growth.

I said it once and I will say it again, we are going to see some great things come from The SEOtree in the future. I love using the plugins for easy submissions of articles. Don’t forget you can also get a paid link in the directory for Entrecredits. I have seen my authority on Technorati jump to 25 in 3 weeks of blogging, not to mention the Alexa jump to 276,530 in the same time. Building your network is building your road to online success. I wish you all well.

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