Everyone knows about the flower vase in the VW Beetle. They may know nothing else about the car or VW. But they can have a conversation about this silly little thing. If you’re struggling to find a reason for people to talk about your business — maybe you’re making it too complicated. You only need [...]
Newsletter #856: The “Get Rid of It” Issue
October 27, 2011
[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.] Most businesses are obsessed with adding something — more products, more features, and more complications. But some smart marketers are showing [...]
Top 30 questions from social media marketers
October 26, 2011
MotiveQuest, a social intelligence company (and client), has compiled a list of the top 30 questions marketers ask of their social media research. Interestingly, the question that most social listening dashboards are designed to answer — “what are people saying about my brand?” — didn’t crack the top 50. The top concerns were comparing their [...]
Who runs social media at big brands?
October 25, 2011
You would meet them personally if you were coming to our BlogWell event in Atlanta on November 8. The head of social media from the following companies will be there. (If you’re the head of social media at big brand, there are people just like you, with jobs just like yours, at 200 global brands who [...]
Suggest things they didn’t even know were for sale
October 25, 2011
Here’s a slightly-more-sophisticated version of yesterday’s post about suggesting new products to your existing customers. GoDaddy, the domain seller, has an algorithm that looks for domains that match those that their customers already own. I have a lot of domains related to marketing and a lot of .orgs — so they suggested the ones in [...]
When selling is actually customer service
October 24, 2011
Another classic, effective marketing technique demonstrated by Amazon: They send an email reminder to their customers when the sequel to a previous purchase is released. This week they dropped me a note that Dan Roam has a new book because I bought his previous ones. I bought it, of course. The best part: This sort [...]
Your profile picture helps your career
October 23, 2011
Great advice on choosing a good social media profile photo from LinkedIn’s Nicole Williams: Always have a photo: Profiles with photos get 7x more traffic Just you: Photos with friends or pets make you look unprofessional Dress to match the workplace: Your outfit shows how you’ll fit in Look natural: A stodgy or stiff photo [...]
Save 3,000,000 gallons of water. Get 100 new customers.
October 22, 2011
Radiant Plumbing has a fantastic idea — and a great example of word of mouth marketing for a small business: They offered to fix 1,000 leaky toilets in Austin for free. This would save 3,000,000 gallons of water each month. Which saves a ton of money for homeowners and is a great community service here [...]
The influence of word of mouth marketing
October 21, 2011
This fantastic infographic from WOMMA says it all. Learn more at the upcoming WOMMA Summit.
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