One restaurant owner in Arizona drove to pick up a customer who had been involved in an automobile accident and was in danger of missing his reservation. Now that’s customer service! And it got such word of mouth buzz that the restaurant attracted press stories - and not just in its home town.

The story is the perfect illustration of how exceptional service can lead to word of mouth buzz. It’s uncommon and this type of service doesn’t happen every day, which is what makes it worth talking about. And if you perform that kind of service for your customers then you’ll be talked about too.

Never deny the power of word of mouth advertising. It’s cheap advertising, but by cheap I don’t mean non-valuable. The value is immeasurable. It’s inexpensive because you don’t have to shell out dollars and hope it works. It is costly, however, because exceptional service requires some level of risk that must be managed. Still, it’s worth every ounce of it. There is no substitute for word of mouth buzz, even for a small business.

An article at Inside CRM lists 15 websites that can influence your business for good or bad, but the article is rather flawed. Here are the 15 sites the article lists that are influential enough to make or break your company:

• Google
• YouTube
• Amazon.com
• Wikipedia
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Digg
• TechCrunch
• Colbert Nation
• Valleywag
• Twitter
• The Smoking Gun
• Oprah
• The Consumerist
• The Huffington Post

The problem with this list is that most of these websites don’t give a hoot about your small business enough to pay it one iota of attention, let alone boost it on a pedestal or drag it through the mud. Of this list, most small business owners need only consider 4 of them, maybe 5, as potential websites to concern themselves with in protecting their brand.

Those 5 sites are:

• Google
• YouTube
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter (wild card)

Google, of course, is the most popular search engine today. They really don’t care about your site. An impartial source, Google algorithms do all the work. It’s up to you really how well, or how poorly, you are perceived through Google’s lenses. Google does nothing; you do everything. They catalog information; you present it. But you can build a solid business online without being listed in Google (though I wouldn’t recommend it).

YouTube is a video sharing site. Yes, you can have videos go viral. Many have. But look at the odds. Seriously, millions of videos uploaded, only thousands with a record of success. Possible, but don’t bet money on it. Just build your brand honestly, create and upload videos if they’ll benefit you, and just do good business. To be honest, YouTube isn’t for everyone, but for those that it will benefit it has potential.

Facebook is one of the best ways you can build your brand. Like Google, it does nothing. You do everything. These sites provide the opportunity; it’s up to you to take advantage of it. Network, network, network.

MySpace is for teens. Does your business cater to teens? Use it. If not, forget about it.

Twitter, I’ve never used it. I’ve heard it’s great. It probably is. Many people use it and say sweet things. If you want to give it a go I see no reason why you shouldn’t.

But what about the rest of these sites? Amazon.com is an online book store and product retailer. Do you sell through them? Is it a place that you could sell through? Then by all means it could help you. If you’re not a retailer then Amazon likely won’t be much good for you.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. Most of us don’t need to be listed there. Have you made any significant accomplishments? Maybe they deserve a mention. But don’t expect a flood of business just because your friend Biff went up and told the world that you won the Blue Ribbon Award for Dog Grooming in Nantucket, Illinois (Is there a Nantucket in Illinois?).

TechCrunch, Valleywag, The Smoking Gun, The Consumerist, and The Huffington Post are all news sites. If you aren’t newsworthy then you likely won’t be mentioned on any of these. TechCrunch and Valleywag only deal with technology so if you aren’t a technology company then don’t count on it. The Smoking Gun destroys reputations. Sound inviting? The Huffington Post is a political site. The Consumerist is The Smoking Gun of the marketplace, but if you aren’t a big brand worth talking about then they likely won’t care that you ticked off Bongo the Clown because you didn’t have any red balloons.

That leaves Oprah, Colbert Nation, and Digg. Oprah is very influential. But you have to work your soles off to get on her show and it’s a task. Unless you have something that has a very wide and potentially popular appeal, don’t waste a lot of time chasing Oprah.

Stephen Colbert is a funny guy. Why would he care about your small business? Only Colbert knows.

And Digg, hmmm. Interesting site. Can help you get a lot of traffic. But if you look like you are trying to get publicity through Digg then you’ll get blasted by the in crowd at Digg. They either like you or they don’t and they generally don’t like marketers. But you can get some traffic here. Personally, I think you’re better off with StumbleUpon and a few other social sites. The most popular isn’t always the best.

Honestly, Yahoo and MSN Live can do you better service than some of these sites. As a small business, just stick to the basics and you’ll do fine.

Do you have a small business Internet marketing blueprint?

Viral marketing is a phrase you´ll hear tossed around a lot online, but rarely explained. What exactly is viral marketing, how can it help you and what makes something viral? These are all questions that plague anyone who is getting started in internet marketing for their business.

First things first, viral marketing is simply marketing that spreads itself. It is something, often an ebook or video, that catches people´s attention and they pass it on to friends and clients. You start the process and it then continues on its own . . . it´s a great way to market for anyone!

It should be pretty obvious by now how viral marketing can help you. You´ll be getting plenty of attention and hits on your website, simply by putting an article or video out there. It will have your link in it and everyone will be coming by to see what else you have to offer.

So, what makes something viral? It really depends, but there are a few common factors among viral marketing campaigns.

• The item to go viral is free
• It is extremely useful or funny
• It makes people go, “Oh, of COURSE!”
• There is anticipation
• It´s seen everywhere at once

You can probably figure out the first few on your own, so we´ll just look at the last two points here. Anticipation is huge when you want something to go big. Let people know ahead of time what you´re planning. Get your business networking contacts to talk about it to their clients. Basically, create a bit of hype before the product is even released, people will be chomping at the bit to get their copy!

You can ensure that your ebook or other viral marketing item is seen everywhere at once, giving it the instant impression of being immensely popular. The best way to do this is to send copies ahead of time, along with a press release, to popular blogs and websites. These people will then hopefully give you some publicity. It doesn´t hurt to offer them something, like a mention in the book or make the book brandable so they earn any affiliate commissions from the people who download it from them.

Viral marketing takes work. Very rarely will an ebook go viral without the forethought necessary, so make sure you think it through and plan your viral marketing campaign carefully. Then go for it. It could be the best thing to ever happen to your business.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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Viral marketing is proven to work extremely well to bring in traffic and potential customers to your business site, but many people don´t really understand what viral marketing is or how it works. What makes something viral? How can you create your own viral marketing campaign?

While the name doesn´t sound so nice, viral marketing is called this because a good campaign will spread like a virus. Maybe only one person has it in the beginning, but a cough or a sneeze and BAM! Ten others have it. Each of those people infects ten and so on and so forth. Within days, it´s possible for a virus (or marketing campaign) to become an epidemic . . . even though just one person had it in the beginning!

It can be tough to predict exactly what will go viral, but you can certainly get a good idea by paying attention to what has already been used as a popular viral marketing campaign. Most viral items have a few things in common:

Emotion. They evoke an emotion, happiness, anger or empathy.

Useful. While the odd thing goes viral simply because it is so bizarre, the majority of people will be far more interested in something that is useful to them.

Free. Putting a price on your viral marketing project will instantly cool the hype surrounding it.

Well written. Let´s face it, you aren´t going to pass an ebook so full of grammatical errors that you can barely understand it!

Another way to help what you are offering to become viral marketing is to allow anyone and everyone to distribute it without paying royalties. This will really give folks a reason to help you out. If they enjoy what you have to offer and feel that it would be useful to their friends, family or readers, you can bet they will be happy to share!

Viral marketing can be a very handy way to spread the news about your business. Study existing viral marketing campaigns and figure out why people passed them on. Look at the emails that you forward to friends, why do you do it? What elements are in these emails that you could include in your viral marketing campaign?

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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We´ve all heard about viral marketing, but if you find yourself thinking that it´s something only big companies can do, with their massive marketing power, you´re wrong. In fact, viral marketing is something that works even better for small business. All you need is a good idea, and, as I´ll show you in a moment, you don´t even have to think that good idea up yourself!

One of the best forms of viral marketing is an ebook. Giving away an ebook and allowing others to do the same, as long as the links to your site stay intact, is a great way to go viral. Viral marketing isn´t automatic, though. You will need a product that offers people a solution to a problem. It has to be of value, or no one will bother passing it on.

A very good example of viral marketing that is going on right now is the Bloggerproof Workout that is circulating the internet. This is a very simple ebook of just 7 pages, that solves a common problem (blogger butt) with a unique twist (chair lifts and other interesting, computer-related exercises). The writer allows everyone to give his book away as is, with links back to his website on every page. And this ebook has got everyone buzzing about it.

So, as you can see, you don´t need a 500 page ebook or anything, just a unique idea or useful content. The best part is, if you aren´t great at coming up with ideas, that other people are already telling you what to write. Just pop over to Yahoo Answers and type in your industry to find out what people want to know. Pick a few questions, write an answer and publish it as an ebook and you´re ready to go! Just make sure it´s a common enough problem that everyone will want to read your ebook. Then let people give it away to their website readers and friends. Upload it to bit torrents and within a week, you will have viral marketing at its best!

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

One of the easiest and quickest methods of viral marketing that I’ve discovered is social bookmarking. It’s so easy anyone can do it. But there’s more to it than merely logging in and clicking. I’ve identified three key areas of social bookmarking that every small business owner should involve themselves in to be more effective:

• Bookmarking
• Making friends
• Sharing

It is, after all, social bookmarking. So be social.

The first step is to find the right social bookmarking sites for your business. I recommend 3-5 sites and at least 2 of those should be specific to your industry. After you’ve narrowed the field to those 3 or 5 sites, create an account at each of them. Then start your bookmarking as soon as you can. But don’t just bookmark your own material.

The best and most respected social bookmarkers spend time looking for other stories to bookmark. You don’t even have to go out of your way to do this. Whenever you find something online that you like, bookmark it. For every one item of your own that you bookmark, you should bookmark at least 2 or 3 of something someone else has written. That will help you develop a reputation of being other-centered.

Step 2: Make some friends. Spend some time on the social bookmarking site getting to know other bookmarkers. Bookmark their stores and invite them into your network. Don’t worry if they reject you or don’t respond. Not everyone does this (though everyone should). But if you invite enough people into your network, there will be a healthy dose of them who accept your invitation.

Finally, share your bookmarks with your friends. Don’t just rely on them to stop by and read your bookmarks. Some people will do this, but not everyone will. Instead, send them a note whenever you have something special that you’ve written and ask them to bookmark it. They’ll likely do so and ask you to bookmark their stories in return. Develop a reciprocal bookmarking agreement with a few of your friends. You want your stories to get votes so that they rise in popularity at the bookmarking sites because the more popular a story is the more it will get read and the more likely you are to drive traffic to your website or blog.

If Small Business Mavericks ghostwrites your blog, we can add on social bookmarking services to be more effective and drive traffic to your blog. Find out more about our blogging and social bookmarking service here.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

Viral marketing isn’t a bad thing. The name comes from marketing so good is catches on like a virus. The idea is to get a message out there that people will spread for you. That’s less effort on your part and could lead to greater results.

Viral marketing relies a great deal on word of mouth - you know, that famous “best form of marketing there is.”

There are many different ways to tap into viral marketing. Videos work real well because you can upload them in no time to websites like YouTube and thousands of people could potentially see your video. Viral videos that work well use some type of humor or are controversial in some way.

Other methods of viral marketing include podcasting, photo sharing, blogging, social bookmarking, article marketing … essentially anything that allows people not associated with your business to share information you present with little effort. The idea is to get people to notice you, not necessarily to deliver a huge message with big impact. You just want them to notice you and come to visit your website. Once they are there then they can see what you are all about. It’s like standing on a street corner with your skirt hiked up to the knee. You’ll get lots of coos and cat calls, many from prospects who will go no further (and you’ll be glad they don’t), but also from some who will be happy to do business with you and stay customers for a very long time.

Viral marketing - it’s where the bug is!

Caroline Marketing
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

Drew McLellan over at Drew’s Marketing Minute turned me on to a new viral marketing scheme that I think has lots of potential - when used in the right way.

It’s called Reactee - what happens is you get to create a customized message that gets printed on a tee-shirt - you get to pick the message - then when people see your shirt, they can send a text message from their cell phone to the code you provide. Reactee sends a message that you customize out to the person who sent your shirt the text message.

Reactee has all kinds of examples of these shirts on their site. Some obvious uses come to mind - working a tradeshow floor or an event and having all your employees decked out in shirts that sent custom messages to interested prospects. Political campaigns. New product introductions. The list is long on the possibilities. If you are going to be having a booth at your local fair this summer, check out Reactee and give it a try. It certainly does break through the clutter, and it’s creative. I’ll be interested to see the results.

Of course, like any promotional mechanism, a good headline that catches attention is critical. I had to give this whole thing a try, and you can see what my shirt looks like below. Go ahead, send my shirt a text message!

Caroline
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