While there are aspects of Word of Mouth involved in most Internet Marketing and Social Media activities, there are experts who have focused very specifically on Word of Mouth best practices and cutting edge strategies for years.

These are Word of Mouth experts you will definitely want to learn from and know about:

ANDY BEAL, creator of Trackur Social Media Monitoring

Internet Marketing Consultant Andy Beal, known for many years in Internet Marketing circles for the Marketing Pilgrim marketing blog, has been writing about Word of Mouth Marketing and Online Reputation Monitoring for years.

Andy Beal will become best known for developing the Social Media Monitoring Service Trackur, already chosen as their tool of choice by over 25,000 users.

ANDY SERNOVITZ, Word of Mouth Marketing Book Author

Even more closely associated with Word of Mouth is Andy Sernovitz who founded Gas Pedal Word of Mouth Marketing Blog and offers the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! newsletter.

Why should we care about Word of Mouth?

• Businesses should care because people ARE talking about them – whether they’re listening or not!
• Consumers should care because we can use what is said to avoid wasting our precious time and money.
• Together we can build a better world through sharing what we know and that sharing IS Word of Mouth.

Concerned about your Online Reputation? Click the image to Find Out How to Monitor Your Reputation on Social Media

ATTN: BLOGGERS: Are your readers interested in Social Media Advertising, Social Media Marketing or Reputation Monitoring? Earn commissions and offer them discounst on upcoming premiere Social Media Events.

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First there was the Internet as it was used by scientists, the government and various other very smart individuals in private and education sectors. Then a fellow in Europe decided that it would be cool to share data he was collecting while working at CERN. To do this in an efficient and elegant manner, he created what eventually became the World Wide Web. His notes and info were now able to be “found” by his peers and eventually they were creating their own pages of knowledge to be shared and commented upon.

Fast forward to today, and you’ll find an infinite amount of knowledge and experience online. If you have a question you go to a search engine. Perhaps your query is somewhat specialized? You go to a niche portal that accumulates and coalesces information for your research pleasure.

One of the most powerful paradigm changes the Internet has brought to the masses is the ability to download software from any connected computer, anywhere in the world. This global delivery system has revolutionized the way computer programs are not only distributed, but has actually affected their development processes.

Following are some of the most downloaded software programs that will come in handy during any word of mouth marketing campaign, including a quick review and discussion of what makes that title interesting.

10 Programs to Assist in Online Marketing

• Pidgin – This instant messaging client helps you combine other popular messenger accounts (Yahoo, AIM, Gtalk, etc.) into one program so you can keep in touch with anyone, no matter what network.
• Open Office – If your business is not at the right point to invest in the Microsoft Office suite, Open Office offers you the best of applications with similar features to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and others. You can also convert most Office documents into Open Office format and vice versa.
• Thunderbird – Again, if you don’t use Microsoft products, Thunderbird is an alternative email management program similar to Outlook and Outlook Express to help you organize your emails.
• Firefox – Professionals in the business of coding and developing web based applications took quickly to this new web browser software. It was a key tool that created competition for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
• Winzip – A compression/decompression program that provides utilities for creating smaller files for easier online distribution. The program has developed handily over the years and is still amazingly popular with anyone needing advanced compression tools.
• iTunes – iTunes is home to tons of podcasts for all forms of online marketing.
• Ad-Aware – As with most things online when you download software you also run the chance of getting spam, spyware, and possibly Trojan horses designed to take over your machine. This popular program checks the data stream as you download it.
• Skype – Originally just a way to communicate with others via voice, Skype has become THE online video communications software. Free communications has never been nicer.
• Gimp – Need to edit some images? Gimp is an open source Adobe Photoshop like product that will be able to assist you with your basic image editing needs. I have even created a few simple business card designs in this easy to use program.
• Acrobat Reader (PDF) – For over 7 years this document reader program has positioned Adobe’s portable document file as the leading way to secure the display of files across most operating systems and browsers.

Much of the download software available today doesn’t even resemble the earliest days of the Internet. With increasing usage of Application Program Interfaces (APIs), companies are centralizing the software and distributing the information via remote access to the application.

While this has affected downloads, there are still numerous categories of software which will always be needed, and downloaded regularly by Internet users. What are your favorite free, open source, or premium programs to help with all of your marketing needs?

This guest post is by Vern, a freelance consultant who uses a variety of open source software options as an alternative to having to buy software. With a little research, almost anything can be found freely.

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One of the fastest ways to generate Word of Mouth is Social Media and the fastest way to get more visibility in Social Media is by effectively integrating Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other Social Media advertising campaigns.

When you’re buying advertising it pays to know what you’re doing BEFORE you are out the money with little to show for it. Trying to save money by learning by trial and error is far more likely to cause you to lose more money than you saved. You don’t want to make that mistake.

There ARE people who know how to make the most of your ad spend: leading brands, and markteters and advertising agencies that specialize in Social Media.

Learn to use the latest tools and techniques for running effective, integrated Social Media advertising campaigns from them at either upcoming Social Media Advertising Event: London or Miami.

Get answers and tips on best practices and how-to information including:

• How to maximize and measure your Social Media advertising ROI.
• Learn to combine Social Media engagement with an effective advertising presence.
• Find out which are the most effective networks on which to advertise.
• Target location-based networks, mobile networks or Social Gaming.

These are the ultimate events for anyone interested in social media marketing. Attend either one to learn what you need. Pick the location that is closer (or more fun) to you or choose the most compelling speaker lineup.

“Together, earned and paid media are far more effective when the programs are humanized. The difference between social network advertising and marketing and traditional online campaigns are the ecosystems where engagement is fostered” – Brian Solis

Both events are fully interactive with presentations, panel discussions, Q&A sessions and case studies. See the latest Social Media advertising tools and services in the Exhibition Area. Refreshments, lunch (optional) and a handbook are included in the ticket price. Mingle at the end of the day to network over drinks.

Learn to combine effective advertising with Social Media engagement at the London event sponsored by Synthesio Web Monitoring and Viadeo Network Development Solutions. Search Twitter using Hashtag #SMMUK10 to keep on top of the latest Buzz.

• Blog Advertising and Sponsored Posts
• How to Run Effective Social Media Ad Campaigns
• Promoted Tweets on Twitter
• Paid, Owned and Earned Media
• Using Apps for Advertising
• LinkedIn and other Businesss Networks for B2B Advertising
• Best Pratice Examples and Case Studies

Programme Highlights

• Creating Compelling Social Gaming Ad Campaigns
• Optimizing and Managing Facebook Advertising Campaigns
• HOT NOW: Mobile Social Advertising
• New Forms of Measurement for Advertising
• Video Advertising: Ten Tips to Leverage the Viral Power of Social Media
• Driving Social Media Traffic with Advertising
• Using Social Media Data Mining and Analysis for Social Targeting

Some Early Bird Tickets are still available
Save 10% on any ticket to the London Event by using this link
Or type in discount code iem19 manually

Learn how to engage customers via promoted content in Social Media from experts on effective campaigns sharing their insights into new services and tools.  Sponsored by Leading Email Marketing Solution provider Constant Contact, the Miami one day conference.

Topics we will cover during the day include:

• Measuring effectiveness and ROI
• Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn Ads: Expert Review
• Implementing the Latest Viral High Profile Marketing Campaigns
• Blog Outreach, Advertising and Sponsored Posts
• Tune your Campaigns with Social Networking Theory
• Next Generation Marketing: The Psychology of Persuasion
• Viral Tweeting: How to Get YOUR Tweets to Go Viral
• Innovations in Location-Based Marketing (Foursquare & beyond)
• Using B2B Social Media to Connect with C-level Execs
• The Science of Social Media Advertising
• How to Create Highly Effective Ad Campaigns
• Case Studies and Best Practises
• B2B & B2C Social Media Advertising
• Tools and Trends to Watch in 2010

Monitor Event Buzz by searching Twitter using Hashtag #SMMiami

Some Early Bird Tickets are still available

Type in discount code iem19 manually or use the links below:

SAVE 10% on any ticket to the Miami event by using this link

Save 10% on any ticket to the London Event by using this link

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Brian Solis was one of six prominent speakers who are also all authors at an event this past July 20, 2010 focused on how to be great at Word of Mouth Marketing. Even though that event is past, there are many more opportunities to learn from Brian.

We’ll start with this short (5:20 minute) Word of Mouth tips video created to promote the Gas Pedal Word of Mouth SuperGenius event that offers tips from Brian about what he calls the three Rs: Research, Relevance, and Resonance:

In the video and at that conference Brian touched on what he shares in his book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web.

Want to learn more from Brian? Today’s post on Murray Newlands shares some Brian Solis quotes and another of his videos. He is speaking at Influence People’s upcoming Integrated Social Media and Email Marketing Event Friday September 17, 2010 in San Francisco.

There may still be Early Bird Tickets available to hear what innovative methods Brian and many other leading marketing experts, email companies and brands recommend to maximize your Social Media results.  Use that link or enter discount code iem19 to save an additional 10% off your ticket.

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You already know the important role Social Media plays in Word of Mouth Marketing. What many may not realize is that integrating your email marketing into your Social Media activities is the most effective way to ensure that you maximize your ROI.

The time, effort and money you spend on Social Media is only truly effective if you are capturing those visitors to your mailing list and then following up with them with high quality, well-timed mailings.

The September 17, 2010 Social Media Email Marketing event being held in San Francisco is the fast track to increasing your ROI from both email and Social Media Marketing.

Every day you don’t have your Social Media and Email Marketing working together effectively costs you far more than what you will spend attending this event – especially if you lock in the 42% Early Bird savings.

Read about the Social Media Marketing experts and other specialists who are speaking or use this link to automatically save an additional 10%.

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Social Media Marketing 2010 will bring together leading brands and marketing experts to explore the viral power of social networks.

• Insights into the Latest High Profile Viral Marketing Campaigns
• The Psychology of Persuasion: Next Generation Marketing
• How to use Social Networking Theory to Tune your Campaigns
• Innovations in Location-Based Marketing (Foursquare & beyond)
• Tweets that Travel: The Essential Skill of Viral Writing
• Using B2B Social Media to Connect with C-level Execs
• Creating a Bespoke Community vs Starting a Group

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“We actually drove over 55% conversion rates in some of these cases… You don’t get anything close to that when you put up traditional ads…” — Jon Siegel, Fan Appz CEO

Businesses everywhere are utilizing social media as a compelling new area in their word of mouth marketing strategy, and engaging an online audience through apps is a critical part of that strategy. Fan Appz Professional is a suite of applications geared toward small and medium-sized businesses that helps them grow their online audience, keep them engaged, and monetize that fan base.  Since then they have worked with brands like NASCAR, the NBA, NBC/Universal and the Tonight Show.

I had the pleasure of catching up with Jon, whose previous Siebel Systems business was acquired by Oracle in 2006, at the Ad:tech 2010 Speakers Lounge at Ad:tech 2010 in San Francisco last week, where he gave me some insight into what Fan Appz does and how Fan Appz Professional can help small business owners with their online social media strategy.

“As I looked at social media, the conclusion that I reached was that it was going to be transformational. The techniques that people had been familiar with using email marketing, buying pay-per-click ads, display ads, or means of driving traffic or acquiring new customers- that social media was going to present a whole new series of opportunities and challenges that people need to learn to adapt to. That meant we build a suite of applications that helps businesses use social media to attract and retain an online audience.”

Siegel explained that Fan Appz began working with larger brands, but that he wanted to develop an suite of applications aimed at smaller clients.

“It’s very simple. It’s a $50 subscription, they get a subset of our functionalities, and if they have support issues they email us at our support and we respond within 24 hours. The application itself is customizable in the sense that you can upload your content, your brand, and you can customize certain areas with your look and feel so that it looks like an extension of your social media presence. We built the platform with the notion that you can’t wait 3 weeks for a developer to go and build a platform for you. You have to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m going to do today.’ It doesn’t work- things are moving too quickly. Facebook literally changes something everyday. It’s our job to go and figure that out.”

And that sounds like the biggest advantage to Fan Appz- they figure out all of the technical issues while you, the small business owner, get to reap the benefits of uploading your content and seeing it transform into a customized poll or other content that you can post within minutes.

Fan Appz Professional:

Siegel broke down the 3 key things that Fan Appz Professional does that he heard small and medium-sized businesses asking for:

1. Build and Grow Audience. “If they had 50 people following them they wanted 1000. If they had 1000 they wanted 10,000.”

2. Engagement: “Whatever audience they had, they wanted to keep them engaged, otherwise they would become disinterested and lose them.”

3. Make Money: “How do we take this audience that we’ve built and turn it into money? And that means different things to different clients.”

What About that 55% Conversion Rate?

For this particular example, Siegel explained that a comedian on Comedy Central wanted to see who were the super-fans. He used Fan Appz to create a series of quizzes, and at the end of each quiz invited fans to enter a Sweepstakes to win a signed DVD and other prizes. During that campaign, over 50% of the people who took the quizzes provided their email addresses. Those email addresses were then used to announce the premiere of his show, and that show became the #1 rated show on Comedy Central of the year.

“At the end of the day, so many of the traditional ads that you see may or may not be relevant to you. [Social media content] is highly relevant, and they’re already passionate about that brand, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that conversion rates should go up.”

Jon also pointed out how Fan Appz enable fan engagement to grow exponentially through the inherent virality of Facebook.

“The way our platform works is that the fan in most every case will post on their wall their actions as it’s related to their content. Nielsen and Facebook did a story about about content that comes from peoples’ friends and the recall and the more positive impression that comes from it. So now, if I post my favorite of a brand on my wall and all my friends see it, these are potentially hundreds of extra positive impressions that the brand receives, and this is a key part of what our platform does to leverage the potential viral nature of the social media area.”

Impressive statistics and a great opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to take advantage of technologies and strategies that are working for big brands. You can find out more at Fan Appz. They even have a 7 day Free trial.

“The key message is: We’ve built a lot of best practices into our suite of applications to help them do just that. A lot of it is just getting out there and trying it, experimenting with it and figuring out what works for them.”

– Scott James

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Blogger Outreach Word of Mouth Marketing

Blogger outreach is an increasingly important component of any word of mouth marketing campaign. While traditional word of mouth marketing relied heavily on people talking to each other and traditional public relations on the media, blogging has cemented itself as the perfect storm of the two. Blogging retains the personal nature of word of mouth marketing and blends it with the presentation, connections and niche reach of public relations.

We all hear a lot about social media, but in those discussions we tend to forget that blogging was really the first kind of social media to hit the big time. Whether it was Mommy Bloggers becoming a word of mouth marketing force or the revelation by the entertainment industry that more people are reading blogs than those magazines in the aisle at the supermarket, blogging has served all of the purposes that social media now strives for, and all of the roles that older medias once dominated.

For these reasons alone, blogger outreach is worth its time and space in gold. The three most important reasons to include blogger outreach in your next word of mouth marketing campaign are:

1. Reach: With bloggers, you know you have individuals who are passionate about what they write about. For that very reason, if you’ve got a campaign around their topic, you already know they are interested. And the people who read their blog are interested in what they write. Just like traditional media, you can be sure that getting an article on that blog means you WILL extend the reach of your campaign.

2. ROI: There may not be an easy, agreed-upon way to measure it, but you can be certain it’s happening. Why? Because the cost of entry for blogger outreach is accessible. Because blogging is still relatively young, alliances between PR people and bloggers are fresh and still forming. If you have the time to put in, you can create relationships with reputable, niche bloggers that will require some maintenance but not a huge monetary investment. That’s golden.

3. Social-ness. With traditional street teams or guerrilla stunts, you get the attention of large numbers of people in a public setting. It’s a great tactic, and blogger outreach is no replacement. What it can be, though, is a way to target your publicity. How many of those people you reach on the street are really going to pass on your message? Probably just a few. But get a blogger and their dedicated readers in on the game and you’ve got a group of people who love to read, create and share content. Make your campaign the content and it will go social.

For more on the details of blogger outreach, read Susan Payton’s article in Mashable.

– Scott James

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Foursquare Day Word of Mouth Marketing

Happy Foursquare Day, everyone! What? You hadn’t heard? It’s April 16, numerically 4/16, and if you’re counting, four “squared” is 16. So, 4 squared is 16. Foursquare- get it?

Rabid fan loyalty and innovation are things that you can’t buy or predict for a brand or product, and Foursquare has both. The location-based social networking app is pulling away from the pack in user-numbers and is starting to generate the kind of following that propelled Twitter to become a social media darling. Foursquare day was thought up by a Tampa, Florida Foursquare fan and has quickly spread through word of mouth and social media to include events in dozens of cities across the country. And what’s more, Foursquare the company has embraced it.

It’s an amazing example of a company embracing fan extension and reinvention of what their brand means- allowing and encouraging people around the country to make Foursquare their own. After a strong showing at this year’s SXSW and several slick updates to the app, Foursquare is riding high with over 500,000 users and a growth chart that their founder says looks more like a ramp than a hockey-stick. For being just a year old, that’s pretty good.

Another aspect of Foursquare that is fueling its growth is that it is both functional and a game. As part of the game-aspect, users win “badges” for various numbers of check-ins or for being in specific places. On Foursquare day, users around the country will win the “Swarm Badge,” which is awarded when more than 50 people check-in to the same place at the same time. It’s not hard to think about all the ways that the badge can be used to get a crowd at your location. Watch this fun video about how AJ Bombers did it.

And then go get your own Swarm Badge and celebrate Foursquare Day!

– Scott James

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Word of Mouth Marketing iPhone App uApp

Earlier this afternoon I spent 45 minutes designing an iPhone app. It was a fill in the blank screen, similar to filling out an online profile, and you can add video, photos, links and rss feeds. You choose the image you want for your icon, and you choose the color scheme. The site says that within 24 hours they contact you about your design, as in they send you screenshots to see if it looks right. When I submitted my app design, here’s what they gave me:

When they say “We’ll Contact you Shortly,” they mean it. Within 2 hours I got an email saying:

“Thank you for your submission to uApp.  We will be generating an application using the details of your submission.  You will be receiving screenshots of your app along with suggestions from our team.

If you have any questions please send an email to contact@uapp.com.”

On their site it says I’ll see screenshots within 24 hours. All of this for free, remember. They support the free app with ads, and you can upgrade anytime to a paid version and either remove the adds or choose your own.

Last night I was at a thing called Swagapalooza- it’s a viral media experiment. They got 85 bloggers into a room, had an open bar and got 10 companies with new products to come and pitch us for 5 minutes each. Guy Kawasaki gave a 15 minute keynote with tips for tech entrepreneurs. In it he said to build something you’ll use and assume a marketing budget of $0. That’s pretty much my situation, and the idea of having an iPhone app to refer people to is transformative. With mobile becoming more and more ubiquitous, it’s empowering to send my content to readers and fans through an app.

And, a website like this empowers anyone creating web content. The implications for word of mouth marketing are enormous. Because the app provides links to videos, photos and text content, a store or business can offer people a multi-media story of any event. A blog post or two letting folks know what’s happening, short videos uploaded during the event, and an album of pictures uploaded the week afterward. This is the ideal kind of situation for any summer event. Imagine the Coachella app. But it doesn’t have to be that big, either- it’s ideal for any individual who needs or wants one for their content- anyone from a blogger like me to a family that wants all of their media updates in one place. Or a small business where people would want weekly updates.

Bottom line, this is a game-changer. App power made free and accessible. Thank you, uApp.

Scott James

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