Many small business people jump on word of mouth and the social media bandwagons only to experience a dead batter on the bandwagon pretty quickly.

The newsletters, tweets and status updates come fast and furious for a week or two and then either fizzle out or becoming highly repetitive. It is important to keep your messages fresh and interesting in order to increase your followers, keep them interested, and encourage them to tell others about your messages.

With that in mind, here are some jump starts for the dead battery on your bandwagon: ten terrific topics that you can use in most types of media. Read More »

In my last post, I shared how I got my feet wet in building word of mouth and social marketing for a new book written by friend Lauren Kessler called My Teenage Werewolf, where she embeds in the life of an average American middle schooler—her daughter Lizzie. It’s “hilarious and insightful’ according to several reviewers, including me.).

Continuing my social media lessons from the trenches: Read More »

I’m sure you’ve heard the adage “those who can’t , teach.” I hear it often…but that’s because I’m a professor and every so often, a feisty undergrad will quote this to me with a smug look on his or her face. Yes, I remember that at grading time. But I digress.

I worked in the advertising industry for over a dozen years, and while there are many areas that I feel completely comfortable teaching, I have to admit talking about word of mouth and social media occasionally makes me anxious. Read More »

Managing a word of mouth campaign by yourself is challenging. It takes time, and it draws you away from other activities. For that reason, think about getting your employees involved in encouraging word of mouth, both in the store and, especially, online.

The key is to make sure employees understand their role in the WOM process. You should spend some time thinking about what that role should be. Good social marketers recognize is that it may be difficult to just turn employees loose to represent your company in the social media sphere without a clear understanding of the role of social media in the company. Read More »

Social media, according to the business  owners I talk to, is like a big cocktail party. You enter a room and have all kinds of opportunities for communicating.  But just as you wouldn’t  go up to a group of people at a cocktail party and take over the conversation,  at the social media cocktail party you  just don’t barge into someone else’s conversation  and say, “Hey, come shop at my store.”

Conversations come from being both timely and topical: good social media cocktail party conversations are  fresh and connected with what other people are talking about. Like at any cocktail party, you don’t want to be seen as the bore who talks only about yourself. Your goal is fit your business into the conversations that are currently happening. Read More »