August 30th, 2008
How To Get People Talking About You
I strongly believe in word of mouth marketing instead of spending a great deal of resources advertising our products / services. Today, we are living in a honest marketing era where companies will benefit from their current customer base if they (the companies) are likable and remarkable.

I recently read the book, Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. With Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki writing the foreword and afterword of this book respectively. Andy created the Word of Mouth Marketing Association around the latest revolutions in blogs, buzz, and word of mouth.
In his book, he illustrates the 5Ts which are essential in order to get people talking about you. In addition, he also added a 16-point list of tasks to do to fire off your word of mouth marketing. At the minimum, you should take away the 5Ts after reading the book.
1st T – Talkers
All companies should decide their top list of people who will go around talking about their products or services. For example, Bloggers and Journalists will often spread the word before anyone. Defining your group of talkers is essential in the beginning.
2nd T – Topics
You must also ensure that you have something interesting or worth to talk about for your talkers. There is simply no point asking your talkers to spread words that most people know. For example, asking your talkers to spread words about the benefits of having Internet is pretty much fruitless..
3rd T – Tools
After determining your talkers and topics, the next thing is to help them to spread your brand easily. You should make it easy to anyone to talk about your company. Some examples include letting them writing reviews on your products on blogs / websites or can be as simple as having a memorable slogan
One great example for this 3rd T – is YouTube.
4th T – Taking Part
It is much more effective if you can participate in the discussion when people are talking about your product or services. For example, use Google Alerts to send you an email if search engine finds new links that mention your product / company name.
5th T – Tracking
One classic but effective way of tracking is to include the field, How did you hear about us? in your order form. Gathering feedback from your customers can also help to redefine topics and talkers for your business.
You may also want to watch the following video on Andy Sernovitz making some keynote speeches around the world:
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Comments
interesting read! thanks for sharing in a manner that is easy for us to understand! save us some time from reading the book
jmot
August 30th, 2008
Thanks for the post, I have been having the same problems.
soulex
November 15th, 2008
Great advice, thanks.
Michael J. Byers
February 15th, 2009