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Archive | June, 2007

Sun’s Blackbox

Sometimes it’s the frosting, not the cake. Word of mouth sometimes comes from doing something substantive and fantastic.  And sometimes if comes from something that may not be core to the product but gets people talking. Sun delivers their new servers ready-to-run in a shipping container, called Project Blackbox.  Pretty cool, definitely worth talking about. […]

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Truemors works

Truemors is Guy Kawasaki’s new site to help people a) have fun, and b) generate traffic. Nothing too fancy: You post a true rumor, and other people can vote on it, and it links back to your web site.  If you put up a popular rumor you get a lot of visitors. There has has […]

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Complaint Posts: Consumer Advocacy or Blogger Crack?

When bloggers complain about a company (Vonage, Westin) we get great feedback, tons of comments, and lots of attention. It’s ego-building, lots of fun, easy to do, and makes your blog popular. Readers pour on the positive reinforcement when you make a post like this. I hope that readers want more than gossip and bad […]

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Barcamp Chicago

Barcamp is an amazing international phenomenon.  It is a series of self-organizing volunteer unconferences. A few people put up a web site, someone donates a space, food, chairs, etc.  Speakers volunteer, everyone shows up for free. Lots of people crash in the corner. And really interesting things happen.  Ideas are shared, code is written, interesting […]

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eBay Live! 2007 Roundup

eBay Live! is an amazing event.  It flows with incredible raw entrepreneurial energy – there is nothing else like it. All entrepreneurs should get there every year for a recharge, even if you don’t sell on eBay. I gave a keynote, alongside Meg Whitman, Suze Orman, Seth Godin, and John Janstch.  And Kool and that […]

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Vonage spams customers, burns influentials, gets people really angry

Vonage is harvesting names from their refer-a-friend program to send spam promotions. I am a Vonage customer.  In December, 2004 I entered 18 friends’ email addresses in their refer-a-friend program.  This was clearly intended to be a one-time referral, on an opt-in basis, from me to my friends. 30 months later …. Vonage crossed all […]

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Word of Mouth Marketing Class at Northwestern

This week I started teaching "Word of Mouth Marketing and Communications" at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. I think it is the first graduate course on the topic. There are 20 smart students in the class, most of whom have full-time marketing jobs.  Smart group.You can read the syllabus, reading list, etc. here. The big […]

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Stamps.com: Start thinking about user experience

I love Stamps.com.  I mail out a ton of books every week, and it really makes my life easier.  It’s one of those things that I could get for free, but I choose to pay for it. But they have a really boneheaded idea of customer experience. Two examples. 1. Where is it? Global Priority […]

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#6.03: The “Something to Share” Issue

When someone passes along your content, they are advertising you for free. Make it easy. 1> Create stuff to share 2> Make it sharable 3> Copy protection vs. copy promotion 4> Check it out: Google job on the moon 1> Create stuff to share You want people to talk about your organization. So give them […]

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