A LinkedIn contact reached out to me the other day to schedule lunch (which we did). She told me that she was trying to meet with every local contact among her connections on LinkedIn, which struck me as a very ambitious task, but one that is really valuable. Our lunch resulted in a new, deepened connection, some shared information, and a referral.

You can connect with me on LinkedIN here or we could meet for lunch and be LinkedOUT-and-ABOUT.

Home delivery of groceries has come, gone, and come again. There is an outfit in Sarasota, FL which literally brings that idea a step further, by offering bicycle delivery of organic produce from local providers. Instead of bringing the grocery store to you, they bring the farmer's market. This seems like a fantastic idea to me, combining environmentally-conscious local eating with environmentally-conscious transportation. The PR and marketing benefits are obvious.

What else could be delivered locally by bicycle? Produce, for sure. Meat from a local butcher shop (in a refridgerated trailer?). Flower arrangements from a local shop or garden center. What about plants and nursery supplies? Milk from a dairy (another retro idea that is gaining popularity). IKEA furniture delivered to dorm rooms for assembly. I even wonder if the neighborhood school bus route couldn't be converted into a modified bike cart. After all, those kindergarten kids are pretty light.

It is clear that building word-of-mouth marketing is critical for the success of a product or company and often it can use a bit of help to get started. I am always interested about how companies do it. I found a few insights that I thought I would share here.

For well over a year, I have participated in SheSpeaks, a sampling network of women. They have sent me products to review. I loved the Sonicare toothbrush. The Nicole by OPI nail polish took a little getting used to, but is interesting (this one is new and I have some coupons, by the way). The salon hair care product that made me smell like almonds, but look like I hadn't showered in weeks was an emphatic "no!"

Today, I learned about another network like this called BzzAgent. I don't have much to report other than they reallly get the word-of-mouth thing and I have heard about the founder's latest ebook on no fewer than 3 blog posts this weekend from folks I follow and respect. I read the book tonight and it had some nuggets in it.

If you know of others, post the links in comments here.

Volvo promises an injury-free car by 2020. Is is a marketing ploy, a safety-conscious consumer's dream, or a product liability ligitigator's windfall? Judge for yourself.

I was reminded recently of the important connection between storytelling and branding. There was a good presentation about from Mickey Connolly, who is a founder of the training and development company Conversant and co-author of the Communication Catalyst (another one I'd recommend).

Danny Meyer in his book Setting the Table related how he tries to turn diners in his New York City restaurants into evangelists. He talked about taking a page from the auto maker and watch manufacturer's playbooks, who have "long understood that people buy their products not just ecause of how the product itself performance, but to tell a story about themselves." His job as a business owner is to "give people a story worth telling."

So, what does your product brand tell your customers about themselves? Do you sell leading-edge technology so that your customers can feel like they are early adopter and insiders? Do you sell fashionable items, so that customers can feel chic? Do you sell at value pricing so that customers can feel frugal and responsible? Do you sell green products, so that customers can feel a part of a larger environmental movement? All products tell a story, some better than others, and the brands that understand that have a huge advantage.

It is a challenge for business leaders, no matter the size of the company, to think about what they want their customers to feel about themselves having bought, used or experienced the company's product. I have spent some time thinking about it for Creative Outlet Labs.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
- Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is messy. You have freedom of assembly and you get people protesting and disrupting a perfectly good Olympic Torch relay through London or Paris. You give your users control of their content and they’ll design ugly products, use your software in unexpected ways (breaking it, by the way), and may even enable some third-party tools or hacks that disrupt or undermine your business model. Build a community on your website and you may have people criticize the company or its management. Post a blog and people will comment and disagree with you.

Freedom in itself isn't disruptive though. The thing that creates the real chaos around freedom is popularity and passion. Only if people read your blog will they comment. Only if people are aware of your human rights practices will they protest you winning the bid to host the Olympic games. Only if they use your site and love portions of it, will they take the time to object to the parts they hate. They may criticize, but at least they care.

Freedom is messy indeed. It identifies those things that are relevant. In a world without freedom, you can’t easily tell what is really important to people.

And of course, feel free to post your violent disagreement in a comment.

I just added a Twitter feed of my posts to this site. If you haven't yet used Twitter, it is fun service that allows you to post 140 character messages from your phone or the web. If you are skeptical, sign up for free and try it out and follow me (which is another way to say "sign up to see my posts automatically). Or, you can read what internet strategist Kendra Wright says which is right on the money.

Apparently, the Portland Trailblazer Brandon Roy benefited from an all out marketing blitz to get on the All-Star team. The marketing team sent out dozens of iPods pre-loaded with a highlight reel and a "vote for me" message. They called them iRoys.






Now, with the price of the Shuffle coming down, now you too have have your own iPod campaign. You can even call it the iYou, if you want (my apologies to the legal department at Apple).

Years ago my husband drove a Toyota Tundra pick-up truck that was painted a rich blue with red tones in it. I believe the paint was called "Midnight Blue," and to my husband's color-blind eyes, it was navy blue. To everyone else, and especially in sunlight, it was purple. This drove him crazy and every car we have owned since then has been black. Don't-argue-with-me-about-the-color-of-the-car black.

On a recent flight to Europe, I saw a WorldShop catalog full of duty-free items that can be purchased on the plane. They advertised everything from jewelry to toys, from luggage to candy. This ad caught my eye. In the States, the warnings on cigarettes are big, but they fill the square with lots of fine print. In this catalog however, the messages were not subtle.

Two words.

Smoking kills.

It reminded me that sometimes there is no time for subtly. Sometimes you have to be direct. Give a clear directive.

So, next time you think about delivering a marketing message, talking to employees, or pitching a new investor...be direct.

Apparently it is very common for corporate recruiters to Google (the verb) a candidate's name. I am sure it is common in other circles as well (if I, heaven forbid, was on the dating circuit right now, Google would get a work out searching for skeletons in the closet of any would-be boyfriend). Not only that, but if you want to make a name for yourself in any field, reinforcing your expertise online is critical. So, the good folks at TheLadders have put together their recommendations on how to build your online brand and I thought it was worth summarizing here. The authors are William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson nauthors of Career Distinctions.

• Publish: Get articles or white papers published in online publications, preferrably those highly ranked themselves.
• Posting: Post a review on Amazon or BarnesandNoble on subjects that are "on topic" with your expertise.
• Pontificating: Post comments on other people's blogs. You can find relevant blogs at BlogSearch.Google.com. You can subscribe to the best ones in your field directly or you can keep your eye on the entire landscape by subscribing right on BlogSearch to any blog that contains your keyword choices.
• Publicizing: Write a press release and post it. PRLeap or i-Newswire will release them for free. Check out an earlier article I wrote about doing your own PR.
• Partnering: They recommend networking sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, ecademy, and Facebook. I personally like LinkedIn.
• Profiling: They recommend creating the basic online profiles at Ziggs, LinkedIn, Naymz, and ZoomInfo, which I have written about before to make sure that they are complete and show your expertise clearly.

I guess I have some work to do...this personal branding thing could be a full-time job!

I am reminded of a poem I once read when my youngest brother was small that read "Even when removed of all obvious confections, children are sticky."

To be sticky in a business concept is to have an idea, product, or website that keep people keep coming back to (in their actions, their words, etc). I have read that you need to be controversial and polarizing if you want to create buzz on the internet (as measured by trackbacks). I guess the adage is true that "bad publicity is still publicity," even on the internet.

In broader terms, businesses want to have sticky products to build customer loyalty. Marketers and campaign leaders want sticky ideas. Chip Heath author of "Made to Stick" contends that all sticky ideas share six principles:
1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Story

Perhaps that is why children are sticky afterall.

P.S. If you want to find out how sticky your ideas, products, or company might be, here is a link to some tools that you can use to monitor web buzz.

It is truly incredible what a professional public relations firm can do for you. I have worked with several in the past and the good ones can really make things happen. It is dream of mine someday to have my own publicist, but I suppose I should strive to be a bit more accomplished first (although that might be unnecessary if the publicist was good enough).

To the extent that you are your own publicist as well, I ran across a free press release distribution service today that might be of use to us. i-Newswire will distribute your news on a variety of news bureaus and the like for free (or you can pay, of course, for more and better services).

This site was featured in a strange news story about a 15 year old boy who wrote up a fake press release about being hired at Google ("the company's youngest employee ever" the press release reported). He did it as a joke and it was picked up by thousands of outlets and caused quite a stink. So, I figure if it will work for bad news, it might work for us, too!

When you are writing your release, keep in mind a fun technique that my friend Tamara Greenleaf used in a release for a Web conference whose headline boldly announced that "Steve Jobs will not be the keynote at this year's event." The completely true headline sent all the web spiders and Apple-afficianios into a tizzy and got them a lot of great publicity. Brilliant!

If these releases should teach us anything it is that we should pepper our news releases with key words that will broaden its appeal. You can test out some words by looking at search trends at Google Trends (look at me peppering this blog post with several mentions of Google...oops, I did it again!)

Some body please try this and let the rest of us know how it worked. In the meantime, I'll be working on doing something newsworthy!

In my work for the Westside Mothers of Preschoolers, I have ran across a cool tool that might be of use to you.

It is called Mollyguard. On this website you can set up an event, specifying not only the date and time, but the capacity that you can accomodate and the price of the event. You can have multiple "ticket types" with different prices and can collect credit cards via PayPal. You can track your registrations and ticket sales. The basic (free) service is quite robust and they offer a premium service for those who want to do their own branded look and feel.

I have found it easy to use and just what we needed. We are going to use it to allow people to register their children for childcare provided during our meetings. We may also use it for registration for special events where capacity is limited or we want to collect fees ahead of time. This tool really starts where Evite ends.