WOM Marketing

As social media and word of mouth marketing slowly mature as disciplines, I'm glad that more and more people are writing books on the subject. Because as much as I love the stream of consciousness info flood that I get through my blog reader every morning, it's also nice to explore a subject in a more deliberate way.

Most blogs have a fairly small readership, usually a handful of friends, peers or family members. But there are the occasional standouts that achieve 1,000s of readers through some combination of hard work, luck and the right niche. TechCrunch's 300,000 plus is the common example. Recently, I was lucky enough to interview a sharp entrepreneur named Collis Ta'eed who took his new blog/community (FreelanceSwitch) from 0 to 4,000 RSS subscribers in under 30 days.

With all the buzz and hype, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that social media is young. And due to that relative youth, both leading practitioners and researchers are still just starting to sink their teeth into the subject. This morning I was lucky enough to interview a Phd student from the University of Maryland's ebiquity Research Group who has been researching social media longer than most (i.e. 2 years!).

XBOX is one of the amazing launch stories of the last five years. From a standing start, Microsoft, has launched a gaming platform with amazing market share and brand awareness worldwide. For this podcast interview, I connected with Eli Friedman, one of the smart marketers driving the XBOX brand.

Listen in as Eli discusses the challenge of global branding, how he manages that complexity, one of the most innovative branding efforts the XBOX team implemented and more.

Enjoy!

For this Jenerous podcast interview, I connected with the resident WOM guru, Geno Church, of Brains on Fire, a leading identity agency from Greenville, SC. Geno Church was nice enough to chat with me about how BoF views branding and identity, the current state of WOM, the biggest misconceptions companies have about word of mouth marketing and more.

Great stuff!

Enjoy:

Geno Church

As a former marketing analyst and social media fanatic, I love trying to understand the flow of influence and traffic online. For my 96th podcast interview, I had the chance to talk with a leading expert on measuring influence, popularity and social media online - Flemming Madsen of Onalytica.

Flemming and I chatted about the challenges of and approaches for measuring online influence, what to watch out for when you measure online conversations, the next evolution and more.

Developing online communities is an incredibly complex challenge with a high risk/reward ratio. They can create incredibly loyal customers or they can wreck brands if they spin out of control. For my 90th podcast interview, I had the honor of chatting with Tamara Littleton of eModeration, a leading community and interaction moderation company.

Tamara and I talked about what eModeration actually does, the tools/approaches they use, the evolution of community monitoring, consumer generated media and more.

Enjoy!

Scott Ginsberg is man with a strong personal brand. Everyone seems to know his name. Of course, it might be that he's been wearing a name tag for the last 2,119 days.

Scott and I chatted about marketing, personal branding, approachability and more.

Scott has a blog, podcast, and some great articles at his website.

Karl Long's subtitle on his blog, ExperienceCurve, reads:

Marketing. Social Media. Customer Experience.

Tara Hunt is a hot name in the blogosphere these days. From using community marketing to help Riya with its successful launch to the controversially named Pinko Marketing to her new endeavor Citizen Agency, she's at the forefront of some exciting trends and interesting ideas.

Fortunately for me, I was able to pin her down for a few minutes to chat about her background, marketing philosophy, Citizen Agency and more.

Enjoy!