Category Archives: Word of Mouth

BrandingBlog Radio: Using Rituals to Generate Word of Mouth

In this episode, Craig Arthur and I discuss how businesses can use ritual to make their customers feel like “insiders” which will make them more apt to talk about the business to others. This is a form of kinetic Word of Mouth.

At the beginning of the podcast, we discuss Sarah Ripley’s article “Where DIDN’T you hear about us?” from the Wizard Chronicles.

I love riffing with Craig. This conversation is a great example of why I’m podcasting. I’ve had many dozens of calls like this over the years with Craig. We finally got smart enough to record them. Enjoy.

Ding Dong SEO Gone Bad

DingDong I'm gonna tell the long story. If you want the short story, skip to the last paragraph. Dinner last night was at Elway's, a bajillion-star restaurant inside the equally starred-up Ritz-Carlton in downtown Denver.

After serving us some amazing steaks, the waiter asked if we wanted desserts. We all declined. He then said, "Look, we're kind of famous for our Ding Dongs. I'm gonna bring you one for the table to sample. You shouldn't miss this."

I've talked about Word of Mouth advertising quite a bit and one of the best triggers is unexpected generosity. The Ding Dong rocked. Awesome. It's the reason I'm writing this story. Yes, I'm giving Elway's some WOM love because Max the Waiter gave me a quarter of a Ding Dong. At $9 on the menu, the dessert is likely made up of less than a dollar's worth of butter, flour, sugar, cocoa and yum. So, for the cost of a few pennies, Elway's got a blog post, a Facebook conversation, a tweet…and it's just the day after. Be remarkable. Be generous.

Now, for the SEO lesson.

After I posted this pic on Facebook, my Australian Wizard of Ads Partner, Craig Arthur, asked, "Is that a chocolate spider?" I thought I'd help him out by posting a link to the official Hostess site. Right now (I hope they change this) the Ding Dong page at Hostess has a video of Ashton Kutcher doing a "Ding Dong Doorbell" stunt and absolutely NO a brief description of one of their best-selling snacks of all time. I'm sure that some genius figured out that they weren't ranking as well as the Ding Dong article on Wikipedia and said they should leverage Ashton's use of a similar phrase to garner some SEO traffic. ARGH. If I wanted Ashton Kutcher, I'd type that into Google. The official Hostess page was in second place, but offered little relevancy. A photo of the box, but no real description of the product. I'm not even going to link to their site because I don't want to reward this kind of stupidity. I have no doubt that this blog post will soon be on the first page for a Ding Dong search and at least I offer a story and a rant about a better Ding Dong than Hostess makes. Go do the search. Let me know when they come to their senses. I'll edit in a link for them. 😉

On Your Market: Open for Business

I've been working on a soft launch for a project that has been in the works for almost 2 years. The idea is to teach business owners some of the very same techniques that we use when helping our clients with their marketing strategy. I got some very talented colleagues to help out and now I'd like to invite you to have a look. We're giving some free samples and we have it priced extremely low because we're just testing things out right now. You're welcome to sign up for the free stuff and jump in with both feet if you like. It's called On Your Market.