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Tell a Good Story
On a trip to Argentina Blake Mycoskie discovered a simple canvas slip-on shoe that Argentinean farmers have been wearing for many years. On the same trip he came across some kids who were running around barefoot. This gave him an idea: Start selling these shoes, and for every pair that he’d sell, he would give away another pair to a child in a developing area.

Toms Shoes

Mass Media and Buzz

Counter to the view that word of mouth is the exclusive result of grassroots marketing, significant buzz can be created by mass media. Soul City is a soap opera in South Africa dedicated to promoting social change. Research shows that those who watched the show frequently, talked about domestic abuse significantly more than those with low or no exposure to the program.

Soul City

Trigger Conversations
In theory, your happy customers will buzz about your product forever, but in practice people forget and run out of opportunities to talk. You need to trigger conversations. Here's how NOLS, The National Outdoor Leadership School does it. This is a video from my tour with the NOLS bus in April 2009 (This was fun!).




Work with Network Hubs
Some people talk more than others. I call these people “hubs”. I make a distinction between social hubs—people who talk more because they know more people—and expert hubs—people who talk more because they know more about something. Here's how one organization used hubs to spread the word: If the link below doesn't work, click here.

Prostate Net

 There's More than One Way to Trigger Conversations
Some say that word-of-mouth marketing can be summarized by one principle: delight your customers and they will talk about you. This is certainly the foundation of good word-of-mouth marketing, but again, even delighted customers can forget, and run out of opportunities to talk about you. You need to trigger conversations. Here’s how this was done for a new Dylan boxed set. Try it yourself here

Bob Dylan