Are you a “Sneezer”?

TALKERS | October 22, 2012

By Holland Cooke
Radio Consultant

BLOCK ISLAND, RI — With colds and flu season approaching, umpteen PSAs have trained us to sneeze-into-our-elbows. Because the last thing you want to do is spread a virus, right?

Only literally. Metaphorically, you DO want to be what author/entrepreneur/marketing guru Seth Godin refers to as a “Sneezer,” someone who spreads ideas.

When others “catch” what you’ve put into the atmosphere, it becomes what he calls an “IdeaVirus.” And peer-to-peer sharing is an endorsement more powerful than advertising.

You can read his “Unleashing the IdeaVirus” – the most downloaded ebook in history – FREE, at: sethgodin.typepad.com .

How’s that for walking-the-walk? And you should poke-around SethGodin.com, which demonstrates several of the tactics I recommended in my session “Database Your Tribe…NOW,” at the recent Talkers New Media Seminars in New York and Los Angeles. You will very likely tweak your web site as a result of seeing his.

And, based on my experience, here are four more recommendations, which will help you build your tribe:

Put Post-to-Facebook and Twitter buttons on every page of your web site.

Why offer this option? Duh.

Why on-every-page: Many-who-end-up-on one-of-your-pages didn’t get there from your home page. Because of Google, any of your site pages can be an entry page.

If you’re building your site on (highly-recommended, also FREE) WordPress, this useful plumbing is a built-in option you simply need to activate. On “Dashboard,” click “Settings,” then “Sharing.”

Can you put three address windows in the “Send to a Friend” form?

Get your whole tribe sneezing at each other!

If you can, put multiple “TO” fields on the Send to a Friend form that pops-up. Offering a single box implies send-to-ONE-friend…even with instructions that the user can separate multiple names with a comma. Don’t even ask ‘em to figure that out. Put three boxes there, and users will likely end-up referring your item to two other folks, beyond the friend they first thought of.

When choosing graphics for your web site, avoid pictures of studio equipment.

Common cliché: close-ups of audio consoles and microphones on station web sites and in media kits. Why avoid this?

Our hardware is foreign to “real people.” Too techy.
Instead, show ‘em photos of you and your topic. Stuff that matters to them. “Content,” eh?
Better yet? Photos of them! How can you get your tribe into the act? Look popular, not nerdy.

Don’t call your E-blast an “E-blast.”

Smart stations email something relevant, useful, and sponsorable to an opt-in database. At some of my client stations, it’s an 11:00 am news update, “what’s happened since breakfast, and where to do-lunch today” (a local restaurant coupon).

Whatever you’re blasting-out, don’t name it something-that-reminds-listeners-it’s one-to-many. If you do, they’ll think it’s one-too-many, spam. Instead, can the subject line be a news headline?