I recently finished reading the revised edition of Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. Writing a review of the book would be commonplace–I’m going to do something a little different. The book was good and I liked it–that’s the review you get! I can’t say there was anything revolutionary but, it did bring up points that we often forget.

I’m going to present 7.5 things that I found most interesting from the book. The book offers a lot of great things you can do to generate instant word of mouth that I won’t talk about. You’ll have to read the book for that. You can check out the book’s website for other useful tidbits as well.

There could have been 8 takeaways but, I didn’t think the last point was worth a whole number. So I am taking a page out of Geoffrey Gitomer’s playbook by calling it 7.5 takeaways.

1. People Love to Talk

If there is one thing that people love to do, it’s talk. We spend a lot of time talking to each other. Whole businesses are built on the concept that we want to talk. Coffee shops may sell coffee but, a great deal of foot traffic comes from people who want to talk over a drink. The same thing goes for bars and restaurants. The drinks or food serves as a means to facilitate conversation.

And what do we talk about? Everything. What we did yesterday. The funny thing that happened today. The great story from last night. Maybe even the news. As long as we are alive, we will have something to talk about.

Sometimes the conversation will involve a brand, a product, a store, or some sort of business. Maybe it was a terrible experience at Starbucks or a great deal at H&M. We might have seen a really creative advertisement. A RedBull car could have stopped by and gave us a can of RedBull on our way to work.

No matter what the conversation is about, we love to talk. We want to share stories with friends and family. With the social web, we share things with our virtual networks and they spread even faster. The challenge is this: how do we make ourselves talk worthy. Why would someone talk about our product or company over another? People are already talking, how do we give them a reason to talk about us?

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I was just browsing through my Twitter stream and came across an article about 4 Twitter Tools for Business Research tweeted by @zaibatsu. I didn’t find the other three tools listed in that article new or interesting. However, NearbyTweets caught my eye and I gave it a try.

The site’s design is something that could be improved but, it is the value they offer that matters. The site automatically picked up a location near where I was and then proceeded to show me Twitter updates from people around me. I didn’t have to tell it where I was so that was cool–you can change the location if you want.

Since I was only on this site for about 2 minutes, I just played around with their block of Twitterers and read the stream of updates by those members. I wasn’t expecting to find anything specific–maybe someone with something interesting to say.

To my surprise, I came across a user called @largeanimal. I wasn’t sure if this was Large Animal Games–independent video game company in New York. Surely enough, this was the Twitter of Large Animal Games. The independent game development community in New York is relatively small and tight–everyone pretty much knows everyone else.

This is a tool that has great potential for finding people near you or researching what people are saying about specific keywords as you can search a specific location by keywords. It certainly beats Twitter’s  own means of finding people–or I’m just not very smart. So check out NearbyTweets and maybe you’ll find someone you know tweeting nearby!

I have to admit that I did not understand Twitter until recently. I had a Twitter account for a long time but, I never understood what good these micro-blogs were. It just seemed like the Facebook status field extracted into its own thing. Of course,  it is quite a bit more sophisticated than that. I am now on Twitter everyday–I think I might be addicted!

At first glance Twitter is a little confusing. I didn’t understand what all the following and followers were about. Why would anyone follow me? That would be big marketing question to answer. What do you have to offer for people to follow your Tweets? It took me a while to understand Twitter slang and etiquette. I understand most of it now but, I’m sure there is still more for me to learn.

My main reason for using Twitter was to use it as a means to promote SuperTommy–me as a brand. My Twitter is @iamsupertommy. I’m also trying to become an expert in the field of interactive marketing so learning Twitter was going to be a must. I originally just went on and followed a couple of people who seemed interesting and made Tweets of my more recent blog posts.

I started replying to some people and looking at who the people I was following was following. My friend @wilpen–I actually know him in real life–has been using Twitter for a while so I was able to find a bunch of people who we mutually knew to follow as well. That was the basis for my Twitter network. The more you Tweet, the more people find you. I find myself looking at the most recent Twitter updates to see if anyone has anything interesting or if I have something to offer them.

Twitter search is also useful for finding people who is talking about specific topics and then following them. I did that for a few topics to find people to follow.

The best thing about Twitter outside of the networking is the amount of information that comes your way from the people you follow. I think I get better news from my Twitter feed than I do from reading the news. Since I am follow people who are Tweeting about topics I care about, the links they share are targeted and useful to me.

I am really liking Twitter right now and I think it is an incredibly powerful for spreading messages and ideas. You are welcome to follow me on Twitter!

I went to check Twitter this morning and Skittles was a topic amongst the people I followed. They were talking about something new and cool with the Skittles website. I never really go to candy websites–who does? Fast food restaurants are useful in that we can find locations although I use Google for that sometimes.

So what is so special? Skittles’ new website has become a “siteless” site. If you go and take a look at it  you’ll see that you get a prompt to enter your date of birth as Skittles has a policy of not advertising to children aged 12 or younger. Upon proving that you are old enough, the site will load the Twitter search results for “skittles”.

A navigation box is left in the upper left corner where you can view more information which all lead to other social websites. Choosing Products will send you to the Wikipedia page listing all their products. Looking at Videos or Pics will send you to YouTube or Flickr. Selecting Friends will send you to their Facebook Fan Page–I became a fan.

There is also a tab that says “Other Gobbledygook” that slides out the fine print.

I have an appreciation for interesting and new marketing campaigns like this one. The word of mouth and buzz that Skittles has created with this is likely tremendous. I haven’t thought about Skittles for a long time until today–that has got to say something.

UPDATE: While I didn’t think of this at first glance, Skittles is not actively participating in the conversation. That is an important part of using word of mouth and social media. I still think the idea is good, they just need to continue to execute it well.