Customer Evangelism: Kudos to Zimbio and Spaghettipie

I just sent Mark Goodyear the final information for a "Customer Evangelism" segment in our Mount Hermon Powerpoint presentation.

According to Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists customer evangelism is:

"When customers are truly thrilled about their experience with your product or service, they can become outspoken 'evangelists' for your company. This group of satisfied believers can be converted into a potent marketing force to grow your universe of customers."

It appears that I myself have customer evangelist tendencies. Which is why I feel semi-comfortable talking about the subject in a seminar on blogging for promotion.

Case in point. A few short weeks ago I sang the praises of Zimbio on this blog. I also chose Zimbio, from many possible contenders, to host my Stone Crossings Book Club Wiki. Many of you decided to join Zimbio because you could see the possibilities too.

Then the other shoe dropped. On Zimbio, I was given "kudos" by four Zimbio members who've given many of you kudos too. None of these Zimbio members care about you or what you stand for. None of them even bothered to get to know you before giving you kudos. Obviously they meant only to get attention for themselves.

This was all fine and good for the Real Estate woman, the Business Man, and the Craft Seller, but the Unmentionable kudos giver was a definite problem. I wrote to Zimbio immediately at "feedback [at] Zimbio [dot] com" and complained (something customer evangelists also do sometimes). I did not want this person on my page, no way, no how. But I was powerless to delete him (or her?).

Which is where we begin our happily ever after. Zimbio admitted that they need "a more robust system in place", which they've promised to work on. Then my new friend Danny from the Zimbio team went in and personally deleted the Unmentionable kudos giver from my page.

Now I just need to talk to Google, whose ads on the Stone Crossings Book Club Wiki sound something like this: "Kitchen Knife Sets: Top 6 Websites For Kitchen Knife Sets. Sharpen Your Knives. Skip the gimmicks. We have knife sharpeners that work. Best Sharpening Stones. Arkansas, Diamond & Belgian Sharpening Stones. Low Prices!"

(In other kudos news, a big thanks goes to Spaghettipie for being generous and interviewing me for her blog tour series. Needless to say, it was ever-so-kind of her to post my response since I'm not a big fan of blog tours!)

Star Fruit Tree photo by Sara B. Used with permission.


MORE ON ZIMBIO:

Ann V's new wikizine The Sacred Everyday

L.L.'s latest Zimbio experiment: Blog Post Tool Kit

Brandon's The Journal Journey

Increasing Blog Traffic Through Zimbio

In my quest to increase blog traffic (so I can tell writers at Mount Hermon how to increase their blog traffic) I've come upon another thing worth talking about. And that is Zimbio.

Zimbio is a wikizine site. It offers an absolutely simple way to have an e-zine without all the work involved in creating one of your own. (Though you can quickly create your own as well in Zimbio).

Here's how it works. You register at Zimbio. Then you can begin "publishing" your old blog posts or writing new articles in any number of existing e-zines. The e-zines have multiple contributors, which is why they are technically wiki-zines, so you don't have to work so hard to publish enough things to have an active e-zine.

It's worth doing this for a number of reasons:

1. you can re-use valuable content that has been buried over time in your blog. In this way, you "bring it to the top" in a new place, where people can see your work.

2. you automatically get links to your blog, potentially bringing people over from the e-zine to your bloggy doorstep

3. the links you get at Zimbio are more links to YOU at your blog, thus raising your Google rank (which means that Google will also show up at your bloggy doorstep more often too... and I can testify that this is happening here at Seedlings)

4. according to some blogging forecasters, things like the e-zines at Zimbio that are based on focused content, will ultimately be the most powerful ways that bloggers get noticed on the web

So there you have it. Between this post and the last post, I've mentioned several things you can do to increase your blog traffic. Here would be my recommendations as to where you might go from here, in this order, at least for now...

1. Socialize your blog and your posts

2. Register at Zimbio and re-publish some older posts.

3. Join Squidoo only if you have some very specific interests which would be easy to develop a quick page about. Like the way it was natural for me to do Writing Like Annie Dillard.

Oh, then just be yourself like you're used to doing. 'Cause despite your traffic, you know we really like you.


Stone Bridge at Rockefeller Park photo by J Barkat. Used with permission.