Word of Mouth Speaks Volumes
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Let’s face it, when it comes to marketing or sales word of mouth counts for a lot.
Think about when you are looking to buy something, you will probably hit the search engines but you’re also likely to ask your friends, family and colleagues to see if they or someone they know has any information on what it is you’re looking to buy. 9 times out of 10 you’ll value the opinion of someone you know over some marketing blurb in a magazine or website.
So, you have a website, how do you get that elusive word of mouth effect? Not so long ago you’d maybe have had a link on your site where a visitor could fill in their friends email address and they’d receive your website details in an email. These days that just isn’t as effective as it once was; there is a good chance the email, if it ever survives the SPAM folder, won’t get more than a cursory glance. Instead, people are relying on RSS Feeds and social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Furl, Digg and countless others.
How then do you get your brand/message out there? The short answer is by making it as easy as possible for people to share what you are offering. No doubt you’ve visited numerous websites and blogs which have links, usually icons, at the bottom of each page which allow you to rebroadcast the page you are viewing on any number of social sites. These are good as in just one or two clicks of a mouse your page is sent to dozens, if not hundreds of new people. Notice I said good and not great? These rebroadcasting options generally have limitations, namely they assume that all your visitors have signed up to one of the social sites on offer. For every person I know who uses Twitter I know around 20 who don’t, as the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket or you risk losing a lot of eyes!
What you need is the best of both worlds. You want something that allows people to email your page as well as making it easy to rebroadcast on social sites. While we’re thinking about it, why not make it really easy to link to on their web site or blog? Sure it’s easy enough to copy the URL and then create a link but if you had the complete code there for you wouldn’t you be more inclined to use it?
Well, the good news is such a tool not only exists, it’s free! If you look at the bottom of this entry you’ll see it in action, it looks like this: 
When you click on Share this page you’ll see the box expands to reveal the various options available to you.
To use it on your own site simply copy and paste the code shown once you click Get this free word of mouth tool for your site. Then your visitors will have a whole range of options open to them which will allow them to share your pages with their contacts. The tool itself can be customised so you can tailor it to blend in with your own site.
The beauty of the the Word of Mouth Tool is that it works on both regular websites as well as Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. With CMS sites you just have to add the code to your templates and it will show up. So say you have a WordPress site and you want it to appear on each of your posts, just add the code to your post templates. To put the tool in the same position as it is shown on this page, paste it as shown here:
Whether you have a site or a blog, why not make it easy for your visitors to share it with their friends, be it old school email or the new wave of social sites such as Twitter and Digg. You may be pleasantly surprised at how often it gets used but if you don’t use it, you’ll never know and did I mention is totally FREE?!
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post. Thanks!