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Dave Balter
Founder of BzzAgent
Dave Balter is the CEO of BzzAgent. Dave, a serial entrepreneur, has created a platform that allows people to experience new products and services, share their honest opinions about them with people they know and report those activities and opinions so marketers can directly see the results.
The BzzAgent community, over 400,000 strong, brings consumers and markets together to organize and track honest word of mouth. BzzAgent has worked on almost 450 word of mouth campaigns in the past five years. Dave is also an industry leader. He is the co-founder of WOMMA, the Word-of Mouth Marketing Association and currently sits on their board, focusing on spreading these ideas internationally.
I discovered BzzAgent a few years ago and have enjoyed being part of the community. Dave co-authored Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, one of the industry's most recognized titles. His latest book, The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II is taking the market by storm.
Since it's start in 2002 BzzAgent has produced word-of-mouth media services for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street journal, The Economist, National Public Radio and now finally on Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical.
Click the tabs above to listen to the separate episodes corresponding to the four catalysts of Personal Brilliance - Awareness, Curiosity, Focus, and Initiative or listen to the complete interview if you prefer.
Listen here or subscribe via iTunes.
In this episode of Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical, Jim Canterucci interviews BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter, exploring how he uses the Personal Brilliance catalyst Awareness in his successful life. Jim Canterucci has some tips on Awareness for you as well.
Some of this episode's highlights:
- The basis for starting BzzAgent
- How BzzAgent works
- Three rules of buzzing - the ethics of good word-of-mouth marketing
- The closed loop
- The unique release of the Word-of-Mouth Manual Volume II
- The difference between word-of-mouth, buzz, and viral
- Helping clients with self-awareness
- The 90 day awareness experiment
- The ethics of word-of-mouth - the three things that cause a problem.
Listen here or subscribe via iTunes.
In this episode of Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical, Jim Canterucci interviews BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter, exploring how he uses the Personal Brilliance catalyst Curiosity in his successful life. Jim Canterucci has some tips on Curiosity for you as well.
Some of this episode's highlights:
- Why would anyone want to be a BzzAgent?
- Questions that should be asked by all marketers
- Why word-of-mouth is the scariest medium
- How to use curiosity to enhance market awareness
- Word-of-mouth on a global scale - cultural differences
- What an artist in residence, or something like it, can do for your company
- The most important question
Listen here or subscribe via iTunes.
In this episode of Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical, Jim Canterucci interviews BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter, exploring how he uses the Personal Brilliance catalyst Focus in his successful life. Jim Canterucci has some tips on Focus for you as well.
Some of this episode's highlights:
- How knowing what you're good at is critical to focus
- Why "bad" word-of-mouth may be a good thing
- How to take advantage of quiet advocates for your brand
- How dialogue contributes to success
- One word-of-mouth conversation equals 200 TV ads. Attention and engagement is key
- Word-of-mouth is not an interruption
- Why "breaking into" the mind-set of the consumer is not what marketing should be all about
- Our top 40 list - can you appear on the list? Are you relevant?
- Why you can't ignore word-of-mouth
Listen here or subscribe via iTunes.
In this episode of Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical, Jim Canterucci interviews BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter, exploring how he uses the Personal Brilliance catalyst Initiative in his successful life. Jim Canterucci has some tips on Initiative for you as well.
Some of this episode's highlights:
- What is initiative?
- Is ignoring advice appropriate?
- Ya gotta believe
- Innovation is changing the rules
- Why discipline in conversing with the market is key
- The unexpected one-on-one personal touch is a differentiator
- Examples of word-of-mouth initiative
This is the complete Dave Balter Personal Brilliance - Up Close and Practical interview with Jim Canterucci.
Listen here.