There’s no doubt that world of mouth marketing is effective. It can make or break you. Blogging has really brought that to the forefront with everyday people like myself able to write about our experiences and interactions with people, companies, products and life. I knew when I had my blog, like all bloggers do, they recognize that a significant portion of their readership are lurkers. People who drop by daily for their fix and head off to the next blog. Sometimes we have a hint of this when we view our stats, we can see where people have been coming from or the search strings that have brought people here. I think sometimes we can forget about the expanse of our readership when we have regular visitors and regular commentors. You have the illusion of an insulated world, although it is far from it. That perhaps my neighbors are looking at me oddly because they read my blog the other day;) So when I blog, I like to try to be aware of potential readers and of the impact that sharing my life with the world could have on my life. I would say that for the most part, it has been positive and I think that the boundaries of neighborhoods are changing all the time.

Which leads me to today’s interesting election tidbit.

My phone rings this morning. I answer. “Hi Lisa, This is TJ Burke calling” “I understand you had some questions related to childcare and education and I also wanted to apologize for the sign incident yesterday” (these aren’t the exact words, but a close enough proximation). We chat for a couple of minutes. Then the question “Do you have a blog?”. I’m half tempted to say, oh her, no that’s not me, that’s a different Lisa R, lol. But no, I fess up and say yes, that’s me. It turns out he was one of the mystery searchers that found my blog googling TJ Burke. A wise move to find out what people are saying about you (remember word of mouth). Fortunately, he didn’t tell me I was a crazy blogger or that my rambling was boring and nonsensical;) He was actually quite pleasant and had very nice things to say about my blog (yes I know, Scott, you’ll say he’s a politician and he’s supposed to say that kind of stuff, lol;)) He also said that he’s in the process of starting a blog which I think is an excellent idea to help the everyday voter like myself follow what the local MLA is doing.

So my synopsis; a good move on TJ Burke’s part to follow up with a phone call. If I had never heard from him after the sign incident, I wouldn’t have had the same impression.