Tell-a-friend is one small step for a developer, a giant leap for a company

In early March Ascentium launched a public web site for one of our clients. To my surprise, one of the key requirements for the new site was a tell-a-friend feature aimed at promoting the company's product.

That seemed like a pretty insignificant piece of the functionality to have, and in my humble opinion, there were other features that should've been completed instead. Was I wrong!

Last week I was reading a book called Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. On page 123, Andy lists three things that the reader should remember even if they choose to ignore the rest of the book:

1. Ask people to spread the word.
2. Put everything in an email
3. Put a tell-a-friend link on every page of your website.

The idea behind the tell-a-friend link is that it is one of the best ways to spread the word. The book also clarifies that tell-a-friend should be as compelling and easy to use as possible, as it gets the company word-of-mouth marketing for free. It often surprises me how little things can prove to be so important, and this is definitely one of them. Lesson learned! After reading the book, I wrote the content for my girlfriend's web site last week (she just opened a family medicine practice in Kirkland, WA), and you'll be sure to find a tell-a-friend link on every single page of the site.

The morale of the story for my fellow Project Managers: understanding the business of your clients is a key success factor for the project. I would argue that it is as important if not more important than the understanding of the technology.