Generating Buzz

What is Buzz?

• Word of mouth
• Tell a friend
• Viral marketing

The source has to be reliable and authoritative, and the message must be authentic.

Proven fact: blog posts with lots of comments get more comments. Digg submissions with a high Digg count (combined with a catchy headline and summary) get Dugg before the content is viewed (even if the content is never viewed).

The Cost of Creating Buzz

• Tools are cheap, but the return on investment requires significant time because of the need to build trust and relationships. An hour per day for at least six months of cultivation is required.
• Heartfelt and sincere appeals can work just as effectively as the wildly popular humorous ones.
• Begin by building relationships first before asking or appealing for anything.
• Be a good member of your community by promoting the work of others as much as you do your own. You don't want to appear as a spammer who only talks about his/her latest posts or site content.
• Just like around the water cooler, memes or themes will develop in online communities.

Remember: Being awesome is the best way to SEEM awesome. The cool factor cannot be underestimated when building buzz.

Tools

• Twitter
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• FriendFeed

Things to Consider

• Why are you using it?
• Who will use it?
• How will you know you are succeeding?

Set up your accounts to reflect the answers to these questions.

Twitter

Meet people - Have conversations - Make it easy
Listening is a big part of creating buzz.

Twitter Tools

TwitterFeed
Tweetscan
TweetStats

StumbleUpon

Watch me, watch what I like, and recommend new content for me.
Rate your favorite pages, StumbleUpon will recommend similar content it thinks you will like.
Make friends, be consistent, generosity rules.

Digg

News aggregator, much bigger community than StumbleUpon.