A Web 2.0 Buzz Marketing Strategy - How to Get Your Product Known through Interaction

You can work hard to get your product known through what is called "viral marketing" or "buzz marketing", but if you don't know the basics of why social media are that way, you might as well stay home with your knitting.

Recent work and study on social media marketing led me again back to Colin MacDougal and his Constant Conversation. In this, he mentions interviewing Google's Matt Cutts and working out what he calls "Visitor Experience Optimization" - essentially, saying that content is king and is what the search engines are (and everyone else should be) working on ensuring that the visitor has valuable experiences.

Looking for "Matt Cutts Interview" came up with the same thing - a gem here:

"Graph theory vs social networking vs buzz marketing: which of them is most important for a new webmaster to study? What resources would you recommend for learning about each of them?

"I'd study buzz marketing. If you capture the fancy of the web, you won't need to worry about graph theory--you'll get links on your own. Plus, once you know what a clique is in graph theory, you can never go back. Instead of asking "does this link make sense for my users?" you'll be wondering "Am I too close to a clique?" and that's just not healthy. :) Other people could provide better resources than me, but The Tipping Point and Freakonomics are good reads."

Searching for buzz marketing lead me to Ralph Wilson, who limited viral marketing to these principles in his explanation:

"Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources"

However, this falls short, exceedingly. He makes no mention of Malcolm Gladwell ("Tipping Point") or Seth Godin ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"). Practically, this is a mere explanation of what you see from your end of the elephant. It doesn't tell you how to get the beast in motion, and ignores the fact that "viruses" are interactive - the elephant has as much say as the elephant trainer.

Gladwell pointed out the jobs of "Mavens", "Connectors", and "Salesmen" in spreading viruses to and past the Tipping Point. (And what started this particular post was that recurring term Maven, which is a key to the Review of Maven Matrix Manifesto that I'd recently completed.) Godin added "Sneezers" to the list - and examined the whole necessary structure of the message itself - how "sneezable" it needs to be.

Part of my work in studying this area earlier had lead me to issue the following book as an excerpt of the much larger "An Online Millionaire Plan."

--/ Sponsor /--

Creating The Web 2.0 Buzz: Beyond Search Engine Optimization

You can create a Web 2.0 Buzz which can get you both immediate and long-lasting results beyond "search engine optimization" as currently practiced.

How do you do that?

• Most SEO is built around establishing keywords prominently on your pages.
• Web 2.0 uses all the "New Media" to spread the word for you.
• When you use your keywords in your social bookmarks, your site becomes "viral" - other people spread it for you.
• Using audio, video, and slideshows, people tell others about your stuff.
• And search engines love Web 2.0 more than static pages.
• So use "New Media" to promote your static pages and get top real estate in the search engines.

This book gives you all the theory and examples of how you can create a Web 2.0 buzz and use it to bring paying subscribers to your mailing lists.

---/ Back to our post /---

I wrote and edited extensively on viral marketing based on data in the above book. A sample of applying it shows up in this slidecast:

| View | Upload your own

But back to Dr. Wilson and our disagreements:

There are a lot of factors in creating a buzz, but the key point is participation. People have to want to share your message and contribute to it. In the days before the Internet, viral buzz was created in magazines (Colliers, among others) and newspapers ("yellow journalism" and it's successors today) and books (the "pulps"). Each of these had a method of keeping readers wanting the next edition, the sequel.

And those great stories caused excitement in their readers, who discussed them at length among themselves and kept them alive - in the oral tradition known as "word of mouth".

A great example of this type of writing modernly was Louis Lamour, who had a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter (named for the stunt of having the hero literally hanging off a cliff) - and the only way to put it down was to stop in the middle of each chapter.

The tradition of stories continues. Collier and other great advertising copywriters told continually that the story is what made the ad. And continuing series (such as the classic Volkswagen ads, and Mac serials) just made the message continue on and on and on.

When the Internet evolved and approached its Web 2.0 critical mass, that is really the underlying basic that even Gladwell and Godin missed:

Stories are how people think.

Literally. People are living a story, with themselves as the center focus. They reach out to experience others' stories and compare this with their own. This is how they figure out if they're improving or "de-volving". And so the successful oral traditions on this planet continue into our Internet Age.

With Web 2.0, we then reach the point, as MacDougal says, "In a nutshell, Web 2.0 is simply user-generated content." So everyone is contributing their own story, but at the same time able to contribute to everyone else's.

This is the popularity of "mash-ups" where soundtracks are changed, where different clips are re-edited, re-purposed into completely new output. Plots, characters, meanings are changed. But none of this is particularly destructive - it's all part of creating new content from existing resources. The audience is participatory with the stagehands and the actors, directing as well as viewing. The speed of swap is mind-boggling.

As Matt Cutts related to MacDougal, search engines are engaged in intense search for all this new content. Search engines emulate the human condition. They are tools which try to duplicate the way we think, help us find what we are looking for - even when we don't particularly know. So the visitor experience is key and vital. People are constantly looking for new stories to help them think through their lives.

There has been an intense set of changes with the search engines. They have been gradually shifting over to the Web 2.0 mindset, away from their start with static pages. Now you can "take over" prime search engine real estate literally within minutes if you know how to market it through the social media. For now, since the bulk of the web is still rooted in their static origins, you can hold these positions for some time.

But you can also see, with the Stumbleupon plug-in, you can find who has been there before you, if any of them were by someone you know, and what the basic rating of that page is by that community. You can even search within Stumble-upon, where you get a series of simple user experiences on an "I feel lucky" basis.

But what about our storyline...

When you post to the web now, you need to be able to involve your audience, as well as being willing for that audience to involve you. Nothing is truly static. And you can create intense effects without even creating a static page of your own.

I'd hazard that the bulk of the most influential Web 2.0 sites are where they allow you to post your own creations for free.

Now here is where the "ease" and "smoothness" of the message transfer occurs. Most of these social media sites have incredibly easy interfaces - which can be customized to almost infinite degrees so that you take charge of how you see it and how you look to others.

But the story is king.

Because the story is the stage where the audience and the actors mix. It's an interactive and inter-relational space.

Stories then go beyond the linear scope of fixed plots and linear approach.

Viral and buzz are the words which are interchangeable here. But one doesn't actually start a virus, one invites one to happen. And the originator must, as in any true conversation, be willing to listen - to become the effect of others' cause.

The days of sheer intrusive one-way flow advertising and marketing are over. Now we have ClueTrain conversations with our clients. There are no more customers or consumers. There are only people that you interact with and service - people that you are working with to help them improve their lives.

And all these companies and corporations which are stuck in that one-way marketing flow are losing their "customers" and "consumers" over to those new entities which are interactive with them, willing to shift and change in order to improve the quality of their service. Look around, anything shrinking is still stuck in that old pattern. All that are expanding have established real conversation with their clients - and continue to attract new clients through word-of-mouth, not interruptive advertising.

So how to do Viral/Buzz marketing?

There is no set pattern for this constantly evolving, er, uh, um... -- thing.

I'd say that the greatest ongoing buzz marketing right now is our online gaming communities. Entire economies are being created in these arenas, where people can interact with each other and reinvent themselves as they want. They can enter and leave the space at will.

Online gaming communities approach the ideal marketplace. All participate, any can help others, any can join in commerce or refrain.

Short of that - and not all of us have the intense discipline and willingness to "submerge/emerge" into that type of environment to do our shopping and to get our news and entertainment.

So the next best thing is the Internet.

Here's one preliminary approach to creating a buzz about a product:

• Basic is to tell a story.
• Next from that is to enable interaction.
• Meanwhile, lead your clients over to your product and allow them to tell you about it and help you improve it. You're working to tailor-make your product to that niche you've targeted.

So:

1. Create at least a couple of characters which have a goal and a conflict. (Story)
   While Luke Skywalker had the main decisions in Star Wars, he didn't have all the conflicts. Other characters had their own goals and his friends often conflicted with Luke's progress - or chided him about his lacks. (ref: Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces")
   
2. Align their goal to your product in some fashion. Either they are looking for your product, or presenting it, or using it to achieve whatever goal they have.
3. Enable audience participation at every - single - step. They must be able to vote it up or down, comment on it, even change the script if this is possible. (Interaction)
   
4. Leave it open for a sequel - and don't be the only writer possible. Star Wars had many, many authorized and unauthorized stories which were prequels to the prequel, sequels to the sequel, and filled the gaps in the story line, as well as creating what-if's far beyond the scope of the movies itself. (Invite the audience to help your product evolve.)
   

How you do this depends on your resources. But in these days, you can actually do it with no major corporate sponsorships and it can even be done without owning a domain name. You don't have to know code, although it's helpful if you can create short videos...

An ideal would be to create a gaming platform, an online community where the participants evolve the rules. But the scope of studies down this line are beyond this post.

Suffice it to say that the Internet already is an online gaming community, where the search engine companies are continuing to change according to the demands and wishes of the users. No one is really in charge of anything, but there are major players who empower other players - the ones who can guess their rules.

It's not just viral, it's more than buzz - I'd say that this strategy would be a ripple-tidal effect.

You want to continue chucking pebbles into that pool until you affect the tides on the rest of the continents on every shoreline you want to affect.

- - - -

Yes, I do have a test case in mind. But you're going to have to find it - or it will find you at some point, depending if I run out of pebbles.

A marketing conversation is an action verb - you have to do it...

This from a recent email I got from the folks at Constant Conversations (link below):

I worked this over when I posted Creating a Web 2.0 buzz - on "2008 presidential candidate election" with its video and so on.

But then I got to thinking. Life isn't being a one-shot wonder. After the event is over and the autograph signers have left, when they're sweeping up the confetti and tickertape - you have to go on.

One-shot wonders are just that. Bands will have a single hit. They don't go anywhere - the band like Beatles and Rolling Stones continually turn out new songs, all riding their earlier "buzz".

That's what you are working at in marketing - creating a continual buzz about your product. You are making continual conversation with your various publics and asking them what they think. Read ClueTrain Manifesto. Marketing is a conversation. Not just shouting,"BUY BEANOS -- THEY'RE REALLY GOOD FOR YOU... REALLY."

Is Google Listening to Your Conversations?


If You Don't Start It, There Will Be No Conversation

Can you imagine going to a cocktail party, business conference or networking event where you stand in the corner and not make eye contact even once and still walk out of the room with new clients?

Of course you can't.  You know that being proactive, enthusiastic  and willing to share some useful information with others is the only way to work a room successfully.

The same is true on the internet.

You've got to get your name out there -- i.e. be visible in lots of places on a regular basis -- and be the one to initiate a discussion worth participating in.

As you know from the "Starting The Conversation" section of our book, the best way to get people into a back and forth dialogue is to ask a profound question.  By that we mean one that is profound to the people you're trying to attract to your business.

Make it specific and a bit controversial and folks will be flocking  to comment. If they disagree with you or each other so much the better as it provides another opportunity to continue talking while you also establish yourself as the expert in your field.




And here's my video take on all this:



What's your take? Leave a comment...

Blogged with Flock

How to write a good book review - and take over top SEO ranks

There's not much to learning How To Write A Good Book Review - in 200 words or whatever you want.

I assembled various pages on writing book reviews, as part of assembling an online press kit to promote my books and myself as a great radio guest. In doing this, I figured that all this could be rewritten/reauthored/paraphrased into an article or chapter (or both) for updating one of my books or to appear in An Online Millionaire Plan Newsletter (sign up here).

When I started researching keyword phrases for it, I found that there seemed to be limited competition for the long phrase "How to Write A Good Book Review." Just 4 sites seemed to be optimized for that phrase.

So I took my overlong article and split it up into four parts in order to make a mini-web out of it.

While I was working on that mini-web, I also took the first section of it and started submitting it to article directories, since it didn't show up as an article anywhere.

These mini-webs are getting easier as long as I learn and stick to the discipline of setting them up right to begin with. Of course, you have to have a great deal of attention to detail, but you do learn where to put what pretty quickly (after you go through the agony of spending a whole afternoon trying to figure out how you screwed it up - the editing program always only does what you tell it to...)

Now that the mini-web is up and some 50-plus articles have been posted, I decided to take a breather (as I just finished posting another major ebook promotion and my next step on that will be both articles, audio, and video - plus more social bookmarking.)

When I looked back on it, I could see that I needed to test my ideas on Web 2.0 with this little mini-web and from this blog.

My last claims to fame resulted from blogs. (At least the instant Google positions.)

The sequence of this test:

1. Create the article.
2. Keyword research for the title.
3. Set up mini-web with article as text.
4. Meanwhile, set article submitter program going to high pagerank directories first.
5. Mini-web goes live.
6. Blog about the whole thing.
7. Then I'll social bookmark this blog post.

And we'll then see what we see. Stay tuned for updates.

- - - -

update 080228

The interesting thing is that I picked a heavy competition wordphrase, although my tools said it wasn't. I didn't get the articles submitted to the top directories first, but set the article being populated on the article directory "bottom feeders" - which is useful, but not anywhere near a top SEO tactic.

I did get some social bookmarking going, although this is still something I'm researching more and more. (There'll be a following post on this...)

Still some more to learn about SEO. While the term "book review" supposedly has no real competition, there are tons of sites out there which still trump my "optimized" mini-web.

The real deal? Go for lower-end, longer tail in order to "dominate" the rankings. My Digg post winds up higher than anything else - as will this post, after its been social bookmarked.

Right now, you get high on the rankings (apparently) by
1) having a lot of pages on your site which talk about the same thing (site LSI) or push your general pagerank up,
2) Web 2.0 attention via blogs and social bookmarks.

The solutions are the same:
1) Build several mini-webs each week which add to your mini-net. Main site needs to be purposed a bookstore or affiliate clearing-house.
2) Continue article marketing to those key article directories which actually do a) send you traffic, b) post active links which show up in SERP searches. (And meanwhile bulk post to a wider net of article directories to find more that will link to yours.)
3) Blog every mini-web you create, and social bookmark that blog post and that mini-web's index page.


BUT - the most efficient sequence right now:

A) Create your work and build a mini-web for it (plus your sales page and Clickbank links).
B) Blog about it
C) Social Bookmark the blog
D) Social Bookmark the mini-web index page
E) Comment Market this on key blogs and forums (back to a forward burner for research)
F) Then Article Market it to the top five directories.

These B - F steps are all done the same day - within minutes or an hour at best, after you've built and posted the mini-web.

Once you've gotten all this done, then you can put an article submitter posting to the "bottom feeders", long-tail article directories.

I'd also then recommend that you use other social-oriented sites, such as creating a video for YouTube and an MP3 for Archive.org - which will give you more exposure. And of course, you social bookmark all of these as well.

Looks like I've got some more notes to post on social bookmarking...

New Online World Peace Lecture MP3 released!

Just posted a lecture on how to achieve world peace online through free self help books.

I tried various combinations of things, but finally just wrote out an outline and gave it out-loud. Didn't take a lot of editing to get some of the mis-speakings out, but there is my online world peace MP3, all 47 minutes of it (more or less).

The simplicity of it is that there appears to be a single underlying system to this universe - that we all subscribe to, regardless of our religious or political belief-systems. Bodies run the same, Nature will sprout seeds, the weather can be predicted (somewhat) - because they all operate on a common, base system. It doesn't matter whether you believe in an Islamic Allah, a Druidic or Wiccan set of gods, Huna amakua, or Christian-Protestant-Jewish God/Jehovah/Yahweh.

Regardless of what god you pray to or how you pray, your body continues to function and you are being fed because some farmer somewhere grew your food for you - whether imported from across the globe or in someone's farm up the road.

And that is the key point that my Go Thunk Yourself Self Help Library and personal development research has led me to. The Internet just makes it all possible.

So I'm including here the press release on the subject.

If you're podcatching this feed, you already have the MP3 on it - otherwise, right-click on the blog title and save as whatever you want. (See below for upcoming, soon-to-be-released video...)

- - - -

- for immediate release -

Doctor Finds Secret to World Peace in Free Online Books

In a recent lecture, Dr. Robert C. Worstell has released findings that claim world peace is possible just through enough people reading free online self-help and personal development books.

Through studies that resulted in his successful "Go Thunk Yourself!" book series, and his Personal Development Library of the same name, Dr. Worstell said that the route to world peace is completely mapped out - and has been for some time.

He refers to continuing bestselling authors such as Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, Charles F. Haanel, Earl Nightingale, as well as current bestselling DVD's, such as "The Secret" and "What the (Bleep) Do We Know?".

In these books, tells Worstell, are the simple and recurring secret paths which lead to World Peace.

"The joke is that they tend to remain secret, even though authors like Earl Nightingale have made Gold Records telling people about them - and DVD's like "The Secret" give it all away within a few minutes of watching their film. In fact, these secrets are in the New and Old Testament as well as most religious scriptures and are often quoted in sermons. The trick is in connecting the dots", says Dr. Worstell about his lecture.

In that lecture, Dr. Worstell "connects the dots" in drawing upon sources such as quantum physicists, New Thought authors, popular personal development gurus, and the oldest-known philosophic system known on this planet. He also draws from current researchers into spiritual mysteries such as Gregg Braden to give examples of how his single system could result in solving world problems such as poverty, war, and housing shortages.

Worstell tells that all these "dots" can be downloaded as free online books, as most of these authors are now in the public domain:

"The term 'Secret' has been applied to so many of these books that it almost becomes an oxymoron in our Internet Age - especially since they are almost all available as free online downloads, or can be purchased for low cost. Your trick is to be able to put these data together and get them to work for you. Enough people using these data in open-handedly improving the world around them would result in a lasting world peace and global prosperity at a level never reached historically - or even approached. The term 'Golden Age' could be applicable."

Apparently the limits to world peace lie in the fact that not enough people are reading, believing, and using the data available through these authors. Worstell gives no estimate as to the amount of people it would take to create this global phenomenon, only the theory of how it is possible.

And to forward his theories, he has made his lecture available for free online download through his website and blogs.

Dr. Worstell's "Go Thunk Yourself!" book series is published by online Print-On-Demand Publisher Lulu.com, with the title book also available on Amazon.com and other online booksellers. Dr. Worstell has written and published over three dozen personal development books, as well as numerous articles, and whitepapers. He has studied the human condition for over 35 years, working in counseling and consulting as well as freelance research.

Contact:

Dr. Robert C. Worstell
Email: robertworstell@removethisrobertworstell.com
Websites: http://gothunkyourself.com, http://stores.lulu.com/robertworstell
Blogs: http://worstellr.blogspot.com, http://gothunkyourselfsmore.blogspot.com

- - - -

About a new online world peace video...

And I'm working on improving a PowerPoint I have on this particular lecture. Right now, it's all text and b-0-r-i-n-g. (Like any lecture.) However, with video, I can (and need to) add additional images in there to punch up that message and add additional nuance. Unfortunately, I can only get 10 minutes up on YouTube, so the rest will be linked here when I get the whole thing up on my site. But for now, enjoy the MP3!