An online buzz is the definition of what happens on social networking sites when for example. a celebrity couple have a huge bust up, or Justin Beeber announces a new tour, or Apple launch… well, anything.
If you run a sandwich shop in Wigan you are highly unlikely to create the same ‘buzz’ as the iPhone 4 (unless you happen to give food poisoning to Justin Beiber during the northern leg of his tour) but you can still make a splash, relatively speaking.
In most cases, you are far more likely to create a buzz online if you give something away and here are a few thoughts that may just spark a good idea:
Tweet a Freebie
Sticking with our ‘Wigan sandwich shop’ example, Tweeting that you are offering a free drink and packet of crisps with every sandwich bought for the next week may cause people to visit your shop and may well encourage the odd retweet from philanthropic food lovers who just like spreading the love. However, to really make an impact you should tailor your offer to the form of distribution. In this example, that’s Twitter.
Offering a free lunch to anyone who helps to spread the word is the classic combination of a really generous offer AND and incentive to tell people about it and that is the surest way to creating a buzz.
KEY TO SUCCESS – whatever the offer, make sure it’s a good one. Even if it is a loss leader, like offering free food, if it encourages swaths of people to advertise your business for free and drives loads more to come into your shop then won’t that be worth it?
Blog Around the Houses
If you’re launching a new product with a great introductory offer, nobody running a blog is going to simply allow you to write a guest post that advertises the fact. However, writing an ‘expert’ guest post on a relevant subject could be away to drive traffic to your site and get your deal noticed.
For example, if you run a gym that has just launched a new, unique class then a health and fitness blog may be interested in letting you post on the subject of ‘new fitness crazes’ or ‘unique ways to shed pounds’ and, as long as you keep the piece balanced there may be room for a mention or a link back to your site.
Don’t Underestimate the E-mail
In these days of social networking we tend to neglect the humble e-mail but there are thousands of people sitting in front of their accounts from 9 – 5 every day, so e-mail marketing done well can be a powerful force.
For example, every year in the lead up to Christmas I receive an e-mail with a link to a voucher that gets me 50% off wine with a local off-licence chain. It always looks as though it has come from a friend of a friend of somebody who works at the store, it makes you feel as though you are part of an exclusive club getting in on a deal that few others are (or at least it did in it’s first year) and it’s such a good offer that everyone invariably visits the site, prints the voucher and forwards the e-mail – instant buzz!
