Creative content is the key to creating buzz

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dean Hunt from the UK. Dean is one of the leading experts in the field when it comes to buzz marketing… and he’s only 26 years old! He’s truly a marketing genius and knows how to get people talking.

For those of you who have been a subscriber of mine will probably know that I’m a BIG fan of viral marketing and I happen to agree with many of the stuff Dean said. It’s all about creating CONTENT that will turn into link baits - whether its humor, quality tips, controversy, value etc. Read the interview below:

1. What did you do before you stumbled across the internet? And how did you eventually got started with internet marketing?

I have done everything from graphic design, to being a professional golfer. I squeezed a lot into my youth. I stumbled across Internet Marketing really without knowing exactly what it was. I created a sports betting forum in 2003, and basically I wanted to make it popular, so I just experimented with lots of techniques. It was only later that I realized that what I was doing was actually called “marketing”.

2. What initial obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

Lack of funds were my main issue early on, so I overcame them by being creative, utilizing contacts, and learning how to get noticed.

3. What is the difference between buzz marketing and viral marketing?

For me, buzz is the action and viral is the result. For example, if I stand in Time Square New York naked and sing ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna, then I will create a buzz, later, if people tell their friends about it, then that is the viral stage. So really, viral marketers are actually buzz marketers who are looking to go viral, they just don’t realize that yet.

4. How did you become known as the buzz marketing expert?

Again, kinda by accident. I started my blog as simply a way to keep my thoughts and ideas, it wasn’t really something that I wanted to share with the world, but then I started getting traffic, and when I analyzed that traffic, I noticed that people responded most to anything that was creative, different, funny, or edgy. A pattern soon emerged, and I discovered that creative content is the key to creating buzz.

I also have managed to have huge success over and over again on sites like Digg.com, so that has helped cement my place as the leading buzz marketing expert on the net.

5. Could you perhaps use a case study of yours and walk us through a step-by-step process to a successful buzz marketing campaign?

I actually have done a few case studies, you can download one of them here: http://www.webtrafficorgasm.com/casestudy.zip or signup for free at www.buzzprofits.com and I will send you them all. They show EXACTLY how I did it.

6. What do you exactly do to monetize your buzz marketing efforts?

I use what I like to call “down the line monetization”. What this means is that I don’t look to profit from the traffic straight away. Most people don’t grasp this concept, and that is why they have to work a lot harder than me to go viral.

Say for example you create come killer buzz content, and you get 100,000 visitors in a one day period. The usual method is to plaster your site with loads of adverts, and if you are lucky, you can make $200 from adsense.

That is what most people do.

However, for that $200, you now have 100,000 people who think your site was annoying, spammy and crap. So you will never see them again.

What I do is don’t look to monetize instantly, in fact, I have been known to strip all ads off my site when I detect that I am about to go viral, and my personal blog has zero ads on it. Then, when people come, they read my content, they check my other stuff, they subscribe to my newsletter, they add my feed to their reader, they bookmark me, they email their friends etc… and I build a relationship/following with them.

Now, as well as dramatically increasing the popularity and value of my site and brand, these extra followers can be sold to at a later date, hence why I call it “down the line”. I sell to them later down the line.

It might even be 6 weeks later.

7. What else do you do to make money online apart from buzz marketing?

I recently started doing consultancy services to web businesses that want to dramatically increase the popularity and profits in their company. I do this with my awesome biz partner Barry Dunlop (BarryDunlop.com) and it is going well. I don’t normally plug, but if anyone is interested in our services, please contact me ASAP at my personal email: deanhunt08@gmail.com as we only have two places left on the program.

8. You have an very interesting blog with tons of personality in it - the bunnies, the $1 million dollar review, the 6 billion RSS reader etc. Tell us a bit about these and why do you do those wacky stuff. It’s certainly not things you see normally on a typical blog.

That is why I do it. Most people don’t get why I do it, but it is the same reason that people where bright clothing… to be noticed and remembered. I read hundreds of blogs per week, and I forget about 99% of them. The ability to stand out above the crowd, get noticed, and be remembered is the essence of buzz marketing and branding in today’s world.

9. Any final comments? Plans for the future?

I know there are a lot of businesses struggling out there at the moment, so I would strongly recommend that they contact us ASAP and we can discuss some exploits, techniques and strategies to improve their Internet Success (deanhunt08@gmail.com). Thanks for your questions, and I hope that this has been useful to your readers.

Dean (www.deanhunt.com)

Vince Tan is at it again.

In case the name Vince Tan is not yet ringing any bells with you, this is the guy that pulled off one of the biggest firesales of 2007, doing $69,000 in sales in a mere 7 days.

…out of nowhere.

Yes, he came out of nowhere and racked up the kind of sales that some never accomplish after years of being online.

He proved that it you WANT it you can do it.  In fact, Vince became quite the inspiration for many a marketer who never thought this kind of fast online success to be possible.

So, here’s why we’re talking about this now, in 2008. you see, Vince is going to do it again, this time shooting for 6 or even SEVEN figures with NO out of pocket expenses!

Vince has made it his personal goal to show that ANYONE that wants to accomplish this kind of success online can do it, regardless of how much money they have OR don’t have to start with.

Vince’s firesale will go live on 18th November, BUT for now, you stand a chance to win the complete firesale package plus some other extra stuff  worth $1,500 (or more!) by going to the site below and guessing the total value of the firesale package!

Remember, that’s 100+ top IM products that are currently selling in the market Today!

Of course I’ve already put in my guess

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/biggestfiresale

Vince has already managed to get over 100 Top Marketers to join forces on this (including me), again, without spending any of his own money, so you really should follow this closely, and be on the lookout for the official launch on November 18th, 2008.

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/biggestfiresale

Take care,

Stanley Tang

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All the best,

Stanley Tang

For those who sell their own products online, as you know, running your own affiliate program is probably one of the best internet marketing strategies to make money online. But the biggest problem is getting those affiliates to actually promote your products.

Here are 5 ways to motivate your affiliates to sell more:

1. Make it easy to promote

Make it as easy as you can for the affiliates. Provide them the emails, ads, and tools which they can use, so all they have to do is copy and paste. Make it so easy to promote that even a 10 year old can do it. Don’t expect them to promote if you only just give them an affiliate link.

2. Give higher commission

Especially for digital products, these days 50% is just the normal commission now. Offer them 60%, 70%, or even 100% commission. And make your money in the backend.

3. Run contests and competitions

That way, your affiliates will get motivated and excited about promoting your product. Perhaps you can offer prizes like, the affiliate who sells the most will get a free laptop.

4. Stay in constant communication

Constantly email them with good promotional tools, and most importantly, good content so that you’re educating your affiliates. Remember, the more you educate them, the better they’ll get at promoting, the more sales they’ll make for you, and ultimately, the more money you’ll make!

5. Give surprise bonuses and prizes

Perhaps you can send them a Christmas card, or a $20 Amazon coupon. That way, you’re building up your affiliate loyalty. The next time you ask them to promote, subconsiously, they’ll say yes.

Post your comments and let me know what you think

Something weird has been going on with the Internet…

Just 3 years ago, Myspace was bought out for only $580 million dollars yet they had 200 million members.

Then a year later, YouTube gets bought out for a massive $1.65 billion dollars by Google.

And now, rumors has it that Facebook is valued at $15 billion dollars. But it only has 70 million members - three times less members than MySpace yet worth 25 times more.

Now let’s do some maths…

Myspace - $580 million dollars for 200 million members =  $2.9 per member

Facebook - $15 billion dollars  for 70 million members = $214 per member

That’s a 7300% inflation rate in just the past three years!

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit since at the time Myspace was bought out, it did not have 200 million members. But still, there’s clearly a big inflation going on with the value of internet start-up companies. Doesn’t this remind you of the 1999/2000 dot-com crash? Remember how advertisement rates, especially for banner ads, soared crazily high to as much as $100 per 1000 impressions? And now, it’s only $0.01 per 1000 impressions?

Is this a sign of a dot-com crash? What is your view?

Anyways, I’ll say for NewsCorp (the company which bought out MySpace), a 7300% return on investment in just three years is not bad

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet start-up, myspace, facebook, youtube, newscorp, dot-com crash

Out in the brick and mortar world of commerce, reputation and credibility matter, of course. They are pretty apparent. In your own neighborhood you know which merchants are considered honest and which merchants don’t have a good reputation.

You trade with the merchants who are considered honest and trustworthy and who have credibility within the community. The internet is really no different that any community or small town in America. Reputation and credibility are everything. Without them you have a very small (if any) chance of success.

Building credibility in the brick and mortar world is done one customer at a time. A merchant depends a lot on what his customers tell others about him.

If the merchant is helpful and aids his customers in solving their problems and if he gives out free advice that is good, his credibility increases and so does his business. Building credibility on the internet is basically done exactly the same way.

As an internet marketer, you must ‘prove’ yourself to be reliable and knowledgeable about the niche in which you do business. This is the way that you build credibility and when you build credibility, sales just naturally follow. Sales do not come first. Credibility comes first.

There are many ways in which you can build your credibility in the world of internet marketing. You can write and market articles and E-Books that provide good and correct information. You can post to blogs and forums and prove to the other members that you know what you are talking about.

You can start our own forum or blog on your own website. You can advertise and when people come to your website they find help that solves their problems then you are building credibility.

The fact is, your business will never be any bigger than your credibility factor. Build credibility and success will come to you.

Technorati Tags: credibility, success, internet marketing strategies

The first step in doing internet marketing is to choose your URL. The URL is the web address that someone types in when going to a website. The URL you use for your internet marketing business is very important and must be chosen carefully. The URL you use must have your most important keywords in the URL whenever possible. If you are offering televisions, you should absolutely have the word “television” in your URL. Unless your business is already established, you have the ultimate freedom in what your business will be called. If your business already exists, you are more limited as to what URL you choose.You have specific goals to consider when deciding on a domain name (URL):

1. Is it easy for your customers to remember?
2. Are any of your keywords in it?
3. Does it properly reflect your business?

As you develop (or have developed) your website, make sure you name the pages accordingly. If you have a page dedicated to Phillips televisions, the pages URL should be something like PhillipsTelevisions.com. Take special care when creating pages to ensure that your keywords are in the URL. Search engines look at individual page URLs and use that as one of the many factors in ranking a page for keywords.

The most important aspect of your domain name: You must check to see if your domain has ever been used by someone else. If your brand new domain name was used for spam or unethical internet practices, it will be extremely difficult to get it indexed in the major search engines. This is not an issue you want to deal with. Check out your potential domain name at http://www.archive.org and see if it has ever been owned. If it has been owned, take a look at the archives to see if someone was breaking any rules with this domain. Trust me; you will thank me if you find out that it has been abused in the past. There is no reason to make search engine optimization harder on us if we can avoid it!

Technorati Tags: domain name, web address, url, search engine optimization, internet marketing

1. Pay-Per-Click
2. Banner Advertising
3. Ezine Advertising
4. Text Links
5. Leads (co-registration)
6. Offline Marketing
7. TV, Radio & Podcasts Advertising
8. Newspaper Advertising
9. Word of Mouth Referrals
10. Paid Inclusion
11. Traffic Packages
12. Classified Ads
13. Cost-Per-Action
14. Search Engine Optimization
15. Article Marketing
16. Affiliate Programs
17. Press Release
18. Directories
19. Forum Marketing
20. Email Signature
21. Shopping Sites
22. Shareware-Download Sites
24. Traffic Exchange
25. Banner Exchange
26. Link Exchange
27. CPA Networks
28. Affiliate Networks
29. Desktop Messaging
30. Contests & Races
31. Tele Seminars & Conferences
32. Write Testimonials
33. Surveys
34. Create a Product
35. Expired Domains
36. Exit Traffic
37. Myspace
38. Google, Yahoo & AOL Groups
39. Facebook
40. Social Bookmarking
41. Blogging
42. Video Sites
43. Podcasting
44. Content Sites
45. Wikipedia & Wikihow
46. Yahoo Answers
47. Return traffic
48. List Building
49. Viral Traffic
50. Joint Ventures
51. Product Launches
52. Cross Promotion (Integration Marketing)
53. Giveaway Events & Bonuses
54. Freebies For List Owners

Technorati Tags: internet marketing strategies, traffic generation strategies, increase website traffic, website traffic, traffic generation

Here are 12 strategies to create buzz for your internet marketing campaigns and make money online:

1. New

2. Inspirational

3. Edgy

4. Engaging

5. Innovative

6. Controversial

7. Funny (Humorous)

8. Heart Warming

9. Taboo

10. Secretive

11. Anticipation

12. Suspence

For more viral marketing strategies, visit http://www.viralmarketingblackbook.com or the viral marketing posts

Technorati Tags: internet marketing strategies, viral marketing, buzz marketing, make money online

Andrew Carnegie commissioned Napoleon Hill to interview 504 of the most successful people of that era. Carnegie’s objective was to identify common success factors. That was in 1908 and Andrew Carnegie was supposed to have been the richest man in the world.

Twenty-nine years later, Napoleon Hill published the famous book, Think and Grow Rich. The book outlined thirteen principles that his many years of research had identified as being common to every really successful person on that list.

One of those principles was that no person achieves success alone. Hill called these associations a ‘master mind group’. The idea was that one head was better than two and two was better than three and so on.

Every really successful person had his own master mind group… a group of people that he relied on to give advice, criticize, encourage, motivate and inspire him. Collective intelligence, according to Hill’s theory, is greater than any single intelligence.

Applying this principle is central to gaining success in the internet market place. You must build your own master mind group. If you are involved in internet marketing, you have probably noticed that there are groups of marketers that work together.

The cross-promote one another’s products and services. In short…they are a group…a master mind group. You need a master mind group of your own.

The way to go about gathering together your own master mind group is through the associations that you just naturally make when you are engaged in internet marketing. From these contacts you build your own group of close associates that are knowledgeable and reliable.

It takes time and it takes patience but it is well worth both. Collectively you will all be stronger than as individuals. Two heads really are better than one and more than two is even better.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing strategies, napoleon hill, think and grow rich, andrew carnegie, mastermind, success