Hello, my name is Dean Hunt and I have been asked to share my buzz marketing case study with the readers of John Cow.com
I spent the past ten minutes trying to find a cow related pun for the title. The best I could come up with was to replace the word “brief” with “brisket”. The really sad thing I even used Google to find all the different parts of a cow (I should get out more often).
Anyway, the bad puns are out of the way, so let’s get down to beefsniss.
Today I am going to be showing you the first part of my buzz marketing case study. I was asked to create this case study due to my abilities to get not only my own articles, but also friend’s and client’s articles onto the Digg.com home page.
Here is what I will be showing you throughout this mini-series:
* The tips and secrets I used to get on the main page
* The psychological tricks I abused to get more Diggs
* How many visitors I got
* How many back links I got
* How my server coped
* The golden 30% rule
* The fatal mistake webmasters make
* My $1000 winning bet
* The thrill of the chase
* How the story spread
* How you can do the same for ANY article and ANY site.
* What effect it will have in the up and coming page rank update
* My Alexa graphs.
* TONS more….
I am sure many of you will be familiar with the techniques and terminology I will use in this case-study, but for those are not, here is my description of viral marketing:
Viral marketing: Using techniques and content that encourage your message to be spread quickly and easily from one source to the next by outside sources.
That is my technical description, I also have a JohnCow description:
Here goes…
To me, viral marketing is like a great big field with two cows… these two cows are your viral content. If the content is good enough, the cows will have baby cows, and with time, they will also have babies. A successful viral campaign is when all of the field (the Internet), is filled with cows (links).
Disclaimer: I promise I was not on drugs when I wrote that
So what about buzz marketing?
Buzz marketing: For me, buzz marketing is the art of creating a “buzz” (sense of excitement) from your content/message.
So now you know what these techniques are, but…
Why Bother Using Buzz/Viral Marketing Techniques?
I can answer this in just three simple words: Links, traffic, Branding
Feel free to add “Money” to that list. But most webmasters make a fatal mistake when it comes to buzz marketing and money (I will explain this in a later chapter).
EVERY webmaster on the net wants and needs traffic. It if the life and soul of any website. There are numerous techniques for getting traffic, but most experts agree that viral/buzz/linkbaiting are by far the most powerful techniques.
Oh, and did I mention that these techniques are FREE?
If you have never tried these techniques then subscribe to Johncow.com today, and over the coming weeks I will go through every thing in a step by step manner.
Proof
Many people talk about buzz marketing, only a few really understand it in detail. So always look for proof.
Ok, here are a few screenshot clippings that I got from past and recent viral successes. The goal here is to show you what can be achieved with a successful campaign:
The above image shows how I was on the main page for multiple mega-sites at the same time.
* Digg.com
* Slashdot.org
* Reddit.com
* Popurls.com
What difference would it make to your website or business if you were featured on the main pages of all of those sites today?
I am guessing it would completely transform your business overnight.
Let’s have a look at another image:
This was taken shortly after the story went viral, and it appeared on the popular sections of Del.icio.us – what is interesting here is the comment from one of the users “This hilarious story has the web buzzing.” I think that quote sums up buzz marketing in a nutshell.
This is one of the most powerful images. On the 8th December my blog was just a small personal blog with a trickle of web traffic, on the 9th December my site was a national sensation. Within 30 days of my first buzz marketing success, I was making 6 figures online.
Back to the image… you can see the first traffic spike on the 9th December 14,000+ visits. Then it calms down a bit and goes crazy on the 13th .
Here is the most amazing part… my server actually crashed on the 9th, the 13th and the 14th… at one point it was down for hours during peak traffic times. This meant that a large % of my traffic was lost, and the rest was leaked to mirror sites. Had my server coped, these traffic stats would be a LOT higher.
Your Questions
This is part one of my viral/buzz marketing mini series. In future chapters I will show you more successes that I have had, more screenshot images, and I will be sharing the exact tips and techniques I have used not only on my own sites, but for friends and clients as well.
I would love to hear your questions… so please post any questions, and I will try to answer them as best as I can.
Note: Dean posts at his personal blog www.deanhunt.com and guest blogs at www.streetlessons.com and www.retiredat21.com
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55 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post
So do you have to buy credits? No way, you earn a credit every time you digg a story for someone else. So if you digg 20 stories for 20 different people you will receive 20 credits which you can convert into 20 diggs for your own story!
