

Getting Buzz: From 0 to (maybe) Forbes in under a week - mariorz
http://kyro.posterous.com/from-0-to-maybe-forbes-in-under-a-week

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esonica
Personally, I liked your article. It was informative and showed some of the
interesting ways in which you use the medium to generate interest. Some of the
methods are questionable, but you achieved your goal, and were kind enough to
share it with us. A follow up post about the money generated from sales would
be interesting.

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alain94040
Where you crossed the line: "Most of them were along the lines of 'Breaking:
cure to swine flu found [link to shirt]".

This is spam, black hat, whatever you want to call it.

You got 90% of the buzz machine figured out. Now you need to learn how to play
it ethically.

Compare with my version of "0 to AP under a week":
[http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/02/27/make-your-way-to-
the...](http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/02/27/make-your-way-to-the-top-dont-
take-the-stairs-use-the-elevator/)

Good Hackers have ethics.

~~~
kyro
Spam? Black hat? Do you even use Twitter? I'd advise you to go conduct a
Twitter search for any given trend, and return with an assessment of the value
those results carried. I'm wiling to bet that you'll find a good 99.9% of what
you find to be 'spam.'

What I did was no different than what you see on television when you hear 'the
cure to weight loss is here!' It's tapping into the human psyche and appealing
to a very irrational part of the human mind. Just like how Apple markets their
products as 'these will make you look hip instantly!' Sure, you could argue
that because it was swine flu, I was dealing with a more sensitive and morally
weighty issue, but I'm sure more people die every year of obesity, etc. And to
be fair, the name of my account, flushirts, and the shirt linked, shirts that
said 'oinkment' or 'theraswineflu,' did provide some context to those tweets.

You are more than justified in arguing that other things I did can be
perceived as unethical. My use of Twitter, however, was not. I used it to
directly communicate with those who were discussing a topic I happened to be
catering to. And the 'Breaking:..' tweets were just a way to grab attention
amidst a society in an irrational and unnecessary panic. That's how some
marketing works. That's how Apple conducts its marketing, believe it or not,
as subtle as it may be.

~~~
alain94040
The use of twitter to interact directly with users that are interested in your
space, I approve and recommend completely. It's one of the highlights of your
post.

I'm objecting very specifically to announcing a cure for swine flu. I couldn't
care less if 99% of the world uses those sames tactics. In my book, they are
wrong.

And yes, I have been exposed to Apple marketing for quite a while now (~1985)
:-)

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Derferman
So to get buzz I have to post hidden links, tweet sensational headlines, and
lie to popular blogs?

Count me out.

~~~
kyro
Like I mentioned, this was really nothing more than an experiment. I certainly
would not have done that if I was trying to generate buzz for a legitimate
company. These were the efforts of a broke college student who thought it
interesting to see if he could ride the swine flu hysteria. And to a certain
extent, I was able to ride it. It was a great learning experience.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Please, just say the dollar figure already.

If it's in the hundreds, you don't have to be too embarrassed.

~~~
kyro
I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the Forbes article.

~~~
axod
...Which may involve "embellished" numbers right?

~~~
10ren
That's a bit cynical. The _only_ reason he'd do such a thing would be to
increase buzz.

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rms
I'm pretty sure having links with the same color as the background can get
your site penalized. Just put your link in your signature. Or edit the post a
day later.

~~~
pclark
surely all forum links are no-follow?

~~~
imp
There's a surprising number that aren't no-follow.

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10ren
I think this is the power of twitter - to be able to _hear_ word of mouth, and
influence it. Like any communication, it doesn't need to be done in a
misleading way.

This might be partly why twitter gets so much mainstream press/TV: it is a
good thing for their advertisers.

------
aston
The fellas from Heyzap seem to have timed their SwineFighter similarly and
were mentioned in that same Techcrunch post. I wonder how much their marketing
experience parallels that of kyro.

------
ironkeith
The tactics employed in that post are pretty much the reason I hate "search
engine optimizers", "search engine marketers", et al. They're also the reason
I end up on Hacker News instead of Digg and Reddit; people who expend so much
energy trying to game the system end up ruining it.

While the author may have made a quick buck, they did so at the cost of their
customer's trust and their own credibility. Once lost, they're impossible to
regain. I think the author should follow Seth Godin or Gary Vaynerchuck for a
while and learn the value of honest, permissions based marketing.

------
tjit
Interesting article. Even more interesting are the reponses with regard to
your 'black hat' tactics of generating the buzz. There's no such thing as 'bad
publicity', right?

I myself have been wondering how to generate some buzz around my own fun side-
project: <http://www.tjetter.com> \- a site that allows you to chat with
random strangers, as well as _read_ (and replay) all conversations that take
place at that very moment... Not sure whether applying your tactics should be
the way to proceed. Suggestions?

~~~
heyadayo
<http://www.tjetter.com/#3jsK>

~~~
tjit
Are you the one complaining about the 'godawful red'? :)

Anyway, suggestions on how to generate some buzz around this concept?

------
geeko
It's extremely sad to see how much investigation effort is done nowadays
behind stories. More stories is not always better.

------
mattmaroon
Blog comments almost certainly don't help with SEO, since every major platform
uses the rel=nofollow on them. Forums may not have that, but most of them are
poorly indexed by search engines (if at all) so those likely weren't much help
either.

------
jlees
I'm not sure entirely fabricating a 'leak' is what Arrington meant when he
said 'create a story'. Such advice from journalists (and I've been one)
usually means 'give me some angle, give me some reason to write about you' not
'make stuff up'. :|

~~~
kyro
Sure, and I'm not saying he was advocating that. I'm just trying to show that
I took his advice, fabricated or not, in giving them an interesting story -
something beyond your usual 'hey, we made this cool site, please write about
us.'

------
quickpost
Why aren't there any women's t-shirts on the site?

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andrewljohnson
I thought this was going to be a really interesting article leading to some
amount of dollars. Unfortunately, it climaxed with a call from a (nameless)
Forbes reporter.

I suggest you delete this post, and stop telling people about the secrets of
SEO you learned from a t-shirt site.

Better yet, write a follow-up post saying how successful you were.

~~~
kyro
Well, firstly, I didn't submit this. Secondly, I thought this might serve to
benefit some people who have trouble with marketing by explaining my own story
and how I utilized every day resources. And thirdly, I could have very well
posted the name of the reporter, but wasn't sure if that was proper etiquette.

~~~
andrewljohnson
You clearly knew what your readers were interested in knowing... so why choose
not to say the amount, and instead say you got a call from someone in Forbes?
Can you please tell me why the last sentence in your article says you made a
nice sum of cash, instead of listing a dollar figure?

Call me a cynic, but I'd guess that the dollar amount you made would have
seriously detracted from the veracity of your article. Maybe after Forbes
covers your shirts, the figure will be worth sharing...

In the mean time, let me offer some words of advice to the entrepreneurs who
might be misled by this article. The way to a successful product isn't a sham-
wow with a trendy swine flu t-shirt site - the way to success is to focus on
serving your users, and making your product better.

Tell me... did Posterous get to the level of success it has today with the
tactics of making swine flu shirts? Maybe you have a more interesting story to
share.

~~~
webignition
I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that success ultimately depends
on having a great product and providing great customer service.

I think this highlights an important point: the best product in the world will
fail without customers and awareness. This point is clearly fundamental but
one easily missed by hackers living inside their products.

I've intentionally put zero marketing and promotion into my startup as I'm
completing a full-time undergraduate degree and can't provide high quality
customer service to a large customer base. The product is great in so far as
those that use it (about a dozen) love it. But since no-one knows of it, the
customer base barely stays in double figures.

The end result is interesting and the process is worth noting. The tactics
used to generate the buzz may be questionable in places. Change the
implementation as per any ethical concerns and you have an interesting buzz-
generating framework starting point.

