If you blog or do Buzz Marketing and you are expecting to see an 8% increase in sales in the first month, think again. Blogging, and Buzz Marketing in general, have something in common. They spread at their own pace and do not create a sudden upsurge in sales unless you are very lucky. Instead, much like the 6 degrees of separation theory, your efforts lead to connections that lead to additional connections that make unexpected things happen.

Take for instance this buzz marketing blog and my 9 year old daughter’s business, Kids Roar. Some wonderful people in Turkey read my blog and flew over here to discuss a partnership deal. At dinner, I briefly mentioned how Alexandra had a business and it was a lot of fun. The one couple had a young daughter as well, so we talked at some length about that.

Now these people know someone that is the editor of CEO’s Magazine in Turkey and they went back and told him about it. Bang, now Alexandra is featured in a CEO magazine in Turkish and even though it will probably not generate sales directly for her, it is another great story she has in her arsenal to help create buzz. See her press release she and I did last night here.

My blog gave me the chance to meet them, Alexandra’s blog gave them interesting information to use in their article. The buzzworthy story made it right for the magazine.

How do you create buzz about your commercial real estate?

We are moving offices right now and one thing I have noticed is the difficulty of finding a good source of commercial real estate listings. I am sure they are out there, but as I browse I have not been able to find one good source. It got me thinking, if I owned commercial real estate, how would I start creating buzz long before I wanted to sell it to make it easier?

Much like anything else, I would work hard to develop commercial real estate success stories. For example, have your tenants stayed longer than in the average property in your area? Have your commercial tenants been more profitable because of the location? Did you get a great deal on the location and is it highly profitable for you?

Constantly be looking for stories to tell and tell them frequently. People that do not have commercial property yet will start thinking about getting into the business. Then, when they start asking for advice from you, you know that they are potential future purchasers of your property. If they are not, there is still a good chance they are going to talk about you to others.

Once you begin thinking about selling the commercial property, start telling people about it. For example, “You know that plaza I have? I am thinking about selling it, even though it is very lucrative, and putting the money in a new venture…” Listen to what people are saying and see if anyone bits. This works best if you are not in a hurry, of course. You could even mention that if someone offers to buy it before you list it with a realtor, you could part with it for less.

I would also always keep a list of business owners I met that were currently renting. They are a source for potential new renters if they outgrown their existing space, and they probably often think about the benefits of owning their own multi-suite business site. Send them all out updates and opportunities once in a while to keep them dreaming about the possibility of owning their own commercial property one day.

The great thing about buzz is that it fits in nicely with life. It is really just cool small talk. Real Estate is usually a long term investment. Be sure to invest in creating buzz and awareness as well to get the highest profit from your commercial real estate.

One of the things I have struggled with is how fast new buzz opportunities spring up. How can I spend day and night looking at each one and letting you know about them? There are millions of niche places you can create a little buzz. Which ones are the best depends on your goals and which day it is.

Seth Godin has a link to a list of top Web 2.0 companies as measured by Alexa for traffic. This is a gold mine if you are looking for new places to create buzz.

The disadvantage of this site is that it does not describe them. But if you have some time to kill and want to explore new opportunities, it should keep you busy for a week or 10.

A good friend of mine is publishing a book on marketing tips. He is getting 100 tips written by various people to be included in the book. He already has some big names involved. The cost is only to buy 100 books at $6 per book. You can sell them, give them away, etc. He has about half the slots full. This is a good buzz opportunity because you will be in the book, and you will have a gift to give people when you talk to them. Win/Win.

Check him out here

Also check out the upcoming WOM Conference in England – They have done a good job of simply asking me to talk about them. That is all buzz usually takes.

What? Great Deals on Buzz Marketing? What does that mean, you ask.

I consider a great deal on buzz to be something that I spend less than 5 minutes on and it is likely to get 2 or more people to spend more than 5 minutes on my website, blog or making a purchase.

So what are some great deals on Buzz Marketing?

Great Buzz Deal #1: Email – Each day follow up with two stale contacts and touch base. This should take under 5 minutes and all you have to do is filter through your email achieves.

Great Buzz Deal #2: Social Bookmarks – Go to del.icio.us or another social bookmark site and bookmark an interesting page on your company website or a post on your blog. Be sure to use compelling descriptions and tags so that more people are likely to click on it when they see it.

Great Buzz Deal #3: News Voting – Go to Digg or GoBigNetwork and post a link to your blog or website. With the right title you might generate a huge buzz return on your investment and it should not take more than 2 minutes once you have an account and have done it once or twice.

Great Buzz Deal #4: Drop an email to a popular blogger. – If you provide a link and something interesting to say, they may add it to their blog and you will get buzz.

Great Buzz Deal #5: Forum or Blog Comments- Add a thoughtful comment to someone’s blog post or message board/forum. Provide a link back to your site or blog to get more traffic. You could do it right now, right here. That saves you at least a minute!

These are just five of the many great deals on buzz marketing that are on the internet these days. Be creative and bargain hunt for deals that give you a bigger bang for a smaller investment of time and keep doing them frequently.

Yesterday the local Akron Beacon Journal did an article on business blogging that heavily featured me. Including a huge picture of me smiling that made me look fat, my wife says.

The funny thing about the article was that it did not have a link on the web and did not generate any internet traffic at all. I was actually down yesterday. What it did generate was a lot of emails from people, some of whom I had not spoken with in a while. That was nice.

Then, local Small Business Guru and blogging expert Anita Cambell mentioned it in her blog the next day. That did generate more traffic.

The moral of the story is that buzz is not isolated. One thing leads to another, that leads to another, and can build up to nice buzz for you.

When you change your phone number, you have to tell people. When you change it back, you have to tell them again. VOIP easily spreads good and bad buzz when people send out their new contact information. Consider the email my sister just sent out to 50 people:
————-
Hello
Just wanted to let you all know we are back to our old phone number. # 610-xxx-xxxx

We tried the voice over internet protocol (VOIP) and it has been an absolute nightmare. I will be glad when it is all over!!!

Hope all is well!
————–

If you are in the VOIP industry, you need to be sure to make people happy, because bad experiences from you and your competitors travels fast.

As a side note, I have been very happy with our VOIP 2nd line in the office.

Buzz is good. It makes you grow. Sometimes buzz makes you grow fast.

I am looking for at least one good software engineer. Must be in the greater Akron area.

Ideal candidate will enjoy how technology can enable content management and marketing.

Send resume to jobs@outstanda.com

I finally got my copy of Phil Gerbyshak’s new book, Make It Great. It came to the office, and I took it home when I went home for lunch, planning to reread it again in the evening. (I’d read the advance copy before.)

When I got home, my wife, who met Phil on a trip to DC, had already read it. So instead of me rehashing my thoughts on it, here are hers.

It provided a nice wrapper for the other business and leadership books I have read. Phil mentions Zig Ziglar and others that I have read, and ties them up into an actionable work book. – Neofita McDaniel

I have been working long hours lately and wanted to do something fun with the family on Saturday. At the last minute we decided to go to Geauga Lake Amusement Park. It is less than an hour away and with young kids, it is not necessary to drive the extra distance to Cedar Point, as it is famous for bigger roller coasters, which I could not have gone on with them anyway.

For those of you that do not know the history, Geauga Lake used to be an amusement park across the lake from Sea World. Then they bought Sea World and merged them. Then they became Six Flags. Then they closed the Sea World section and made it sort of a lame part of the park, with some minor attractions. Then Cedar Fair bought it and really changed things up. All of this happened in about a 8 year span.

There is Buzz Marketing relevance coming, stay with me….

The constant changes have left the park without a vision or a soul. The coasters are still fun, and they have invested heavily in turning the old Sea World side into a water world theme park, but there is a real lack of identify. There are lots of places that once used to be cool restaurants on the lake and great little shops. Now many of them are boarded up or employee only areas. It was fun in the past to listen to live music and have a drink in the late afternoons.

Riverboats still sit on the lake and I have not seen them move in years. The whole park seems like a carnival in a parking lot. Here today, vacant tomorrow.

Amusement parks usually thrive on the buzz they create by adding the next “world’s largest rollercoaster” – replace largest with fastest, highest, etc.

Sometimes you do not need buzz. In fact, you are better off without it. In the case of Geauga Lake, it is fine but I hope the current owners stay in place for a few years and care enough to make it seem special. To give it an identity it has clearly lost. Maybe next year it will be the Aurora metro park zoo and video arcade.