One way we talk about creating buzz is to have a party.  For the average person, this might be inviting 10 people over for dinner or doing an event at a hotel or at your business.  Wil Schroter is not average.  Last night I drove 2.5 hours each way to attend a party at his house, that easily held the 100+ people.

He attracted a great crowd.  Every person I met was interesting and no one was “Selling.”  They were entrepreneurs there to meet other entrepreneurs and compare war stories.

Another thing that stood out to me is his house.  Very nice and big…. and I believe he bought it before the age of 30 because he is a kick ass entrepreneur.  I need to work harder.

So how did I make his list of invitees, you may want to know.  About 6 months ago I was going to be visiting a client in Columbus and I decided I wanted to meet with at least one other person while there.  I emailed Wil because I was a member of his online community GoBig Network and asked if he wanted to meet.  He did, and we had a nice chat.   One email got me much better connected to the entire community of entrepreneurs in that city because Wil is influential and attracts people to him.

He told me last night that he did not know most of the people that come to his parties until they came to the first one.  Talk about expanding your network!

Dan Ogden - Director/Recruiting Process Outsource Program Manager

I recently asked my LinkedIn network to let me know the best free or low cost way they have ever created buzz.  This reply is from Dan Ogden.

When I was selling regulatory compliance consulting services, I called our sales rep at an appropriate trade paper (Compliance Reporter), got an introduction to a staff reporter and let him know I’d just joined the firm. They ran a paragraph about me and my company’s offerings, along with my headshot in the very next issue, and my phone rang off the hook for a month mostly from people I knew — but from many people I didn’t.

When some upcoming regulatory deadlines were looming – the kind that favored using consultants like those we offered – I called the same reporter again with some updated information, and they ran another article. This time, we received significant phone inquiries on a particular area of expertise for us.

Just about every professional group has a trade paper of some kind that is likely to scramble for news items – I mean, how many articles are there to be had about regulatory compliance every week? Find a way to get your name or company in front of a reporter at a trade paper and they’ll advertise to the audience of your choice for the cost of a phone call.

Link shows search results at www.compliancereporter.com for my name — both the initial call (when I was hired) and 6 months later (when I was promoting our consultants).

Creating a buzz about your brand and great services is essential to your success. One important aspect to this is to find ways to promote yourself frequently and create buzz without taking time away from getting your job done. Promotion is great, but great work is one of your best tools for creating buzz. Do not promote at the expense of delivering buzzworthy results to your current clients.

While there are many traditional ways to use PR and the media to create visibility, I am going to focus this article on quick things you can do to create some buzz. Each one of these things done only once will be unlikely to produce big results. However, if you make a habit of doing these regularly, you will start to see great results.

8 Ways to Create Buzz Today

#1 Refresh Old Contacts and Relationships

We all get contacted by lots of people every day. Email, voicemail, letters, junk mail…. If you are a busy business owner, you probably focus on fixing problems and following up with potential sales.

While those have to be your priority, try to make a habit of going back to older emails or voice mails and following up with a less critical contact. I find the best way to do this is to follow up with three old contacts that are approximately three months old in my email. It is easy to go back and scan these, and choose three to send a quick note to.

Keep it simple and show interest in the person you are contacting. Refresh their memory on who you are and what was discussed. You will be surprised how many of these people are happy to hear from you again.

#2 Pay More Attention to Influentials

Influentials are people that have access to many people that could be valuable to you for creating buzz or as potential clients. Traditionally, these people were the media and that group is still important. Now there are many other people that might not come right to the top of your mind, but could create significant buzz about you.

If you are focused on a local market, it will be easy to go out and do Internet searches and find local groups, associations, blogs and websites with articles that have someone in charge and able to buzz about you. Start building bridges with these people.

If you are a designer, could you write an article “10 Design Tips to Sell Your Home Faster”? If you let every realtor use this article on their website as long as they had a blurb about you and a link to your website, you could find a strong referral partner and lots of opportunities to work with people selling their homes. A similar article could be put on architects websites that included 10 common mistakes made when furnishing a new office.

The key here is to respect and cultivate relationships with people that are influential in areas that benefit you. By providing them with something of value and paying attention to the relationship, you will end up with more people buzzing about you, more referrals and a stronger celebrity brand.

#3 Document and Spread Success Stories

What your clients value about you and what you think they value can be two very different things. The only way to know is to be serious about collecting testimonials and stories from your clients. These give you talking points that will be more powerful when you are spreading buzz about your organization.

First, be sure to collect these stories and record them in a formal manner. For example, each one could be a word document in a particular folder or they could be paper forms you fill out and put in a binder.

Next, follow up on some of the stories later on and see how they have changed. Imagine if you called someone six months after you worked with them and they said, “The more professional atmosphere you helped us create is a big part of why we have closed 30% more sales….” That would be a wonderful thing to repeat to others, but you would not know about it if you did not follow up.

When you want to create buzz about yourself but not seem like a shameless promoter, you can tell stories about your clients’ success.

#4 Start an eNewsletter

Email Newsletters can be a great way to keep your brand fresh in people’s minds. It is also very affordable and you can track the results if you are using a good eNewsletter system. Knowing which people are reading and clicking can help you focus your marketing and stories.

It may seem a bit intimidating to do the first time, but these systems usually come with an easy interface that allows you to build the eNewsletter with no technical skills. It is also important to not get bogged down in trying to write too much detail.

To make it easy, always keep the same format. As an example, if I was a designer, I would have 3 short parts to my eNewsletter. I would write a before and after success story with photos, because everyone enjoys looking at these. I would do a DIY design tip of the month, which is something anyone can do themselves, and I would highlight upcoming events, appearances and opportunities to meet me. I would be sure to be speaking or attending and event at least once a month.

Once you have done this a few times, it will become a familiar pattern you can follow to keep your brand fresh in people’s minds.

#5 Blog

Blogs are websites that people update frequently and often have a personal voice to them. They are usually arranged in reverse chronological order so the newest thing is first.

Blogs have grown in popularity because they are very easy to use. Once you get one set up, and there are many places to do this for free or for a few dollars a month, you just have to write the title and the text, along with inserting any images.

Unlike an eNewsletter, a blog needs to be done more frequently to get better results. However, it is a bit less formal than an eNewsletter and it can be updated quicker. The advantage of the blog is that it is a way for people to get to know you. I often compare it to a text radio station all about you. People will tune in every day if they are interested in you and your topic, and if they see it has frequent new stuff.

Search engines also like blogs. If your website already gets you leads, a blog can increase those leads by increasing your traffic and improving your relationship with your visitors.

#6 Make Every Communication Buzzworthy

This really comes down to self awareness. It is easy to get into a routine and do the same thing that works every day. But what would happen if you cranked it up a notch? Do people get your business card and stuff it into their pocket, or do they say, “Wow, cool card.”?

Every interaction, from your invoice to the way you shake hands has the opportunity to be remarkable or ordinary. If someone meets you at a party and talks to you for one minute, they should walk away feeling like you cared about them and they should walk away thinking, “Wow, she really loves what she does.”

Another easy thing that can be improved is voice mail. If someone is calling you for the first time and you do not answer, your voice mail is their first impression of you.

Make a point of reviewing something every month and making it more buzzworthy.

#7 Get Involved in the Community or with a Charity

Getting involved in a charity or a community effort is a great way to build your network and create some buzz. Chances are, some of the larger organizations near you strongly encourage their senior executives to participate in community activities.

You can also use this involvement to enhance your efforts to build more relationships with influencers. How? By contacting media and others about what is going on with the organization you are involved with. Once you establish yourself as a valuable resource to an influential person, you may have the chance later to talk about what you do.

This will also give you more great stories to talk and paint you in a bigger light. You are more than just your job, and by talking about these organizations you will show you are someone that people want to work with.

As a side note, many of these organizations may buy your products or services at some point. That should not be your primary motivation, but it is a simple reality. They are more likely to buy from someone that is committed to their success.

#8 Build Many Paths Home

The Internet is the new wild wild west. New websites appear every day and the latest trends make it easy for you to create resources on other sites that point back to your website. If you enjoy writing and publishing, you should really consider learning a little about Internet Marketing and using it to create buzz.

The steps are simple. First create or improve your website so people are likely to contact you after visiting it. Then create lots of paths that all lead to your wonderful website. These paths are called links and they will bring you visitors and add to your credibility on the web.

Beside the things we have already mentioned, you can create these links by writing articles for online magazines, you can do telephone interviews that are broadcast for iPods, you can create a Squidoo lens about design (www.squidoo.com) or you could create a work.com resource on how to improve the professional atmosphere of an office. There are 1000’s of things like this out there and doing one or two a week will steadily increase your visibility and success on the web.

These eight items are just some of the ways you can create a little bit of buzz for you and your organization every day. Find some you like and create a schedule to do them each week. Then track your results by asking people where they heard about you and monitoring your leads from your website.

The biggest challenge will be to remain consistent. Creating buzz and PR about your organization is a lot like an exercise plan. It only works if you keep doing it regularly. The good news is that creating buzz is a lot of fun and promotion as a way of life is a lot easier than promotion as an item on your to do list.

I often write about how being involved in the local economy can create some buzz for you too.  Take a look at Dave Ruller’s Blog Post – which contains an email I sent him.

Buzz is not about one person winning and one person losing.  Dave wins because he gets ideas to help the city grow.  If it works, it could be a big win.  I personally feel it is easier to help existing companies get bigger instead of trying to lure new companies to move here. 

I win in this transaction because of his blog post and the potential speaking opportunities.

True win-win situations are the heart of creating buzz.  The person talking about you or writing about you wins because they look smarter or more interesting.  You win because they are spreading your story and adding to your credibility.

Most Bloggers thrive with this win-win attitude.  Links and helping people out is what makes a blog grow and builds your online network.

I asked a question of my LinkedIn network, “What is the best free thing you have ever done to create some buzz for you or your organization?” and I got over 30 replies.  I will be going through all these replies and posting them for you here.  Some great advice and real world examples.  The first is by Brenda Young of The Marbay Group.

Find out which business meetings and conventions are going to be held in or near your city and offer to help as a speaker, round-table panelist, committee chair, etc. It’s a good way to network and meet people. You can also coordinate this with other publicity related to the meeting with your local newspaper, business publications and other media. If you plan things well, you can create some buzz before the event by helping to promote, at the event, and after the event by doing follow-up calls and emails to tell people what they missed. You could also blog before during and after.

I also agree with those who have said to help with a charitable organization in town. If you don’t have time to help weekly, volunteer for an event or a specific task (e.g., marketing, phone calls, etc.). Working on an event for the charity is also good for many of the reasons listed above.

Good advice Brenda.  Thanks.

I sometimes wonder if I am at a big disadvantage living almost an hour from the closest big city, Cleveland.  Leave a comment with a similar success story or comment on the advantages of this buzz technique. 

I almost do not want to comment on it, but recently in the news there have been a variety of really bad marketing ideas, the most recent the bomb scare in Boston. Call them Guerrilla Marketing, Buzz Marketing or PR. It is just a bad idea to go for broke on one idea that has the potential to cause big problems.

I think back to the woman that died a few weeks ago from water poisoning in a radio contest and it adds to my feeling of disappointment in marketing and PR. Where is the common sense? Why aren’t these people asking, “What is the worst thing that can happen?” If the answer includes death, city-wide panic, clients name gets national negative buzz…. think up something else.

And before we blame the agency for everything, clients do need to have a sense of what their tolerance for risk is and to avoid those ideas that could lead to bad buzz or worse.

Today everyone is a marketer. We all create word of mouth and buzz, even if we do not want to. Whether you are hiring a top marketing agency or a basement blogger that is writing in your industry, you need to make sure they have the good sense to not put your organization at risk.

A more mundane example

I was recently talking to someone that told me the story of a company with a popular product. A product would be easy to create buzz about. The president of the company hired an agency that convinced him to get stickers made up and plastered all over the city. He had his doubts but they told him they were the experts. He considered it the biggest business mistake he ever made after the campaign was over.

Why? It was vandalism. If I gave out stickers and people I did not pay chose to do that, it might be cool and viral. Paying people to run around and stick things all over is just going to piss people off.

No mass panic or deaths that I heard of, but a good small company blew a big part of their marketing budget on something that fell flat and actually made people angry.

The simple truth is that you may get lots of free and easy buzz if you have a fantastic product that everyone talks about. Otherwise, you are going to have to work hard to make yourself stand out and commit to creating some buzz every day, as well as actively recruit advocates and build great relationships with them. Avoid the gimmicks, especially if there is a big down side.