Most Essential Blog Content Tips - Buzz Marketing For Blogs

Every man and his dog is giving blogging tips these days. Most are damn obvious like add social book marketing linking options. But there is a real dirth of great tips relating to the nature of the posts to attract readers and feed subscribers. I was doing some ground work on some affiliate blogs (my preferred route to market) and thought about a book that I'd nearly finished reading.

The book is BuzzMarketing by Mark Hughes of Pepsico and Half.com (sold to eBay within six months of launch for $500 million) fame.

The book is basically about PR and creating "buzz" about your products or services but could easily be transplanted into the world of blogging with it's near instantaneous mass-publishing.

Mark states that to create vast amounts of buzz you have to push on one of 6 buttons with the public or opinion formers. They are:

• Comment about a taboo subject
  - He used the experience of using urinal advertising with the creative "Don't piss away half of your money - head to Half.com".
  
• Be unusual
  - Just like the guy that wanted to take on Match.com in the dating field, he issued fliers outside a restaurant chain for OverweightDate.com - people both thin and rotund got the fliers. It was certainly an unusual strategy that worked very well.
  
• Be outrageous
  - Mark rightly says that when you're being outrageous that you still need some connection betweenn your message and the product or service you're trying to promote.
  
• Be hilarious
  - He used the example of French's Potato snacks that were bombing in the States. He used some clever gimmicky men in potato chip suits, but did it in a clever, well-thought out way.
  
• Be remarkable
  - write about something ground-breaking or thought-provoking. Don't get caught up in the usual drivel that most bloggers come out with.
  
• Comment about secrets that you have
  - Create curiosity, discuss information you have that others don't. Show exclusive news or reviews. Give people a reason to visit your blog other the 100-or-so others about your topic.

Most bloggers, social media, web 2.0 people get caught up with their egos, they think just because they're in this fast-paced industry, just because they've done well for themselves that they have nothing to learn from marketing's past.

What a load of crap. There are many leaders in the old economy who's views are more legitimate than the legion of internet or affiliate marketing gurus. What noobies and the industry as a whole needs to do is see this form marketing as just part of the evolution of marketing and not see it as the destination - the final play in the affiliate game.

Affiliate marketing has gone full-circle. From BBS and newsgroups around to shopping portals, then on to price comparison sites and then cash back sites. Most affiliates don't recognise that its a big circle full of fads and phases. The most successful affiliates are those that get out of a route to market just as its getting "over-ripe" and moves on to the "next big thing" when the noobies and the followers are still thinking about the old way of doing things.

As markets become profitable, more people enter, the costs associated with attracting new users rise, merchants and agencies change the rules to make sure they profit from it and no-one else hence making profits fall.

So what next? Well that's my secret- I'm sure some of you are already there!