Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz: How to Attract Massive Attention for Your Business, Your Product, or Yourself

by David Seaman

Overview

"Excellent reading for those who are interested in publicizing a cause, a book, a blog, or just about anything. "
Bookfoolery and Babble

"Seaman gave The Buzz some tips on how we could become internationally famous. If it doesn't work, we're going to hold a Paris Hilton rally."
The Arizona Republic

"Seaman's advice to politicians: "If you're not cool, don't try to be cool. Most people in their 20s and 30s don't need [you] to make us laugh. We already have comedians who do it."
TheHill.com

Practice the Black Art of BUZZ

Would you like to spark a media frenzy ... for free? Do you want to jumpstart your sales and profile in a jaw-dropping way? How would you feel about unleashing your message on the entire world?

In Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz, veteran promotional stunt-planner David Seaman reveals a brand-new, counterintuitive approach to traditional marketing and PR. Find out how controversy, scandal-mongering, and social networking can turn your message into a viral sensation.

Inside are sixty-one secrets for getting millions of eyeballs turning toward you or your business, including:

• Enemies are more important than friends
• A dog and a blog can increase repeat customers
• Put MySpace, Facebook, and the social networking revolution to work for you
• Google juice: hot links from highly rated sites
• TV doesn't make you - you make you
• Get ten thousand visitors for free through StumbleUpon

Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz is a powerful how-to collection of all the secrets no one talks about - secrets you won't find in any other marketing book or program.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402233302
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	10/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David Seaman is a full-time writer, blogger, and media personality. Seaman is the founder of Shutterline Interactive, a vehicle for rapidly deploying new publicity stunts. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including CNN Headline News, CBS Radio News, and FOX's The Morning Show, and has been quoted in countless publications all over the world.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from Chapter 1: Choose Your Own Adventure
Secret #1: Fame and Glory: For the Company or For Yourself?

"For England, James?" asks Bond's enemy in the film GoldenEye, moments before 007 finishes him off. "No, for me," Bond replies without an ounce of regret, allowing the villain to fall to his death.

First and foremost, you need to figure out if you are in search of buzz for yourself or for your company. While the techniques used will be strikingly similar, the outcome is often quite different. In the case of a small business owner, the ultimate goal is sales and massive new revenue streams-buzz accomplishes this by lowering your advertising costs. In fact, buzz is often free. In the case of an individual (such as an artist, actor, musician or author), buzz is designed to create greater opportunities and a larger market for your work. A successful buzz campaign will create a built-in audience of thousands, eager and ready to spread the word about you. Life-changing opportunity comes when people know about you. For the first time in history, the leap from "unknown" to "household name" can be accomplished virtually overnight. The mechanism for doing this, of course, is the Internet.

So if you are an individual in search of lasting fame, read the first scenario, "Comfortably Well Known ('Microfame')." If you are a business owner or marketing executive, read the second scenario, "Business Firing on All Buzz Cylinders."

- Scenario #1: Comfortably Well Known ("Microfame")

You wake up in the morning and before showering, log in to MySpace, where you briefly survey your online empire (58,000 friends and growing). You respond to a few messages and then check your email: among the random, eccentric messages from fans are an interview request and a query from a TV production company interested in developing an online series with you.

The vast majority of your MySpace friends, along with your contacts on rival networking site Facebook (more on these two bastions of buzz in Chapter Four), check your blog regularly for updates. Oh, and of course you have a blog, and it's a combination of simple-text entries and enthusiastic, pithy YouTube video posts. The site's traffic isn't unbelievable, but it's growing at around 20 percent a month, and your following is a fiercely loyal one. The blog makes $500 a weekday and slightly more on weekends, thanks to text ads from Google AdSense that you have strategically placed toward the top of the blog ("above the fold" in advertising lingo). This revenue lets you know you're on the right track, and if it keeps up, you plan on hiring a full-time assistant next month to help with some of the blog posts and video editing.

You've just finished reading a hilarious new book- maybe something by Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris-and you want to share it with your fans. You post a quick review to your blog (this takes around fifteen minutes) and provide an Amazon Associates link to the book. This way, you'll earn a commission from Amazon
on every copy sold through your site's recommendation link. You check back the next day, and while it isn't a windfall, 152 fans have decided to take you up on your recommendation. That's around $170 in commission for fifteen minutes of work. And you know your readers will love the book. When you recommend something of serious value, your blog's readers trust you even more.

While you aren't "famous" in the same way that, say, Oprah Winfrey or Jude Law or Lindsay Lohan are famous, you are aware that what you're doing is not entirely normal. You are getting paid essentially for having opinions and sharing those opinions. And, beyond the great pay and conspicuous lack of a boss, you are vaguely aware that you have an impact on the world. While millions of others simply consume mass media and occasionally grumble about how the latest installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise didn't quite live up to the hype, you are interacting with media. Without trying, you've become a powerful gatekeeper who helps thousands of readers determine what's worth checking out.

Despite the sophistication of search engines, people still want a real person they can trust and agree with on most issues. Over the next six months, people who have discovered your site and like you will tell their friends to check you out. Your site's growth is now astounding (but entirely predictable), and by early next year you'll have one million readers per month. Welcome to microfame! At this point, it becomes relatively easy to branch out into whatever creative outlet suits you best-writing, pursuing that music career you've had on the back burner, even taking a stab at television work.

A year ago, indie music labels and mid-size publishers would have laughed in your face if you sent them an unsolicited proposal or demo album. Now things are a little different: No one is laughing at your million readers per month. Publishers realize that if only 5 percent of your fans end up buying a book written by you, that's fifty thousand copies sold-extremely strong sales for a first-time author. Independent music labels realize that your following is large enough to get a debut album off the ground or at least give it a good shot of selling well. It's worth the risk to them, which means you're already in the door.

Table of Contents

If you're in a major hurry to become famous, read these chapters first. I'll make it easy.
Preface: Consider Yourself Warned
Introduction: Welcome to the Media Feeding Frenzy

Chapter 1: Choose Your Own Adventure
* Secret #1: Fame and Glory: For the Company or For Yourself ?
* Secret #2: Be Outrageous or Die!
Ann Coulter: Crazy Sells

Chapter 2: The Rules of Effective Publicity Whoring.
* Secret #3: The Five Rules
Sam Adams: Founding Father, Publicity Whore
The Naked Cowboy: The Absurd
Michael Moore: The Piggybacker
* Secret #4: The Truth Counts ... or Does It?
* Secret #5: Dealing with Press Stress
Hugh Grant and Savvy Spin
* Secret #6: The Media Is for Profit
* Secret #7: People Will Criticize - and That's Free Publicity
* Secret #8: Overcoming Publicity Postpartum Depression: Knowing When and Where to Find the Next Hook

Chapter 3: All Fires Start with a Spark: Getting Friendly with Mean Bloggers
* Secret #9: Make Your Own Blog
Zach Braff 's Syndicated Superblog
Successful, Funny Fake Blogs
* Secret #10: Anatomy of a Blogger
* Secret #11: How to Get a Blog Mention
Natalie Reid's Blog Buzz
* Secret #12: Take Advantage of Slow News Cycles
Moby's Alienating Blog
Julia Allison's Online Fame
* Secret #13: The Major Blogs
* Secret #14: Social Bookmarking Sites: The Backdoor Approach
* Secret #15: Pinging Services

Chapter 4: MySpace, Facebook, and the Social Networking Revolution.
* Secret #16: Rules of Social Networking Etiquette
Tila Tequila and Her Million MySpace Friends
* Secret #17: Building Online Street Cred
* Secret #18: Community Advertising on Facebook
* Secret #19: Social Networking as a Viral Platform
* Secret #20: The Death of the E-Zine

Chapter 5: When It Makes Sense to Pay for Attention: Teaming Up with the Godfather of the Internet
* Secret #21: Google AdWords, an Oldie but a Goodie
* Secret #22: Breakdown of Other Online Advertising Services
* Secret #23: Making Nice with the Godfather of the Internet
* Secret #24: Google Juice: Links from Highly Rated Sites
* Secret #25: Building a Website and Unlocking Google's Secrets

Chapter 6: How to Get on Television
* Secret #26: TV Doesn't Make You - You Make You
* Secret #27: TV Show Jealousy
* Secret #28: Handling Your First Call from a TV Booker
* Secret #29: What to Expect: Green Room, Makeup, Piss in Your Pants
* Secret #30: Turning One Show into Fifteen Shows
Why CNN Likes Bill Maher
* Secret #31: Get Your Message Across, No Matter What
* Secret #32: The After-Buzz: YouTube Your Appearances!
* Secret #33: To Thank or Not to Thank: Showing Gratitude to Bookers
* Secret #34: The Minimal - Yet Real - Threat of Stalkers
* Secret #35: What Television Producers Really Think

Chapter 7: Become Famous in Your Underwear (Or, Getting Radio Coverage)
* Secret # 36: How to Get on Radio Shows
* Secret #37: Making the Move to National Shows
Howard Stern - Buzz Monger, Also Very Rich
* Secret #38: Internet Made the Radio Star - Merging Your Audiences for Maximum Exposure
* Secret #39: Fast, Easy, and Free - Words to Use in All Your Ads, but Particularly on the Radio
Conservative Radio: The Raving Lunatic Phenomenon and How to Get On Board
* Secret #40: The Advantages of Late-Night Radio
* Secret #41: Dealing with Hostile Hosts
* Secret #42: Why Radio Sells
* Secret #43: Bring Your "A-Game" on the Air
Use a Landline, and Other Seemingly Obvious Tips

Chapter 8: Celebrity Tabloids: Getting in Them or Staying out of Them
* Secret #44: How to Get in Them
Sexy Spice, the Skinny Bitch
* Secret #45: Now, Why Tabloids Don't Matter Unless You're Brad Pitt or Anna Nicole's Baby
Paris Hilton - Buzz Whore, Also Genius
* Secret#46: Flyover States - Winning Hearts and Minds with Tabloid Photos
* Secret #47: Smiling and the PDA Pose

Chapter 9: Building the Empire, Maintaining Coverage, and Avoiding Burnout
* Secret #48: Why Overexposure Sucks - and Avoiding It
The Self-Deprecating Genius of Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow
* Secret #49: Easy Ways to Profit from Recognition - The Real World Has-Been Cast Member Phenomenon
Dane Cook and Radiohead: The Internet Farming System
* Secret #50: Finding Your Niche
Donald Trump - Buzz Whore, Also Spectacular Brand
Martha Stewart - Same Deal, Except with a Vagina
* Secret #51: Proper Product Endorsement
George Foreman and His Grills
* Secret #52: Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising
Visiting Bill OReilly.com and Getting Factor Gear

Chapter 10: Other Sparkling Pearls of Wisdom
* Secret #53: Stage an Event
A Harley-Davidson Event
* Secret #54: The Ultimate Event: "Vs."
Some Recent Celebrity Feuds
* Secret #55: Sincerity - I Really Mean It
NYGirlofMyDreams
* Secret #56: Learn from YouTube
Required Viewing

Chapter 11: Peacing Out, Closing Thoughts, and Publicity Zen
* Secret #57: Publicity - It's a Twenty-First Century Art Form
* Secret #58: Don't Take Anything Personally
* Secret #59: A Little Zen Reading Probably Won't Kill You
* Secret #60: All Publicity Waves Are Temporary
* Secret #61: Embracing Chaos and the News Cycle
* Secret #62: The Part of the Book Where I Plug My Website
Epilogue
* A Powerful Prediction
* A New American Tradition
Appendix: Additional Resources
* Services
* Websites
* Books
Index:
About the Author