Thursday, December 13th, 2007...10:47 pm
How to use bad publicity to create BUZZ for your blog or website!
This post will show you how you can turn bad publicity into your Buzz marketing for your blog or website.
Recently, QuarterWiki, one of our new sites in the Zedomax Network, was reviewed on John Chow dot com. Within minutes of the post, we encountered many negative comments such as these:
- I’ve had enough of these wikis.
- Insane! Why would you pay for a single page when you could write a Squidoo.com lens for free, host a free blog all to yourself at WhyDoWork.com, and put up an entire site with free hosting at any number of free hosts?
The first paid wiki worked because it was new and had a lot of hype. Take a look at the Alexa graph for milliondollarwiki now. Where do you think it will be a year from now?
In response, we simply left neutral and honest comments about our website and the company’s goals. As hours past, we got more negative and positive feedback from John Chow readers. We kept leaving as much comments as possible to politely respond to our nay-sayer’s incorrect judgements. In all, we got 138 comments for that post and still growing.
How did this help us?
First, we were able to tell the readers in detail about what we “actually” offered. Here’s one response we made:
Hi Steven, Paid Wiki can get you on the first page of Google for “Some Keyword Wiki”. The reason behind is that Wikipedia has no real competition other than us paid wikis.
For an example, a lot of people will type “wiki” after they type something they want to find on Wikipedia.
Type, “Digital Camera wiki” on Google, and you will see Digital Camera page of OneBuckWiki show up 3rd right after Wikipedia’s results. That pages is probably worth hundreds of dollars already to say the least.
This traffic can be monetized easily through advertising on your page. You see, it’s an untapped market noone has really exploited yet.
I hope that clears things a bit.
With this response, other new readers who just started seeing the review were informed of additional features that the QuarterWiki provided that was not mentioned in the article. We used a lot of these similar tatics to turn a negative comment into a informative questions and answers. The important part is not to get mad and stay professional with your comments as much as possible. (although sometimes you have to put the hammer down with some vicious readers, show them who’s the boss!)
Try to answer questions with questions. (You can also do this when you get pulled-over.)
The point here is that we used negative comments to actually boost the interest from the readers. This type of buzz creation can be compared to an ancient Chinese Martial Art, Shen Lung Kung Fu, where you are taught to use opponent’s energy to fight back, not your own. In other words, you re-use their negative powers to counter-attack. You can learn more about it here on Wikipedia. (I think it’s the Snake style…)
The result:
We had sales record for both of our sites, the One Buck Wiki and the QuarterWiki.
Our review had more comments than any other recent posts on John Chow dot com, further increasing new readers’ interest in our review.
You can read about John’s latest post on “There Really Is No Such Thing as Bad Publicity”.
Love this, and it’s given me some perfect info for a post I will be doing in the next day or two. I commented on a radio station’s blog - commenting on a post that was about St. Patty’s day, I said nothing bad, just that it gives “it aint easy being green” a new meaning. This guy wrote a comment back how my sketches look like vomit after he drank yagger and a black crayon.
Your piece has prompted me to move forward with it!
Good luck Susie!
Isn’t internet marketing all about generating as much traffic as possible and converting this traffic into signups and sales?
I know it is… that’s why I concentrate on getting as much free traffic to my website as possible. Here is one great source that has helped me a lot. http://www.easy-viral-traffic.com/members.php