Building buzz

http://2006.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&id=IAP060012

How do you increase interest in your online venture without spending big money on advertising? This diverse group of experts will reveal their best buzz-building secrets.

Moderator: Philip Kaplan CEO, AdBrite Inc

Jamison Stafford Iventa Corp

Rufus Griscom ceo, Nerves

Keith Richman Break Media

Philip Kaplan CEO, AdBrite Inc

Joanna Angel Porn Star, BurningAngel.com

I missed the first 20 minutes of this panel.

They are talking about giving users tools to organize and some reward with "points". Featuring on homepage, etc. Just like Participant Points - we need to implement.

Street teams for large brands can grow very fast. When you don't have a brand you can latch onto another brand with momentum.

Don't forget that you are part of your own community - don't do stuff you don't like / think is cool in your own community. Participate on a regular basis. No one ever comes back when they swing by and see no new content. People will feel like a jackass if they recc your site and their friends come to see nothing new. Give back to them. You don't just create an online community, you participate in it.

Omg joanna angel!? schweet. Building an offline community will create ppl that want to be part of your group even if they've never seen your content. example: you might have a playboy bunny tshirt but have no interest in playboy/have never read it.

Nerve is focusing much more on building traffic than other goals - example, everything used to go behind a paywall after 2 weeks for paid subs, now they are moving a lot of things over to freeland because the benefits from search indexing is so much better than the benefits from premium accts.

BA used the bands that people cared about to suck people in (hehe) and build the buzz. Piggyback on a large following. Give pnet shirts to earnest hippie bands?

they're talking about PR and how to get ins - how JA got interviews, how fuckedcompany guy just emailed howard stern and got on his show. Not super interesting. Just track relevant journalists and get the word out. But know there is a news cycle and a certain narrative and set of agendas. When places wanted to write about internet doom, even if nerve was turning a profit they would write "all these companies are losing money and nerve claaaims to be profitable but obviously the aint" so know the narrative.

"everyone here has homework" - nerve tells us we need to contact one press personality, radio, news, whatever who might be remotely interested in our project. People are much more accessible than you think they are, you just have to be in their interest area.

How do you feel about putting your content or software on darknets as marketing? Nerve purposely leaks premium names and passes.

A lot of this panel is "you can easily be your own PR company".