How Generating Buzz Is the Key to Activating Empty Followers
It doesn’t matter if you have 100k subscribers if none of them ever click on your content
I worked with a group of American immigrants in Peru who preferred to be called expats. This group of American immigrants had an exclusive club. They were discriminating about who they allowed to join, but they were happy to take advertising money from anybody.
They had a monthly magazine and they’d go around selling advertising blocks to local businesses. I sat in on a few of these pitches. They printed up around 5,000 copies for each issue of the magazine. I was learning from retired men who had spent their professional careers engaged in this kind of salesmanship. The experience didn’t inspire me.
“But 5,000 copies isn’t a huge circulation,” the business owner would say.
“Well, you have to remember that these 5,000 copies go to an exclusive and elite portion of the population,” replied the slick advertising guy.
During a meeting with the magazine’s previous editor, he gestured at the latest issue and said, “You realize this is nothing more than a ghost publication?”
I admitted I didn’t know what that meant.
“Nobody actually reads it,” he said. “It’s just something that’s printed up to take to meetings to pretend you have a product.”
Idealistic and overconfident, I resolved to make the magazine into something people would read. I failed. But that experience set me on a path that would eventually yield some insight into how to capture the public’s interest. I’ve put that information to good use in the promotion of my own writing.
Empty followers are nothing new
Consumers have to be discerning in where they publish advertising. Just because a business claims they will print up 5,000 copies, doesn’t mean all those copies will get into the hands of potential clients. For all you know, 4,500 of those copies are going to end up in a landfill.
Today, people are inclined to purchase advertising based on follower count, or the size of an email list. But even though somebody might boast a huge following, you never know how many of those followers will actually see your advertisement.
One of the complexities of marketing is that a campaign is most effective when it utilizes a variety of strategies:
Posters
Radio ads
Social media ads
Magazine ads
Word-of-mouth
Even if you attempt to track which of the approaches was most effective, it’s difficult to get a clear picture. This is why views and clicks are recorded separately. The general consensus is that it requires a number of views before you finally get a click.
That’s the critical argument that keeps businesses purchasing advertising blocks even though they don’t harvest any information that proves those purchases lead directly to sales.
Create a wall of buzz
The trick is to make your product impossible to ignore. This applies whether you’re promoting a book, a newsletter, a film, a record, or anything else. As with most things, the key is to be stubborn. Most people fail because they give up too soon.
When I owned a retail bicycle shop, part of my job was to promote events. The fundamental concept of salesmanship is to give your customers a reason to buy your product. We were selling snow bicycles, so we put together what would become the largest winter bicycle race in the area.
I found the most effective strategy was simply to share my excitement for the event with anyone who came to the shop. Even if there was zero chance that a person would compete, I’d encouraged them to come and spectate.
“It’s going to be a huge party! We’re going to have live music and food trucks! This is going to be the biggest thing to ever hit this community!”
I’d make them promise to circle the date. Once people put a reminder in their cell phone, they don’t have any choice but to attend. Our cell phones tell us what to do.
You have to activate your customer list
As a bike shop, we had a huge list of local athletes who would potentially be interested in joining the race. Our entire client list represented our “empty follower” count. Our challenge was to figure out ways to activate our customer list so as many of them as possible would join the event.
This is the step that often gets overlooked. This is because the majority of advertising transactions are considered “finished” when the customer pays for the ad. In the case of our bicycle shop, we were both the customer and the seller. We wouldn’t get paid until the advertisement actually generated a sale.
I found that the best way to “activate” my customer list was to involve them in the process. Everybody who does an event likes to have their picture taken to commemorate their participation. During the race, I’d get photos of all the athletes. Then I’d take them home and add explosions into the background to make the photo look more dynamic.
I’d send these photos to the participants. Then they’d get all excited and share them on social media.
“How do I get a photo like that?”
“You have to do the race!”
In this fashion, I’d get people to promote my event to their trusted social groups. This is the most powerful advertising possible.
Once we’d put together several races, I started to send out a magazine. It was similar to my experience in Peru, except this magazine was actually read. I’d fill the magazine with photos of the participants, who were all customers and friends. I remember waking up and scrolling through social media only to see that dozens of people had taken pictures of the cover of the magazine and shared it to their feed.
Get people talking about you
Too often, writers think about marketing as something that’s separate from writing. It’s more effective when you recognize that marketing is an element of storytelling.
The best example I can think of is Star Wars. I can’t think of any film where people would camp in the parking lot for three days so they could purchase the first ticket. Even if you have criticisms of Star Wars from a storytelling point of view, you have to acknowledge it as a marketing masterpiece.
The films feel compressed, as if they hint at additional information. It’s jam packed with interesting characters that only appear for brief flashes on the screen. From a storytelling point of view, you want to say, “Well, that’s a bad effort. You’re promising things to the audience, and you’re failing to deliver.”
But from a marketing point of view, it’s brilliant because you’ve planted the seed of interest. You’ve “activated” your empty followers. Now they’re going to go home and wonder about those characters and discuss their theories with their friends.
Focus on the followers you already have
There is a lot of advice on the internet about growth. Yes, growth is important. The more followers or email subscribers you have, the larger your potential reach. However, it’s equally important to consider various ways to increase the participation of the followers you already have.
Whatever you’re doing, you have to generate some excitement. You have to generate some anticipation. You have to generate some buzz. Think of your followers like a hornet’s nest. You need to grab that nest and shake it up!
In my experience, the best way to do it is to engage with your followers. This is why I spend so much time writing reviews of books, or replying to comments, or answering questions. When I worked in a brick and mortar store, I found that the face-to-face interactions were the most effective.
Today, we have access to huge numbers of people. The problem is that it has become much more difficult to add that personal element. If you want to successfully promote a book or a newsletter, you have to conceive of ways to get your existing followers involved.
We’ve become too reliant on our technological distribution mechanisms. At the end of the day, success in writing always depends on your ability to make a human connection.
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"The best example I can think of is Star Wars. I can’t think of any film where people would camp in the parking lot for three days so they could purchase the first ticket. Even if you have criticisms of Star Wars from a storytelling point of view, you have to acknowledge it as a marketing masterpiece."
Part of that was because Twentieth Century Fox had so little faith in the film truly being a success that they signed over most of the merchandising and licensing rights to George Lucas' company. So when the film succeeded, it was good for him, but not so much for them.
And then Disney bought them both, but that's another story.
The biggest problem I have with being a writer is the self-promotion thing. I would much rather have experience hands take care of making my name known while I actually concentrate on my writing, but I can't yet afford to have someone help me do it on a full-time basis.
You are spot on .. this matches my experience as I tried to grow my small business. Activating customers is the challenge of the century