Creating buzz really can be thought of like a game. There are lots of ways to measure your success (points.) Here are the different point options you have. And by the way, you can help measure ROI with this as well.

• Sales Increase – Are your sales going up and Buzz is the only thing different?
• Website Sales – Can you track where sales are coming from on your website through your ecommerce store?
• Website Traffic – Is your website traffic growing faster? Do you see a bump after a buzz marketing effort?
• Blog Mentions - How often are you mentioned on blogs? Is it going up?
• Google Trends – If you are popular enough, Google trends will show you website search trends.
• Call and Email Volume – If you are getting more calls and emails for information, it is a good sign that buzz is paying off. Be sure to ask people how they heard about you.
• Search Engine Ranking – Believe it or not, Buzz effects search engine ranking. Blogs are excellent for SEO.  Every time someone links to your page from a credible site they are helping you archive better ranking. Measure your search engine rank for main keywords.
• Inbound Links – The same as search engine ranking. You can measure your inbound links on the major search engines.
• Referrals - If you are creating good buzz and have good products and services that people understand, you will see an increase in referrals.

I am sure there are more ways to measure your results. I know of some more sophisticated products out there but this is a simple list you can start with today. Be sure to write down your measurements so you can compare them over time.

There are many different ways to increase your traffic on the web. Just as there are get rich quick schemes, there are get traffic quick schemes. These can backfire on you just like any other shortcut to results.

As part of your overall strategy, it is possible to create a plan that will get your steadily increasing traffic, increasing visibility and results. The more employees you have that use a computer the better.

Here are the key elements to getting your employees to create some Internet Buzz for you.

# 1 – Prepare

The first key is to create a clear document on what your employees can and cannot say about the company. What is the vision that you want to make public? What is unique about the organization? What stories can they tell? Collect examples of good and bad posts from employees in other companies.

#2 – Coach

Once this is done, have a meeting and explain that if everyone spends a short amount of time each week participating on the web, they can significantly increase the visibility of the organization and all its employees. Clearly state if this is to be done on the clock or outside of business hours.

Explain that this is not sales. Each employee should participate in online communications and add something of value to wherever they are posting information, and work in where they work if they can. Links are the best, but do not force it.

#3 – Set Minimum Goals

Ask each employee to commit to doing a minimum amount of online buzz each week. Some examples of online buzz are:

• Post comments on other people’s Blog
• Create or maintain your own Website or Blog
• Email a friend and tell them something interesting on your organization’s website
• Write an article for another website, with a bio and link back to the organization’s website.
• Set up a profile on a social networking site and participate in discussions
• Email an author or writer that you have read and introduce yourself, and let them know you like their work.

#4 – Collect & Reward Efforts

Have employees email you or record their buzz in a central place. Have someone review each buzz effort and recognize excellent buzz creation. Talk about how buzz effects search engine ranking and traffic. Give rewards to those top buzz creators and publicly thank them for their effort.

#5 – Review and Renew

Periodically give your employees new talking points about the company. It might be an exciting new product line coming up, it could be a great customer service story to work into a forum post, but keep giving them fresh new things to talk about.

If you give employees exciting new buzz-worthy stories they can repeat plus stress the value of their participation, you will find you have more inbound links and internet buzz than any SEO firm could have generated for you in a legitimate way. And it was basically free.

Ron McDaniel, CEO
Buzzoodle (http://www.buzzoodle.com)
ron@buzzoodle.com

Get your workforce buzzing about you.
Buzz Blog: http://buzzoodle.blogspot.com

Getting an article published in the news, in a magazine or even on anther website is very good for your image.  The article may or may not instantly create great buzz for you, but if you start doing it on a regular basis, you will find it builds up your profile, it creates inbound links for your website, and will eventually lead to sales.

People want to buy things from experts.  Publishing articles establishes your expertise.  And publishing is easier than you think.

Write an article about something you know.  It can be short, but should be helpful to people reading it.  Many sites suggest lists, such as the top ten buzz activities you can do.

You can recycle your article and publish it many times by rewriting it in various ways and creating multiple articles out of it.

It is very important that you get to publish a bio at the end that includes a link back to your website.  This helps your search engine ranking.  Look at other published articles and see what other authors are doing.

PR Publishing Secret 1: You can publish an electronic press release through PR Web Publishing for free.  It is more highly ranked if you pay a little, but you are not required to pay to publish. This gets you exposure and keeps you in front of writers and publishers.

PR Publishing Secret 2: Many websites want to publish your articles.  The content helps their site and the link back helps your SEO efforts.  Do a search on Google, MSN or Yahoo! for free article publishing and you will find many web publishing resources.

PR Publishing Secret 3: Publish in the blurbs.  If you do not have time to write lengthy articles, publish short blurbs about new things with you or your company in places like alumni magazines, chamber of commerce newsletters and business highlights in the local newspaper.

PR Publishing Secret 4: Get to know local reporters and build the relationship before you want to publish something.  Let them know they can use you as an expert resource for any articles they may be writing.  PR Firms work hard to maintain relationships with these gatekeepers of the media.

PR Publishing Secret 5: Keep at it.  Publishing one article will not make you an expert or get the world talking about you.  Publish on a regular basis and you will build your reputation, improve your search engine ranking and establish yourself as a published expert.

Be sure to publish your work on credible websites and understand what rights you are giving them to reuse your work.

Let me use an example before I reveal the free website traffic secret rule.

I worked for years with a university that has published an eNewsletter for faculty and staff.  While it is on a public website and it does get website traffic drawn in by the eNewsletter email push, it also has some disadvantages.  The administrators do not care about it getting seen by anyone outside of the university.

Because it is on an older content management system and there is no need to add the SEO elements to the eNewsletter, it has been left alone.  No title tags, keywords or descriptions.

The website does not have friendly url and links, alt tags or any thought to targeting search engine results.

Yet this website suffers from great website traffic.  It suffers from lots of Google, Yahoo and MSN hits.  It suffers from having better website traffic than the main campus website, at certain times of the year.

So what is the number one, big time secret website traffic rule they know?  Content. Content will get you more search engine hits and quality content will get you more people linking to your site.

Their website traffic, even poorly optimized, is high for sheer brute force.  The quality and quantity of their articles and posts (about 15 articles a week for 4 years) has created an ePublishing paradise, a search engine gold mine, and a public information resource that sheds light on the operation of a university and the lives of faculty and staff.

Lots of specific, high quality content updated regularly on your website will pay dividends in website traffic eventually.  If you can optimize some of these web pages, all the better. But even if you do not, eventually lots of good content will find its way into people search results and generate higher website traffic.

Here are things you can do to get more traffic for your blog:

• Post Every Day
• Watch Technorati and use hot words in your blog
• Have a clear theme that people will find valuable so you get readers that want to come back
• Make Blog Friends. (Link to other people’s blogs and they will probably link back to you.)
• Don’t be too bland. It is ok to ruffle some feathers sometimes
• Do some search engine optimization on your blog.
• Actively comment and use trackbacks on other blogs
• Put your blog on your website and business card
• Use specific names, brands and words. People search on these.
• Quote good content on your blog from other blogs, be sure to reference it.
• Learn about SEO and write with an SEO goal.

Feel free to add to this list in the comments area. What works for you?

When it comes to Buzz, naming can be a very important. A lot of business consultants will council against naming something with an unusual name.

When I came up with the name Buzzoodle, I believe the absolute best comment from my staff was, “I will give it some time. It might grow on me.” Now they love it.

With the recent attention being paid to Seth Godin’s Squidoo, I am reminded of the risk we took with the Buzzoodle name.

When choosing a brand name, what are the positive and negative things to consider for naming something with an unusual name?

Negative Aspects:
Hard to Spell
If you go to Buzzdoodle.com, Buzoodle.com or Buzznoodle.com you will be forwarded to Buzzoodle.com because we knew people would misspell it. I noticed that Squidu.com is also already reserved by the same person in charge of Squidoo.com. Smart move on their part.

Doesn’t Sound Professional
If I was going to start a financial services company, Buzzoodle or Squidoo would not be a very professional name. People do not want their financial planners to have fun, after all. For a cool, cutting edge company, they still run the risk of having someone say “From Where!” when they have never heard of you before. That is not bad in the end, because they remember it and after hearing the company name from multiple sources they feel like they are in the know.

Think about how silly some big names sounded before anyone one had heard of them (Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, Technorati)

Positive Aspects:
Memorable
You might think it is a bit silly the first time you hear it, but you do remember it. It begs the question, “What is that?”

Own the Internet
If you have created a unique word, almost every reference to your name will really be about you. I know that before Buzzoodle was launched it was not to be found on search engines. I am guessing Squidoo is much the same.

Become a Household Name
A memorable, unique name is more likely to stand out and become a household name if the product lives up to the promise of the fun, unique name. It is just easier to make an impression if you do not get lost in the crowd.

If you are hearing about Squidoo and Buzzoodle, there is a good chance you are hearing about tomorrow’s cool brands that will be part of a well known landscape of innovation. Version one is not the end, it is the beginning, if it captures people’s imagination and is sticky like peanut butter.

Seth Godin has a excellent post here.