Creating buzz 1998 style
When I launched AssociatePrograms.com in 1998, one thing I did to create buzz about the site was launch a very informal “Special Friends Club”.
I wanted people to talk about AssociatePrograms.com so I did an incredibly simple thing. I asked them to.
On my site, I said:
Please spread the word in discussion groups, mailing lists and by telling your friends. Together, we can make it a huge success for all of us.
I created a page titled Special Friends Club and when people said nice things about AssociatePrograms.com, I thanked them publicly and gave them a link to their site.
Talking about creating buzz! The result was absolutely amazing.
Often I’d be reading a newsletter or email discussion list to which I’d subscribed and I’d come across a glowing recommendation for my site. It was fantastic.
I published some of these glowing testimonials, one at time, on the main page of the site.
I also had prominent links to the Special Friends Club page. I guess those words made people curious. They scanned my list of “friends”, saw names they recognized and decided to “join” the Special Friends Club by telling other people about the site.
A big advantage I had was that affiliate programs were still fairly new in those days, people were intrigued by them and people were interested in this new topic and in my affiliate directory and Associate Programs Newsletter.
I helped multiply the effect early in 1998 by making posts on various popular email discussion lists, into which I would manage to weave a description of my site.
The campaign was a lot of fun and created a lot of buzz.
If you’ve been on the Internet long, I’m sure you’ll recognize many of the names of the club “members”.
Here’s the Special Friends Club article and a list of some of the wonderful people who “joined” the club and helped create the buzz…
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