Following up my recent post If you can't blog then "don't" , it seems pertinent to share methods of creating buzz online for your venture into the virtual arena. Whether “marketing” your blog or an e-commerce venture, as with the real world, it begins with location, location. location. While search engines will penalize your pagerank for a slow loading website, the internet citizenry is less forgiving. They just leave, seeking information or products elsewhere. With limited traffic coming to your site, budget hosts selling overcrowded servers with unlimited everything may not be the best choice. For next to nothing per day, there are numerous offerings for shared webhosting packages that will provide peace of mind and allow you to focus on the product being offered.  Research and choose your web host carefully!  

In the past, only the large corporate conglomerates had the ability to reach large segments of the populace with their message or product. The internet has given the ability for people in the smallest hamlets in the most obscure places to successfully market their niche product (or message) with affordability. Reintegrating, many of the ground rules for the real world apply in the virtual setting.

- Identify who you’re creating the content for and what you want to get out of it.

- Then target to the customers or readers you hope to attract. Simply writing in general about your product or topic will limit Search Engine Optimization (SEO) potential

- Draw from real experience to show more emotions and engage readers as a person so they can connect with you on a human level. Use stories if possible as they never go out of fashion

- Don’t give up too soon

- Grow a thick skin and learn how to deal with the personal attacks that come with putting yourself out there.

Many may mistakenly believe that the last point is limited to blog style writing. I was reading a rant by an application developer that criticized Rim (blackberry fame) for the complexity of the process to build an app on one of their new product offerings. The comments that followed not only attacked the ranter’s abilities and skills, but clearly accused him of being motivated by either Android or Apple to deter other developers from considering creating Rim apps. While I am unsure in this particular situation, it is certainly plausible. Certain webhost have been known in the past to attempt posting fraudulent reviews of a competitor on HostJury.

How exactly do you create a buzz online?

A venture capitalist wrote “Marketing is for companies who have sucky products. If you build something that is amazing people will adopt it because it is amazing. And you won't have to do much marketing, at least at the start.” Contextually, he was stating that you would still need to market yourself, rather than relying on marketing firms.

You can and should get the word out about your product/service on Twitter and Facebook. You should encourage your friends to post about it, retweet about it, and encourage people to try it out. Others will see the tweets and RTs and many of them will check it out. YouTube, another free, phenomenal median.

There are plenty of people still using message boards, email and user-groups to spread ideas. To not use these to your advantage is a mistake, because generally users active on one message board are sure to be active on others and will repost a good idea. There are also plenty of people who go between message boards, social networks and blogs. Use Google News to search for news stories related to what your idea is, then follow-up with a reporter who wrote something similar on perhaps writing your story next. You’ll want your message or product to be visible in all the different forms of web communication that exist.

Social hoooks are a great way of garnering community for your product/service. Ideas that encourage users to invite others to try it out. “The Great Zero Challenge Remains Unaccepted”, a popular HostJury story, continues to garner attention two years after the contest ended (ended up on Digg). The challenge was to recover data from a $60 hard drive after it had been formatted.  Foursquare's adoption of a game dynamic is a particularly clever implementation of a social hook. Games are the most social of all things on the web.

Google has numerous tools that can help identify keywords and phrases that help hone your sites SEO potential. Great for not only brand recognition (you only pay if someone clicks), the ads are driven by search queries ensuring relevance.

The list could continue endlessly with press release firms, both free, and paid, Twitter ads, LinkedIn, Reddit.

Marketing yourself in a virtual setting has never been easier or more exciting. As in the real world, nothing will replace innovation, hard work, ingenuity, and a desire to succeed. But the possibility of success is very real as so many have now shown.