My arrival on the blogosphere has been a little later than many folks, but my experience with computers goes way back to the days when Basic, Fortran, and Cobol were the programming languages used. Back then, our public school system had this huge ticker tape type machine where students inputted data that was then transferred over phone lines to a computer operated by a nearby school district. I don’t recall much of what I had learned as I know that I was much more enamored with the lengthy green ticker tape that came out of the machine as a result of the data entered. Still, the data transfer took minutes not milliseconds and the year was 1970 when I was a pubescent 6th grade student at Somerville School in Ridgewood, NJ.

Today, computers are everywhere and are influencing our lives well beyond what few people could have imagined a generation or two ago. With the rise of the internet, global communication has reached a fevered pitch, but for users it is easy to get lost in the middle of it all.

So, how do you stand out in the crowd as a business person? Hopefully, through some buzz generated by you or through some other means.

Buzz!
Yesterday, I discussed with a new client how to take the press releases I will be writing for him and working them to his full advantage. I explained that I would write the release and distribute each one through an on-line press release distributor, but leave whatever additional distribution he wanted to have done in his hands. I mentioned, somewhat in passing, about creating some of his own buzz when he interrupted me and said, “How do I create buzz?” I smiled to myself, realizing he “called me out” on a word I use rather frequently — without missing a step I rattled off to him some of my favorite buzz generating ideas including: sending excerpts of the press release to his email recipients; posting snippets of the release on his blog; joining forums of like minded people and including a link back to his site/offer within his signature; writing targeted articles and submitting them to select article directories; etc.

I may have overwhelmed this client with some of my tips, but they are each worthy of a special look. Beyond that, I know that link baiting can be useful (yes, go ahead and hit the comment button and include your nonspammy thoughts here…I won’t mind), but it does take plenty of time and in some cases a certain amount of chutzpah, two things that not not every person has a whole lot of. Truly, when it comes to chutzpath, some people are naturals in this area, while the rest of us — myself included — have had to learn it!

For those of us with a flair for marketing, generating buzz for customers is one more way to make a living via the internet — 21st century public relations/marketing through buzz generating solutions.

Anyone care to generate some buzz?