Social Media

Do you know what Buzz is? Do you know how it works? Everyone thinks they do, but mostly they’re wrong. There’s the mythical Buzz and the real Buzz. And wouldn’t you know, the mythical Buzz gets all the great PR–or ahh, “buzz.”

The Buzz that most people mean is the mythical one. Even though it does not exist, that doesn’t stop thousands of people from claiming they’ve mastered, perfected, deployed, executed, managed, roped, tied, branded, harnessed and tamed it. I have a cousin who owns an equestrian shop. She assures me that in her vast inventory there’s no gear for “harnessing” buzz—even though there are lots of harnesses. Most people think of buzz as a kind of fairy dust or secret sauce, which, if spread correctly over something by that magic someone who knows how, suddenly transforms the mundane into remarkable, irresistible awesomeness that everyone feels compelled to spread by word of mouth.

The truth is, there’s no such thing as that kind of Buzz … the kind most people believe in. None. Zero. Zilch.

Here’s where it starts to go off the rails. The first mistake is viewing buzz as a commodity. Like it’s “stuff” you can acquire, store, spread around, save, spend, or hoard like a sack of flour. It’s not. You can’t peddle it, shift it from one topic to another, or one client to another or one industry to another. It’s not pork bellies. Buzz has none of those characteristics. If you think buzz is a commodity that can be reduced to single, simple formula, you fundamentally do not understand what it is or likely, how influence works.

The second mistake is more serious. Most people view buzz as having the power to make people suddenly become interested in something that they otherwise would find boring. But it can’t and it doesn’t, for the most part. Instead, what the real buzz does is activate in people who are already interested in a subject the willingness and urge to share it (or more often, some new aspect of it) with others. That seemingly tiny difference — activating a latent or dormant interest in something vs. creating an interest where there was none – is a huge, wide gulf. In that gulf reside the answers we seek about how it works. In this age of Content Marketing, we’re hearing more and more about activation. And well we should, since it represents the inflection point at which someone decides to consume some content. A good read on this can be found in Joseph Jaffe’s Flip the Funnel.)

If you want to try to generate some Buzz, and you already know what the subject will be, then ask yourself questions like these:
• What new and interesting, fresh insight have you brought to the table?
• What have you communicated, offered, or done that no one else has?
• How do you show you have any credibility on this subject?
• Have you taught us something even while entertaining us?
• What possible reason have you given us to want to continue to consume your content vs. dispose of it in 1-2 days in favor of the next mildly amusing shiny bauble?

Like sex in high school, Buzz is inversely proportional. The people who talk about it the most are the ones who know and practice it the least. I don’t pretend to know all the answers about what makes Buzz successful. But I believe it’s possible to get closer to the meaningful ones by asking the right questions.

[Based on a post that originally appeared in Steve Parker's Marketing Dissector blog.]