Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Internal Kick-Off
Agreatfirststepthatmostcompanies, clients, agencies, freelance
developers, and so on can (and should) do in their attempts to
generate buzz about a new microsite is to kick-off the site intern-
ally. If you work for an advertising agency, send a notification out
to everyone letting them know to check out the new site that your
company has just launched for their client. Additionally, you may
make a suggestion that your client does the same within their
offices. When your client
'
s employees start visiting the microsite,
they
ll most likely pass it on to their friends and family. Speaking of
friends and family, let yours know about the microsite as well.
After all, you should be proud that you
'
ve been a part of the huge
effort that has taken place to make it happen.
'
Seed the Link
Another way to kick-start a little viral action is blogs. I think it
'
s
pretty safe to say that there are a large amount of people who
maintain a blog of some sort. Whether they maintain it on their
own Web site or they use one of the many available blogging
networks, they are out there and you can utilize them. One way
to do this is to find bloggers who are already writing about the
brand you are promoting and make them aware of the new
microsite.
ALERT!
Blog spamming (also known as
comment spamming
)isaverybad
practice and it should be avoided at all costs. To avoid blog spamming,
simply avoid talking about or posting a link to the microsite on blogs that
are irrelevant to the subject matter of the microsite itself. Just remember
that if you are going to plug your work in the comments of someone
else
s permission to do so or make very
sure it fits within the flow of conversation.
'
s blog, either have the blogger
'
There are several ways to find the people or interest groups that
are writing about the brand and one of those ways is Technorati
(http://www.technorati.com). Technorati allows you to search blog
posts from all over the world for a certain term such as your cli-
ent
'
s company name. Once your results are returned to you, you
have several sorting/refining options at your disposal such as topic,
authority, relevance, and date. The authority option uses link popu-
larity along with other factors to determine which blogs historically
have the most (or least) authority on the subject of your search.
Choosing to include those with less authority will yield a larger
number of results, while choosing to show only those with a lot of
authority will do just the opposite and lower the number of results
