Creating a Purple Buzz

Yesterday was a marathon day. My video podcast partner's book, What's Your Purple Goldfish?, was released and we spent the day promoting it and celebrating the fruits of the past couple of years. Seeing this book in print was such a great feeling.

One of the things you learn quickly in social media is that you can't just put stuff out there and wait for people to come to you. You have to go find your audience and engage with them where they live online. For us, that was Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, blogs and even some emailing and good old fashioned telephone calls. If you want to start a buzz, you gotta poke the hive.

We ended the day with a live, online chat moderated by our friend, social media strategist Susan Borst. It was fascinating to see the variety of people that logged into the chat room. There were a couple of long time friends and followers of the Purple Goldfish Project and there were a few people that had just discovered us that day... thanks to the buzz. They had no idea what a Purple Goldfish was or how to even pronounce "Lagniappe." (Lan-yap.)

It was amazing to see one person, who practically stumbled upon us, follow the conversation, ask questions and at the end of the session proclaim that her next move was going to be to buy the book.

This social media stuff works. It's not a magic bullet and it takes a lot of dedication, time and imagination. But when it starts to click, what can happen can be amazing.