How I Dominated the Marketing Niche with a Dumb Quiz

My viral and buzz marketing stunts are at times a little wacky and different. Today I am going to show you that content does NOT have to be 100% relevant to get relevant traffic. So ignore what the so called “marketing gurus” write about Buzz & Viral marketing, you are about to learn the truth…

You may recall that last week I created a post entitled: How Dumb Are You?, as usual, I used an element of buzz in the headline, and I created the content in a format that would make it appealing to the eye and I actively encouraged it to go viral by requesting that people emailed it to friends if they liked it.

Now, whilst many people enjoyed the quiz, I was also asked the question: “But Dean, what advantage can an off-topic quiz have for a marketing blog?”

Here is the secret that no other viral marketers seem to understand… getting 10,000 visitors of which 20% are targeted is BETTER than getting 100 visitors where 100% are targeted.

What’s more, social media sites will often use the category of your blog despite the category of the content.

Want an example?

Of course you do… well let’s use the quiz for example. Recently, after I posted it here, it spread to StumbleUpon. The submitter used the tags we would expect for the dumb quiz, such as “Funny” and “quiz”… but guess what?!? She also used the tag “Marketing”.

What has the quiz got to do with marketing?

Absolutely nothing!

But this is a marketing blog, and she must have felt compelled to use that tag.

Here is a result of that viral effort, with a screen shot I took 9 mins ago:

Out of all the millions of marketing blog posts on the Internet, my dumb quiz is numero uno on StumbleUpon, despite the fact that the article has NOTHING to do with marketing. None of the big A-list marketing bloggers are there, just little old me and my dumb quiz

How can this be? How can A-list bloggers be churning out huge resources and intellectual debate, and here I am, outranking them all on one of the biggest social media sites on the Internet… with a bloody quiz!?!

What’s more, I have been getting over 1,500 hits per day from that listing, and from the emails and comments I have received, many of those new visitors are interested in marketing. This of course improves the brand, strength, stats, rankings and reputation of my blog.

So now that you know one of my secrets, how can you use this on your website?

Simple!

Create an “Off-Topic” category on your blog, and aim to do one off-topic post per week. Not only will it entertain your readers, it can bring large amounts of traffic, and best of all, despite the beliefs of the masses, you know that the traffic for an off-topic post can still be relevant to your niche.

Remember, “The Masses are Asses!“, I am not saying that you shouldn’t read the huge amount of so called “A-list” bloggers, but try and focus more on advice from people who have shown actual screen shots and evidence that they have been there are done it, as opposed to just saying that they have.

Enjoy.

PS: I got only 1 out of 5 correct on the quiz, so what do I know?