What's Buzz?

We live in a world of buzz. Perhaps you've seen the Yahoo! Buzz Index—a daily log of what people are searching for on the Internet, or maybe you've participated in an online forum because you bought a new digital camera and wanted to find out more about it. Buzz is what happens when you blog about your recent experience at a Honda dealership. Buzz is what happens when the message isn't approved by your board or your marketing department or your publications team. Buzz is what happens when normal people talk to others about you, about your product, about what you're doing.

Mark Hughes is the author of Buzz Marketing (Portfolio, 2005). In that book, he lists six things that people talk about: the unusual, the outrageous, the taboo, the hilarious, the remarkable, and the secretive. Those are the things that get us buzzing. Good buzz, Hughes says, is rooted in emotion, in subjects that make us surprised or thrilled, and in things that make us gasp and say, You would never ...