No Kidding! Free Publicity on April Fools’ Day!
It’s almost April Fools’ Day, and besides it being my birthday (no, really!), it’s the one day in the year you can get some ‘free’ publicity by doing something extraordinary to entertain your online visitors/customers. On April 1st, you can get free press without the need for a major update, massive overhaul, or huge investment announcement. Instead you can get press, buzz, and mad linkage, by doing something you hopefully enjoy doing, and your customers will love: Bringing a smile to their face!
Ok, so it’s not really free. It will probably cost you some time and effort to get it right. However, the people responsible for the preparations might welcome the temporary break from their daily work. And when executed correctly, your brand will be all over the Internet! Everybody likes a good laugh, so give your -potential- customers a treat!
Unfortunately it’s not always that simple to come up with a good joke/hoax. Additionally, most of the really good ones take some time to prepare. So if you are reading this post before April 1st, 2011, you should already be well on your way. Take the time to do it right. Look at your idea from all possible angles. A last minute, hastily implemented idea might be a recipe for disaster! And make sure your idea is original. An unoriginal joke isn’t fun and might work adversely.
If you’re a small company without a boatload of users, you will need to come up with something really, really funny in order to get widespread attention. On the other hand, if you do have a boatload of users, you can get away with something that is only mildly funny. It will probably get picked up anyway. Make no mistake, most of the blogs spend a good portion of the day to post about all the fun stuff that is out there. After all, they want their userbase to be able to check it out while they still can and beat the competition by providing the best links, or the most. Being funnier than 95% of the competition will pay off!
Whatever you do, test your idea on a few people before running with it. At the very least make sure it doesn’t get in the way of the actual service you are providing, especially if your users are paying for it! You want people to enjoy the experience, not piss them off because your service was malfunctioning for a day.
Is there in any Social Media in all of this? Why yes, most certainly and in numerous ways! Though you might not be using any of the standard Social Media tools/platforms, your users will. If it’s funny enough, they will generate the digital word-of-mouth buzz for you! Besides, entertaining your customers shows you care and your customers will love you for it!
So.. Start scheduling those brainstorm sessions already to come up with a great hoax for next year!
