Heading into the Labor Day weekend, I had a chance to browse through Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff, a how-to marketing book for anyone trying to get people to start a conversation about a new product or service. The thought was that a few tips and tricks from Mark Hughes -- the marketing maestro who convinced the town of Halfway, Oregon to rename itself to Half.com -- might be enough to help me pump up readership of this blog (which, ahem, even made the Top 30 list at Blogdex last week).

Hughes doesn't claim to offer the key to the mysteries of the universe, but he does get to the heart of the matter: how to move product in a world in which most people view marketing as the work of the devil. People don't want to be pitched, or sold, or deceived into buying something they don't want. And, with the proliferation of new technologies like TiVo, they won't even sit around long enough to listen to a message unless it's somehow fresh and mildy irreverent.

The answer to the problem, says Hughes, is buzz marketing. Quite simply, companies can dramatically boost sales and name recognition by attracting customer evangelists who will spread news of the product by word-of-mouth. For bloggers looking to boost page views and snag subscribers, all the advice you need is found on page 80 ("The Five Most Frequently Written Stories"):

Similar in many ways to giving consumers something to talk about - you've got to give the media something to write about. The media's appetite for what's newsworthy is slightly different from the consumer's. Year after year, the five most frequently written news stories are the following:

If you can create a story with any of these story angles you're going to capture the media attention. Create a story that packs two, three or four of these angles, and you've got a grand slam!"