Building an audience is hard. Our blog has been slowly gaining traction thanks to our efforts through social media sites like reddit, but a real explosion of traffic can only result from our readers taking it upon themselves to read our content and share it with their friends.
Fortunately, our content is free to access, so everyone who chooses to “talk it up” has already had an opportunity to review it thoroughly and evaluate it for themselves for free. This isn’t always the case. Movies, music, electronics, and books all cost money to access, so smart consumers turn to product reviews to gather information before they whip out their wallets. Savvy producers even show off good reviews as a way to build credibility for their product. You can’t watch a car advertisement without hearing something about J.D. Power and Associates or Consumer Reports, and the back cover of just about every best seller is littered with quotes from various critics.
So what happens when you’re selling a product that doesn’t exist yet? Nobody can buy the product to review it, and you can’t even send out pre-release units to journalists. What do you advertise? As it turns out, the solution is often to just quote people who summarize your words.
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