I will assume you did the traditional stuff at a reasonable level. This means you have identified your target audience, the channels you can use to reach them and most importantly your messaging which clearly identifies your value proposition (what’s the benefit of using your product/problem you’re solving) and differentiation from competitors.
So lets get right into it. You’re launching a new startup. You spent all your money on development. You now need to launch and you really have no idea where the users are coming from. In this first installment of this 3 part series, i will show you a simple method which I call the “Shock Theory”.
Shock Theory
The Shock Theory, identifies a controversial topic that is being heavily debated by your target audience and targets it. For example, lets say you have a product that targets housewives. And lets say its early 2011 and rumors are spreading around Oprah leaving her show. This is inspiring heavy debate between haters and fans. This is your opportunity! Many of those Oprah fans are housewives!
So now you go on to all those discussion forums, Twitter hashtags and blog articles and start posting comments that are contrary to the popular opinion. For this to work, your “opinions” need to be controversial enough to spark interest and discussion, but not so controversial that people will dismiss you as a troll.
You should have a blog post set up with an article providing support and credibility to your argument… and also packed with ads for your company’s product. It goes without saying that the blog should not be on your domain or under your name. For example, here you would buy the domain “Oprahshouldhavequityearsago dot something” or something along those lines, create a blog post, and generate 20-30 comments/discussions to make it appear very active and have people feel like they need to join in on the argument.
Now all you need to do every time you engage in a debate on a third party site, is forward people to the relevant blog where they can see “evidence”.
Did I mention that the blog should be plastered with ads for your product? (Ideally, make it look like they just happen to be ads served by an ad network).
Why is this called the Shock Theory? Because you pop into a battle zone, give everyone a jolt, and watch everyone evacuate (hopefully to your new blog).
Obviously the stronger people feel about the topic, the better. Imagine how well this could work in an elections, sports, reality TV and other context.
Here’s a great example of a grenade where the scheming mind behind it was so smart they actually got the gullible reporter to write a piece about the awful epidemic of college students paying tuition by working as strippers (http://www.indianexpress.com/new…), and endorse that particular person’s strip club in the article. Amazing.
2nd Part continued on Next Post….
Dwaipayan Chakraborty 
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