Imagine you are standing in the crowd and you want everyone to look at you (all 50,000 of them).

No chance. It’s the same problem as the internet.

How would you get yourself noticed in the football crowd?

One answer is that you could be one of the famous guys on the pitch wearing a #1 jersey. People have already heard of you and they already have their attention focused on the place where you are standing.

Let’s assume though that you are not already a famous person on the internet.

So how would you do it?

Try this: get a small group of friends who are with you at the match.

Get them to stand up and raise their arms with you. Then sit down.

Do this again. Do it a few times.

Pretty soon you’ll find that 10 people sitting around your friends are copying the message too.

Soon after that 50 people are doing it. Then 100, then 200, then 500, 2000, 50000.

You might not have the whole stadium staring at you, but you’ve got them to spread the message that you and your friends started.

How did it work?

You created a message and then amplified this by getting your friends to copy it. You repeated it until other people near your friends noticed it and recognized it as a familiar message (a mexican wave) and started copying it, knowing that other people would do the same.

The key here is that the message is recognized, repeated, familiar and easy to transmit. That’s all it takes.

People notice people noticing stuff (read that again if you want).

OK – how do you apply this to your website promotion?

Same technique. Find a message about your site. It could be a story, or a tagline, or a viral video. Make it simple and easy to understand and base it on familiar things.

Find some friends who will copy your message, and make sure they do this a few times just to get it noticed.

They could talk about your story on some blogs, pass on your tagline in some emails or digg the viral video.

If the message is simple enough and interesting enough to pass on it will build and amplify over time as more people pick it up.

So there’s your website promotion. Easy (!) Clearly the key here is to get the right kind of message. Keep it simple, make it clever and give it a try…

I have an interesting conversation running in my head right now. Two nights ago I stood in the local Apple store playing with a shiny new iPod Touch.

I want one, but it’s $300…

Now I’m not generally one for impulsive purchases and I’m pretty analytical. The sound and video quality is great and the touch screen interface is amazing. But is Google Maps really useful if you can only use it where there’s a wireless connection? Would I really want to download YouTube videos and watch them on the screen?

In the end I walked out of the store empty handed. All the marketing in the store hadn’t convinced me.

Yesterday my colleague came in to the room and started showing off his new iPod Touch. He said how amazing it was and everybody crowded round to take a look and play with it.

Now I really want one, it’s $300…

What’s going on here? I now want the thing even more because a friend has one, other people are impressed by it and I could show it off to my family and friends. That’s not very analytical is it? But it applies to so many things that people buy.

If people feel that buying an item will satisfy a desire and improve their status with friends then they are much more likely to make the purchase. In some ways they are buying it for their friends.

You can apply this to your website too. What does it offer that visitors will desire? What will make them feel good? Maybe valuable tips & ideas, or some secrets, or a way to save money. What does your website offer that they can tell their friends and family about?

This is a hard thing to do and not many people get it right. If you can do it then you will have a better website.

I’m going back to get one tonight, I’ll find the $300…

I’ll let you know what happens

PS. So why did I use iPhone in the title when I’m discussing an iPod?