[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy in which low-cost unconventional means (graffiti, sticker bombing, flash mobs) are utilized, often in a localized fashion or large network of individual cells, to convey or promote a product or an idea. Wikipedia[/blockquote]
TL;DR
- Download BitTorrent
- Something, Something.
- Profits!
Part I: Download BitTorrent
Marketing professionals and SEOs, tend to hop on their rails and churn tasks on autopilot. Although this saves time and energy, it also makes you grey. You want to be purple. I promised myself to be more creative and innovative in 2013 and have finally decided to try out one of my “todo list” ideas from a few years back.
BitTorrent Protocol
Common association with BitTorrent is pirated movies, but I’ve always seen it as an interesting protocol. In 2011 I proposed an archiving model where BitTorrent is used in combination with PageRank algorithm to create cloud-like redundancy and determine archiving priority in large collections of documents in a distributed computing environment. Speaking of which, you can download the article I’m talking about on torrent and as a PDF.
I also see BitTorrent as an underutilised content distribution channel with great potential for viral and educational content.
Getting Started
To get started download and install a popular torrent client such as µTorrent. If you’re not entirely familiar with the protocol here’s a handy video for you and promise your next step is not downloading pirated movies.
Part II: Something, Something.
Creating a Torrent File
Load µTorrent, click “File” and then “Create New Torrent…”.
A new window will open, browse and select the file you wish to distribute and hit “Create and save as…” button. Ensure that you have “Start seeding” ticked. If you have the file available via http already you can add it as a web seed too, just drop the full URL of the file in the “Web Seeds” field:
A torrent file will be saved and also added to your µTorrent list. You’re now the only person seeding the file and others can leech from you. You can also upload the torrent file up on the web and promote it, those with a BitTorrent client will be able to download it and in the future you’re likely to see the number of downloads (seeds, peers..etc) grow.
This, however, could take time.
What you need to do is tell the world that your torrent file exists and get it out there. One way of doing that is to visit all the BitTorrent websites out there and submit your content to each…or… find a significant torrent hub and apply as a content producer.
Fly my lovelies, fly….!
Once you’ve set up all your torrents and are seeding them, you can sit back and watch them distribute across the P2P universe.
It’s a satisfying feeling to see it take off after all that fiddling and set-up.
Part III: Profits!
Well, I don’t know about profits, but I think if your content gets exposed to 2000+ people within a few hours for free is pretty cool. Especially if you remembered to include your link in that PDF file that will be uploaded and re-uploaded everywhere now. Yeah, links in all your PDFs – there’s a pro tip for you.
Statistics
So let’s look at the first few hours of me uploading a bunch of my PDF documents.
[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]I love that it is exposing your content to a completely new audience that would otherwise have never seen your work before. Alistair Lattimore[/blockquote]
All right! 2457 8,340 downloads from… Turkey… and…. Russia and… Kazakhstan… hmmm….
It looks like demographic targeting in the P2P environment (or any control for that matter) is zero, but it’s a first day, first few hours in fact. Time for me to walk away and go plot another guerrilla marketing scheme. I will revisit the torrent statistics in a week or so to see how my content has been distributed. I’m already getting Google Alerts for “Deyan SEO” on various torrent websites.
Let’s hope Google doesn’t get a wrong idea…
30 Days After
I just logged into my torrent distribution dashboard and this is what I’m seeing:
“Your torrents have been downloaded 262,219 times in 180 different countries.”
The peak day was at just over 16,000 and the lowest at around 4,000 downloads:
Impact on link profile: Thousands of links, mainly nofollow.
Impact on rankings: Insignificant.
Impact on referral/direct traffic: None.
Increase in customer enquiries: None.
Impact on branded searches: None.
So far it seems that the impressive distribution of over 1/4 million downloads hasn’t really hit any useful marketing objectives other than securing document availability through redundancy. I’ll continue to monitor the potential impact on a monthly basis but at this stage don’t have any high expectations from this distribution method.
This is a great idea and the best part…Distribution will keep happening over the time.. You never know which one of your file will get viral…
For creating PDF.. are you using your Existing Blog posts/case study or something else?
Yes, existing material: http://www.mininova.org/user/Dejan-SEO
Very cool! Have you found many citations of the torrents on other websites?
About 200 so far.
Super bad ass idea! Looking forward to a follow up on this in the near future. Great work!
In such a small timeframe – that’s pretty incredible. Eagerly awaiting any updates you have on this in the coming weeks!
Already at 8,340!
Thanks Adam, I’ll keep an eye on it and report back with any new developments.
Dan are you using these to actually rank? And do you think they will help?
Incredible! awaits a case study on this 🙂
Sounds very intriguing, I’d be really interested to know how many links it would generate over a certain period of time – say 30 days.
I have no idea what will happen, haven’t done this before.
Will do my best to make sense of what happens next.
30-day wrap-up sounds good.
Aren’t you concerned about obtaining links from low quality/spammy/flagged/bad neighborhood websites?
Really like this Dan.. interested to hear how it goes!
I really like this idea. It seems to me that it could be a good idea to distribute content in “chapters” with the goal of generating a useful collection. Then when the full collection is ready consolidate the chapters into a unique “book” and distribute via P2P…
Amazing idea Dan. Thank you for sharing.
Entertaining post and clever idea!
Yes. I am.
Yeah a really nice way to get popular quickly. This way we can build bulk of readers with in no time and all of them really interested in your content. I think it will also help to build a brand name, I am keenly waiting for your results.
Interesting idea, my only concern will be if I received a bunch of links in low quality sites. However, it is a new idea to get your content out there quickly. I look forward to a follow up.
Well it appears you like to live on the edge! Followed you on Twitter for that. 😉
mmm did u get that idea while chatting to….?
Any update to this?
I registered with MiniNova, but haven’t been approved yet.
Any Ranking change?
Great report on the value of Bit Torrent very impressive. Do you have an approx.cost for this test? time it took to setup,etc. Either way we need more of this type of testing to gain the clarity required for producing valuable & measurable Search Enhancements.
Great article! Thank you. Shivambest, I’ve been using this method of content distribution for 7 months, publishing PDFs once a week. It drives measurable, highly targeted traffic to my niche site. Experiencing an increase in revenue as well.
any result?
Any update on how this has worked out? I’m interested in giving it a try.
Wow! This is a great idea. I never thought of this kind of technique. The problem is you need to make your device running 24/7 in order to continue seeding. Anyway, this is very creative. Thanks for sharing!