Posts filed under 'Viral Marketing'
Posted March 18th, 2009 by Kevin
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join a panel discussion on The Strategic Growth Concepts for Small Business, a blogtalkradio show discussing the basics of social media and how small business can leverage community activity to grow. For many small business owners and marketers, navigating social media can be a challenge due to lack of time and resources. As a result, many companies miss out on an opportunity to harvest customer insights and data through online relationships that could drastically impact their bottom lines.
Simply getting started can be daunting for many folks who haven’t grown up with the technology. The panel stressed that having a strategy and plan in place that details your goals and expectations is crucial before jumping headfirst into the social media conversation. This isn’t just good practice for small business, many large organizations should think long and hard about their current activities and how the disjointed efforts may impact future initiatives and segment their audience. All too often, many marketers fail to see the big picture, understand the extent of the commitment and know where to participate to obtain the greatest ROI. You don’t need to be everywhere and you don’t need to reach everyone - reach the right audience in the right place with the right information.
For more insights, listen to the panel discussion featured here and feel free to leave comments on the blog or direct message me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/KevinMGreen) if you’d like to discuss further.
Posted February 11th, 2009 by Kristin
It’s the day you’ve all been waiting for: the second edition of Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business is now available.
First published in June 2007, Larry Weber’s second book quickly became a bestselling guide on how to build businesses online. It talks about the decline of traditional advertising and helps marketers navigate the evolving digital world of blogs, reputation aggregators, social networks and e-communities. These environments, he shows, present new opportunities for businesses to maximize marketing investments.
Grab a copy to read the new foreword by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and communications consultant Andrea Weckerle, a new chapter on Facebook as a marketing tool, and updated examples and interviews. You can also check out a video of Larry talking about what’s new in edition two. Let us know what you think!
Posted February 6th, 2008 by Kristin
So it’s no secret that I’m a Brookers fan. This morning I watched her latest vlog in which she questions the authenticity of YouTuber Magibon. Magibon claims to be 21 years old on her account. No way. Maybe she’s 13. Her videos are short and quirky. I’m guessing she’s speaking in Japanese. The language doesn’t matter – her eyes and innocent yet somewhat revealing tops do the communicating. What’s really creepy is a site supposedly created by a fan of Magibon’s: www.magibon.com. Like Brookers, I suspect this is a marketing set up for an upcoming film a la Blair Witch meets LonelyGirl17. If it’s not a marketing set up, that Frank guy should be hunted down and arrested, because hello, that’s no fan site.
Which leads me to the question, when do these hoaxes cross the line? Right now this Magibon set up seems like something straight out of Law & Order SVU. How do we know when to legitimately be concerned?
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last night at about 9 pm the Facebook app SuperWall had 3,090,929 “daily active users.” As I write this post, it has 3,551,493. That’s an increase of almost half a million users in less than 24 hours.
Why?
Some time in the last week or so, the SuperWall developers added a new feature: Forward (fast). Clicking this link at the bottom of a SuperWall post automatically posts the wall message onto the SuperWall of all of your friends.
A picture of a husky puppy dog has shown up on my SuperWall three times with the exact same message, “click forward….to see what happens!” Fortunately, I was warned by an office mate before clicking forward.
While this is will likely be a very successful campaign for increasing SuperWall installation and usage, it feels a little like a con. It’s to close to that bad type of virus that proliferates without the infector’s knowledge. The good viral campaigns are only passed with the infector’s full knowledge.
Posted December 28th, 2007 by Kristin
On December 13, ad agency Arnold announced the start of “a viral video series which gives the agency’s perspective on current trends, happenings and important issues in the world of advertising.” They call it Arnold On.
It amuses me that they’re calling it a “viral video series.” A viral video is one that is passed along from user to user (usually because it’s funny or really cool). However, it’s immediately apparent how un-viral the Arnold On videos are, without any regard to the content. There is no “send to a friend” or “forward” functionality. You can’t embed the video on your blog or profile page (not that I imagine the demand to do so is high). Users are instead asked to keeping coming back for updates, which for now involves going to www.arnoldworldwide.com and finding Arnold On under the Our Agency section of the nav. Sure… that’s likely to get tons of repeat traffic.
What should they do with Arnold On? For starters, turn it into a video blog. Allow and encourage comments and feedback. Give it a unique url and/or feature it more prominently on the website. Oh, and if they want it to be “viral,” make it easy for users to pass it along. Duh.
Posted September 12th, 2007 by Char Lyn
The NY Times Bits blog outing of John Ordover’s Marry Our Daughter prank site made me recall the hour I spent at work horrifically fascinated by the male pregnancy site. In both cases I was relieved when they were confirmed hoaxes. From a social media perspective, sites like these are the accidents on the side of the road during rush hour traffic. One can’t help but slow down to gawk, then talk about what was seen around the water cooler. Unfortunately the Britney debacle wasn’t a hoax, but it received the same type of viral reaction.
As a group here at DIG brainstormed campaign ideas for a current client after having seen the Marry Our Daughter site, I was once again reminded of what makes media viral. Like the virulent germs they are named after, explosive campaigns need a little bit of shock to create a pandemic. The shock can take many forms: disbelief that requires verification from all your friends (Marry Our Daughter), unexpected craziness (Carlsberg beer and Will It Blend?), remarkable/silly but useless talent (Stride gum), and yes, sexy still sells (do you really need links to prove that?).
Fortunately, campaigns don’t have to be virulent to work, and going viral doesn’t guarantee revenue. There are many campaigns which promote steady growth over time without shocking or offending potential customers such as the Coke Zero campaign, Cisco’s Human Network and Visa’s Fan with a Plan. They provide reliable information to quality customers and still provide entertainment.
What people often forget is that the product or service being sold must have customer value. If the product doesn’t live up to the value proposition, the most viral campaign in the world can’t guarantee product success.
Posted August 21st, 2007 by admin
Heavy.com, providers of such online video hit series as “Superficial Friends” and “Behind the Music that Sucks” has today announced the public beta of its own ad network, The Husky Network.
According to the press release, Heavy will be wrapping video players, such as YouTube or Revver, with branded skins and selling them on a CPM basis. According to the screenshot below, Heavy will be dropping a big static pop up on your page with a hole in the middle for the video to play in.
Posted July 30th, 2007 by Kevin
Will JK Rowling kill Harry Potter? Will the iPhone levitate? Are the cast members of “Lost” in purgatory? If you want an answer, you can find plenty of them in the appropriate community. Today, anyone can be a Super Sleuth and find facts and data to support a desired theory to the questions above. The most recent example of this phenomenon is 1-18-08.
If you’ve seen the movie trailer, your first reaction was probably “WTF?!?!?!” Followed quickly by, “What was that called? I didn’t see a title.” Paramount Pictures released the trailer prior to Transformers and the blogosphere has been buzzing ever since (you can see the trailer here). There was no story mentioned. It looked like an earthquake, until something roared. There was no title. Just 1-18-08.
Now, just three weeks later, you can find countless theories and a huge foothold online. Have a theory about the movie, visit the wiki. Want to get some additional clues, visit blogs like this. Want to follow the breadcrumbs that Paramount is leaving you, then check out the official site at www.1-18-08.com where you can view four still images they’ve released to date and check back often as there are more to come.
So…what is the community saying about a movie with no title, characters and confirmed plot line?
“I just watched the trailer to 1-18-08 and it looks like its going to be one hell of a movie. I have no clue what it’s about.”
“…Along with the date (1-18-08), we see a time of 12:36 A.M on one of the pictures. I did a google search for 12:36 (with the idea of a biblical verse) and here’s what it came up with. “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak…” Matthew 12:36
“Supposedly he told Ain’t It Cool News that it’s about a giant worm that falls to Earth. Sigh…Viral Marketing works I guess.”
Posted June 26th, 2007 by admin
The Social Web is a powerful vehicle for responsible social change. Thinking of the social web as MySpace and Facebook is like thinking of AOL as the Internet. Have you ever thought about how the Social Web is helping prevent family abuse across the country? How about how the Social Web is empowering activists to rebuild African societies, end poverty and provide education to remote villages around the world?
Thanks to the all mighty Social Web, in just 3 months StopFamilyViolence.com organized people from across the US who sent more than 164,000 messages and made countless phone calls to Congress to pass crucial legislation and extend funding to stop domestic violence. StopFamilyViolence benefits from the support of online communities like Netsquared.org which helps non-profit organizations and passionate activists adopt social web tools. Organizations like Kabissa.org are committed to nurturing African civil society organizations by providing them with information and communication technologies (ICTs) necessary to benefit the people they serve. Kabissa’s programs include: enabling organizations to access the power of the social web, empowering organizations to integrate the Internet into their work, and encouraging interaction between African organizations through their social network.
Cause-related social networks like MyKenyanSpace.com, NABUUR.com, and TakingITGlobal.org are nurturing communities of activists around the world by giving them access to networks of knowledge, mutual support, and financial resources on a scale that otherwise would be next to impossible. I think the day has finally come in which ONE person CAN actually make a difference.
Posted December 20th, 2006 by Char Lyn
With Web 2.0 upon us, those snail mail chain letters have transformed into blog tag, a game even A-list bloggers are willing to play. The latest game of blog tag in which you state five little-known facts about yourself has infected the likes of Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Amanda Congdon. Thanks to the memetag, we know that that the game some of these A-listers are playing was started by Jeff Pulver on December 10th.
The graph above shows the number of blog authors who mentioned “blog tag” and “5 things” in the same post during the past 3 months. It seems the A-listers are late to a game that peaked in early November by the bloggers in MySpace.
Perhaps the moral of the tagging story is that the bloglebrities of the world are regular people reflecting the common themes in today’s society. So go head, post five little-known facts about yourself, forward that email that asks you 20 somewhat-embarrassing questions, enjoy what you learn about yourself and others in the process, and know that you are in good company.
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