Category Archives: SEO

In celebration of the 5-year anniversary of YouTube this month, I thought it fitting to discuss the idea of viral videos and “going viral.” The entire concept fascinates me. It’s just another internet buzz word like….social media, tweetworthy, foursquare, etc., yet somehow, has completely re-shaped our culture and activity online.

Wikipedia describes the term viral as: “…becoming extremely popular in a very short amount of time. Often for something to be considered viral it needs to make its way into everyday non-internet life.”

Entire seminars, conferences and marketing strategies are now dedicated to how to create something that will go viral. Something about that seems completely counter-intuitive. I don’t think you can ever truly set out for viral success, let alone define a formula for how to make it happen.

I think viral content happens due to a number of different reasons, but usually involving some combination of the following…

1. Really engaging or great content
2. A brilliant or creative idea
3. Something we haven’t seen before
4. Cute or funny kids
5. Something that’s truly laugh-out-loud funny
6. Something that happens completely by accident and is captured on film

I’m not saying that companies haven’t had great success creating viral videos as part of a marketing or advertising campaign…I’m merely saying I think it’s important to change the strategy and thought behind coming up with that content.

A “viral video” can’t be looked at as just another check on the checklist of planning a campaign, like a direct mail piece or a website. I think it’s important to take a step back and look at what you’re trying to accomplish and ask yourself or your client: “What are we trying to accomplish here?” “Who is our target and what interests them?” “Is this something that I would be so moved / entertained / [fill in the blank] by that I would actually forward this to my friends?”

In my opinion, those are the questions to be asking…not, would you like a viral video?

To close, I’d like to leave you with an assortment of some of my favorite viral videos, in no particular order…

1. The Cadbury’s Gorilla
2. Single Ladies Devastation (by Atlanta’s own Carlos Whittaker & family)
3. Charlie Bit My Finger
4. Toyota’s Swagger Wagon (This is the most recent on this list and yes, completely part of Toyota’s latest marketing strategy surrounding the Sienna…I say, bravo Toyota, job well done on this!)

What are some of your favorites?

Most of us consider Twitter a promotional tool, but companies ranging from local burrito shops to Dell are using it to find leads and close business.

Connect with Customers Instead of just announcing new products or promoting your blog on Twitter, reach out to your customers. Boloco, a local Boston burrito restaurant with 16 locations runs ads in local papers that include a $3 off coupon. The owner decided to take a picture of the coupon and post it on Twitter, he tweeted that they would accept a print out or even just showing the coupon on a phone. The restaurant usually accepts 350 coupons when they run one of these ads, after using Twitter they received 900.

On a larger scale, Dell Outet recently acknowledged that they had made $3 million in sales over two years using Twitter, primarily posting coupon codes. @DellOutlet has over 1,000,000 followers.

Track Mentions & Save Searches
Use Twitter to track what people are saying about your company. Many Twitter applications like Tweetdeck let you track “mentions” which will allow you to see what your followers as well as non-followers are saying about you.

But you will only get notified of a mention if someone uses @yourusername specifically. How do you track what people are saying about you in a simple post? What are they saying about your competitors or specific things relating to your industry? Create a custom search; Simply search for your desired keywords on Twitter and then save your search (see image). Twitter also has an advanced search feature: http://search.twitter.com/advanced. There are many widgets for tracking your search criteria as well as features built in to many of the popular Twitter applications: http://twitter.com/downloads.

Give your company personality, even deal with disgruntled customers
Give your company a human face by interacting when your company is being discussed. Boloco’s owner weighs in with his Twitter followers to encourage them to visit his restaurant when they are pondering where to go eat on a Friday night.

A Denver area Ace Hardware owner, uses monitter to search Twitter for both keywords and locations of tweeters. One day, he flagged a Denver man worrying about insects in his lawn. He was able to tweet to him about the benefits of using lady bugs to manage lawn pests. The man ended up coming in to the store and buying lady bugs.

The same Ace Hardware owner also caught a customer complaining about a broken tool. He reached out to him and informed him that Ace tools had a lifetime guarantee. The man went from angry to extremely impressed.

In conclusion, if you are not using Twitter there is no reason not to give it a try. It is free and it is not time consuming. If you are already using Twitter to promote your company, I’d encourage you to try taking advantage of Twitter in some of these creative ways.

Evelyn-Anne from Clever Twist and I went down to the Lenox Apple store last Friday for a little guerilla marketing. The iPhone 3GS was being released and we thought it would be a great opportunity to promote the Bottlecap / Clever Twist team by handing out mini iPhone cards with links to free app downloads.

The crowd was extremely receptive, everyone loves free stuff, especially free stuff for their iPhone. People in line gladly accepted the packet of cards, not one person said “no thanks”. The Apple store seemed to have no problem with what we were doing.

We continued to hand out the packets until mall security came and asked us to stop. By this point we had handed out hundreds of packets. When people in line saw that security was addressing us , it definitely peaked their interest. After we got back in line people began approaching us and asking for cards.

For the record the new iPhone is awesome. It may not be worthwhile to get it just for the 3.2 MP and the video capabilities… but the speed is noticeably better and makes it worth the upgrade in my opinion.

According to StatCounter, Bing has become the number two search service in the U.S. and also the world.  Yahoo Search dropped to number three as Bing has gained over 16% of the market share in just a few days.

There are a couple of theories about this.

1. People are just trying it out.
   With the release of any new service that’s promoted as heavily as Bing, there’s sure to be a surge in use from people who are just curious.  Only time will tell if this is the case or if Bing can retain its new users.
2. Bing was Forced on people still using IE6.
   According to TechCrunch:

   “The Next Web reports that users of Internet Explorer 6 are being forced to use Bing as their default search engine — even if they’ve manually switched their preference to another search provider, like Google. Attempts to switch the browser to something other than Bing result in an error message.”

   Whether or not microsoft receives backlash from this move, it’s an interesting marketing tactic.  It’s a strange coincidence that IE6 users account for roughly the same number of users that Bing has gained…

So of course you had to know that Google would get involved in the Social Media world.  With their latest announcement, Google Wave, we have a better understanding of what they envision and to be honest it looks pretty sweet.

Jeremy touched on the social networking aspects of Xobni in a previous blog and how Bill Gates said that Xobni will be  “the next generation of social networking”.  Well it appears Google is thinking along the same lines.  Google Wave will integrate email with a slew of social networking capabilities and more.  As one of the developers on the project stated, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today”.

I  encourage you to check out Googe’s official blog about it and also if you have the time watch their Full Demo of the Wave.

Obviously, iPhone applications are the new craze.  One billion (1,000,000,000!) apps have been downloaded in a very short period of time, and with the upcoming release of iPhone OS 3.0 this number is sure to skyrocket.

With all this exposure, it makes sense that advertising within this platform would have a higher than normal return on investment.  A recent report from Greystripe reveals that iPhone users average 9.6 minutes per app.  I’m not entirely sure what this translates to in the world of advertising, but let’s look at Volkswagen’s “Polo Challenge 3d“.  I honestly have no idea how much it cost to develop this game, but nearly one million users have downloaded the app.  Exposing their product to that many people for an average of 10 minutes at a time should be very effective in theory.  On top of that, their audience chose to download the interactive advertisement.

Speaking of advertising demographics… according to Mobile Marketer, more than half (54 percent) of application users are in households with incomes greater than $75,000 per year.

How much would you pay for 10 minutes of undivided attention from one million enthusiastic individuals who are fully capable of purchasing your product?

Just a thought…

Just search around a bit in Groups on Facebook, you will find pages promoting everything from rock bands to beer to politicians. These same people are also using Twitter, Flickr, YouTube etc. to promote by developing content, driving traffic and holding contests.

One industry you don’t see a lot of in the social media arena is automotive. Many older industry’s have had trouble adjusting their marketing to the web. Finally a motor company is not only utilizing today’s web but making it interesting. The Ford Fiesta has been sold overseas for awhile, they are bringing it to the states in 10’ and marketing by using online content driven by… well, the drivers.

Ford gave 100 Fiestas to people selected from 4,000 applicants. The winners get to use the cars for six months in exchange for completing “missions” with different themes. They’ll share their experiences through YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts that Ford created for the campaign.

Ford is using this campaign (they are calling it “The Fiesta Movement”) not only to promote the car but to get genuine feedback publicly from the drivers. This is using social media as it was meant to be used. I think Ford is going to get some great results. Good move Ford!

FordFiesta Twitter page

The Fiesta Movement Facebook page

Fiesta Movement Flickr Page

FiestaMovement YouTube account

Anyone who has a website wants to know what their users are doing, how they’re responding to their site and what can be done to get more user interaction.

One useful tool we will always suggest and implement is Google Analytics.  The amount of details that you can get from that simple implementation is mind blowing, but now is not the time to get into the details of how to use your analytics tool, rather I wanted to talk about a new site analyzer that was recently brought to my attention.

It’s called Crazy Egg.  I’ve seen heat map analysis for user-interaction on websites before, but I haven’t seen it done with the flexibility this app appears to offer. I especially like the confetti feature in the demo, being able to tell where your users are clicking and grouped by how they were referred to your site is a powerful tool and should help you understand your traffic a little better.

I was paying my bills online yesterday when I realized I haven’t even owned a checkbook in over a year. So I started thinking, How am I now comfortable managing all of my finances online when only six years ago I wouldn’t even provide my real mailing address to sign up for Yahoo! Mail?

Establishing trust with your users remains one of the largest hurdles a new online service faces. Even though we depend more and more on the Internet for daily tasks like paying bills, keeping in touch with old friends, or shopping, stories of scams and identity theft fill the news leaving users suspicious, or at best skeptical.  Large companies such as Paypal.com and Amazon.com have built up a reputation over time that exudes trustworthiness, but how does a smaller company or start-up build that confidence?

Here is a short list off the top of my head of ways online companies have gained my trust.

1. You are trusted by another person whom I trust.

2. The information I have to give you to use your product is not very sensitive.

3. I’ve trusted you with a little, and you haven’t let me down.

4. You are transparent and detailed about how your are going to use my information, and what you are going to do to protect it.

5. You use a third party service I trust (such as paypal.com) to handle my sensitive information.

Disagree or have any other suggestions? Let us know in the comments.

Who wouldn’t want to connect a network of 175 million active users to their up and coming web app or website? With Facebook’s newest venture, Facebook Connect, that is now very possible.  Facebook Connect allows you to integrate the Facebook Platform into your very own site, seamlessly connecting your site to users’ Facebook accounts.  Users can then share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook, or even connect with other Facebook users who also use your site. When a new Facebook user signs up to use your amazing new application, they’re not just signing themselves up, they’re bringing their (on average) 120 friends along with them too!

For example, this weekend I noticed Netflix has integrated with Facebook Connect, so I gladly connected my two accounts by simply logging in to Facebook Connect through my Netflix account.  Now, whenever I rate a movie on Netflix, an entry is posted to my Facebook Wall.  All of my Facebook friends can see the movie I rated, the rating I gave it, and a description and thumbnail of the movie. They are also linked directly to the Netflix home page, or to the movie’s page. In essence, I’m giving Netflix free advertising to all of my friends, who very likely have similar tastes in movies.

As the Facebook community continues to grow at an incredible rate, the value that it can bring to any website is priceless. And with Facebook Connect now being available on platforms such as the iPhone, the possibilities are endless. Is your web app taking advantage of this power?