Viral Marketing and Mass Media

The scene opens with a gathering, a party. We have a close-up on Rob, the person whose honor the celebration is held for. There are various close-ups on his friends and co-workers, who ask where he’s off to or simply to wish him luck on his new job in Japan before we focus on Rob saying that this night “will be the best night ever”. Suddenly, the power cuts out and the scene shifts to a shot of the darkened New York skyline with a massive explosion. Scene shifts again, something big bouncing against buildings and crashes into the pavement right next to the camera; it’s the Statue of Liberty’s head…

All that more is what awaits viewers watching ‘Cloverfield’. Now, before you write off the experience as just another monster movie, one has to remember all that went to spreading word of this movie around, to say nothing of how it was shot.

Viral marketing.

Now, the definition of the above word states that this is advertising using pre-existing social networks. The process used to achieve this is akin to the self-replication of computer viruses. Not just websites are used to spread word or brand awareness around. Video clips are used as well like Youtube. Flash games add a level of interactivity to the advertisement. Then there are text messages and images.

Around 2008, viral marketing has been used to spread word or support of movies around. JJ Abrams’ movie “Cloverfield” used the popular social networking site MySpace, creating accounts for the characters in the movie. They even went out of their way to create websites for the companies alluded to, like the company Rob was going to work for, “Slusho!”. The movie itself was shot in this authentic home video style that looked like any amateur video uploaded to Youtube. It was so effective that in the darkness of the cinema, people got sick.

For the popular Batman film adaption, “The Dark Knight”, the marketing campaign combined real-life and online elements, resembling an alternate reality game. Techniques included mass gatherings of Joker fans, scavenger hunts on an international scale and even intricately-made websites telling fans and visitors how to vote for political offices in Gotham City. They used the queue lines for the Dark Knight roller coaster rides in the Six Flags amusement parks to hide phone numbers and websites. The final touch to the whole campaign was simulating Gotham News Network, the news website of Batman’s hometown. This site had everything, from information about the city’s railway transport system, a travel agency and the web pages of political candidates. Then there was the word of mouth from the Batman fans the world over.

Viral marketing shows how far multimedia has infiltrated the collective imagination of the populace-with-computers as a whole and how they influence everyone else. And this kind of marketing is only limited by the imagination. Who knows what they’ll come up with in a few years time?

Amazing Sand Art by Ilana Yahav

I appreciate art just as much as the next guy, but I’ve never had a compelling reason to share a video about art until I started seeing videos on Facebook of the incredibly talented Ilana Yahav. Her sand art is incredibly beautiful. Here’s one of the most amazing videos I’ve ever seen:

I see more and more of these sand art videos spreading across Facebook daily. The above video has been viewed almost 1.5 million times at the time of writing this post and I’m sure it’s provided her with some great publicity, but it does raise some questions. If you look at the tags of this video on YouTube.com you’ll notice that her name has not even been tagged correctly by the poster. Her first name and last name are mapped to two different tags. So you can’t even click on a tag of her name to see all of her videos. For many viewers this could be just another cool or even amazing video that doesn’t entice them to buy anything or cause them to follow any specific leads. In this case the site URL has been included in the video itself, but what about the millions of videos that don’t take advantage of this?

Luckily, YouTube’s ‘related videos’ feature does a good job of leading viewers to other videos by the same artist. I’ll end up watching at least another one of her videos, getting even more impressing with her work and so even if the site wasn’t included, I could still get there by doing a Google search of her name which would ultimately lead me to her site: http://www.sandfantasy.com/. Mission accomplished and once again a video that may not contain a link to a site or a product, is still capable of converting thousands and thousands of leads. Viral video marketing strikes again.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends

SEO has been a buzzword for many years now. At first people didn’t take it all that seriously because they felt like it was more smoke-and-mirrors than anything. It seemed like you’d have to pay somebody a lot of money (or get really good at it yourself) to work your site up the search engine rankings without the promise of actual returns. There was no direct way of proving that the SEO efforts were yielding the results as sites naturally work their way up the rankings anyway.

Over the past few years, the importance of SEO and the ROI of putting in the effort or spending the money on it has become more apparent. In light of this, we are highlighting some of the key trends in SEO for those that are interested in ramping up their efforts or becoming more knowledgeable in general.

The following are important SEO trends to look out for:

• Mobile search – the iPhone and other GPS enabled mobile devices have introduced the concept of location based mobile search
• Semantic SEO – This is the concept of being able to understand the underlying meaning of the words and links
• Organic SEO – real world organic SEO is ultimately just as valuable if not more so than PPC
• Social Media SEO – leveraging social media sites to establish visibility, credibility and backlinks

Watch for value SEO tactics and emerging trends in your bid to get ahead of the competition and get the most visibility on Google and other leading search engines and sites.

Do I need a good domain name

A common question I come across is “how important is a good domain name for my site/blog?”

My first reaction used to be that the domain name had very little significance in the big picture. I visited sites on a daily basis that had domains with dashes and were made up of all sorts of funky word combinations and sub-par extensions. I quickly started believing that the domain had very little to do with the success of the site. Over the years, however, I have started seeing trends in the relevance of domain names and I am going to start running a series of posts detailing the importance of domain names and how one should go about acquiring a good one without breaking the bank.

Let’s start with 2 important aspects that will get you thinking:

1. Brandability
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Brandability:
Let’s face it – a name like Weather.com is far more memorable than a name like myscorchmeter.com and will yield a brand that can easily become popular and successful.

SEO:
Search engines such as Google.com love relevance. They will always give an edge to sites that appear more legitimate and credible. Compare the names numanuma.com and mynumasongdance.com and you will definitely agree that numa numa is the exact term and therefore has the greater relevance.

In future posts I will discuss how the search engines factor this in and how to go about grabbing the best name possible. In the meantime keep this important message in mind:

“never underestimate the power of a good domain name”.

Do you like literal videos?

There’s a fairly new craze on the web referred to as “Literal Videos”. Lets start with an example:

At first I thought this was pretty cool and laughed at it, but then it started to feel like cheap wine in some old dingy motel. I wanted to shut down my browser and walk away slowly from my computer doing my best to put this out of my mind.

What’s your take on literal videos? Do you love them or hate them?

At the time of writing, this video has been watched over 2.5 million times on YouTube.com and I’m sure that number will keep rising. The rating is also excellent, but I have to wonder…

why?

Social media marketing in a recession

Lets face it – times are tough at the moment. Jobs are being cut, businesses are losing money, spending is down and the general attitude towards just about everything is negative.

There is, however, one area where things are looking good. Not only are they looking good, but they’re actually looking better than ever. I’m referring to what’s known as social media marketing. Wikipedia describes social marketing as “an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.”

Social media marketing is smoking hot at the moment and it’s only going to grow. I just read a great article on ReadWriteWeb.com about how more than 50% of marketers are increasing their spending on social media marketing despite reduced budgets due to the current recession. That’s incredible news for people that believe in the future of social media marketing.

The recession has made us all more aware of our spending habits and how we need to watch every dollar, but there are certain areas that merit more attention than ever and Social Media Marketing is definitely one of them.

It’s not just a buzz word; it’s a legitimate business strategy for driving more targeted traffic to one’s site and/or business.

Keep marketing my friends…

The value of good video content

I have seen too many people try to jump on to the viral video bandwagon and hit an “overnight success” with some extremely stupid or over-the-top video that was produced for the sole purpose of getting hits. It’s easy to fall into this trap. Take one look at some of the latest videos on Youtube.com and you’ll immediately realize the power behind some of these viral videos and the unbelievable number of views they generate. The important thing, however, is to keep in mind that ultimately it is true content; legitimate content that wins at the end of the day. Sure it will take you longer to garner the number of hits you’re dreaming of, but the people that find your video will be watching it and interested in it (and potentially any site associated with it) because they are genuinely interested in that niche. That’s the key folks. Rather have a fraction of the views but a higher level of interest and a far more targeted audience.

Now if you’re simply out for bragging rights and want to have a video that gets an insane number of views with no real rhyme or reason then you should get one of your friends to film you being knocked out or make a total goof out of yourself, but if you’re being smart and really want to have your audience interested in a specific site or product then you should ideally be producing genuine, targeted, Google-compliant material.

Keep on participating and enjoying the Numa Numa trend…

Lonelygirl15

Lonelygirl15 was an ingenius bit of marketing that ran for 2 years on Youtube from June 2006 to August 2008. It was essentially an online show, however, it came across as a simple series of videos posted by a cute teenage girl sharing her daily trials and tribulations.

The show eventually turned out to be a scripted fictional videoblog which had been carefully crafted by a few individuals. It has since spawned at least one offshoot and was talked about in the likes of Business Week and other publications.

The success of the show illustrated just how powerful online videos can be. Ultimately successful viral videos can be monetized and used to channel traffic to sites and products in a highly effective manner.

You can have a meme

You can tell the internet meme (or viral video) craze has reached a high point when even President Barack Obama isn’t safe from Rickrolling. From Rickrolling–a popular bait and switch tactic design to trick internet goers into clicking a link of the 1987 Rick Astley video, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” no matter what the subject matter–to the ever popular Cat Macros seen on icanhascheezburger.com, internet memes are slowly weaving their way into our everyday lives, and even the media is taking notice. The story of Christian the Lion, a video depicting the amazing event of a wild lion once nurtured in his youth by two men, recognizing and embracing them upon their reunion nearly a year later, made headlines on the The Today Show. Even Yahoo has its own video section that features the occasional viral video. You can have a meme, too.

The need for viral videos

Gary Brolsma was mocked and even laughed at after Numa Numa went viral–but people needed that. People needed to laugh at something–because they can’t laugh at themselves. These viral videos are snapshots of daily lives. Yours, mine, your friends, and even people we don’t know. When a video finally goes viral it lets the world share just a few minutes with you. Gary was shocked at how many people were able to relate to his whimsical dancing. For the cubicle drones it was a moment of much needed laughter, for some, it was seeing someone break out of the norm. Numanuma.com believes in laughter and entertainment. We believe in you. We want your videos and your laughter. We want to share the moments that you capture with the world. There’s not judgmental eye here–just laughter and fun. Come visit us at www.numanuma.com and let the world spend a few entertaining moments with you.