SES NYC Session #2 - Igniting Viral Campaigns
Igniting Viral Campaigns
In a world dominated by behemoths like bud.tv, MySpace, and YouTube, how do mid-sized and smaller companies break through to generate online destinations that create buzz, encourage word of mouth and establish relationships with potential buyers. This session unveils the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to standout and be talked about.
Moderator:
- Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget
Speakers:
- Bill Hanekamp, CEO, The Well
- Ed Kim, Chief Executive Officer, Red Bricks Media
- Fionn Downhill, CEO & President, Elixir Systems
- Conn Fishburn, Director of Social Media Strategy, Yahoo! Inc.
Bill Hanekamp”
You can now reach Millions of people with virtually no marketing budget or production costs. The secret? Content.
In order to get people to talk about you, you have to give them something to talk about.
READ: Made to Stick
The four main ingredients of a viral campaign:
1. Entertaining
2. Relevancy
3. Timely
4. Exclusive
Get the visitor ENGAGED. Ask questions, make comment, User Generated Content, polls, sign up, email to a friend, etc.
*Build a microsite - off of the main site, perhaps with more liberal guidelines. (See The Office fake PSA ads on YouTube!)
Ed Kim:
<good example>
People actually are influenced by the recommendations of third parties. Like Amazon’s readers’ comments. Amazing.
“Buzz factors”
e.g. * Remarkable * Outrageous and Unusual * Humorous (have you seen Chad Vader?)
Where to start buzzing:
*Blogs
*Message Boards
*Wikipedia
*Video Ads
*Podcasting
*Social Networks
Who are the influencers? Give them each a sample of your product.
Bottom line: You can never predict what will go viral and what won’t.
Fionn Downhill
1. Give away products or services
2. Provide for effortless sharing with others
3. Scale very easily (if it takes off!)
4. Exploit common behaviors
5. Utilize existing communications
6. Take advantage of other’s resources
Viral campaigns may have small budgets, but they still need budgets, and with an emphasis on the creative.
*Blogs
*RSS feeds
*Forums
*Social bookmarking
*Press Releases
*Article marketing
*Wikipedia
*White Papers
*Cool images
*E-Zines, newsletters
*Videos
*Subscribe…
*Share with friend…
*Bookmark this page
State your Privacy Policy that you Will Not share user’s email addresses!
“The Key is Free”
Use YouTube’s resources for hosting your content! Get a $150 flip video camera. So easy a 10 yr old can do it.
How can you measure success?
RSS / email / newsletter subscribers
Comments on your blog
Links to your website
Who else is talking about you?
Use Google Alerts
Tracking / Analytics
The Bottom Line: Just do it! Are there any of these things that you haven’t done? Try it. Do it. Experiment.
Conn Fishburn (Yahoo!)
Don’t make it your goal to “Go Viral,” the odds are just too small and you’ll possibly neglect more achievable business goals.
Think about The Next Generation - what they are doing / using is changing very rapidly. Find out what they use.
“Technologies change, people don’t.” Do you agree?
{great slide - illegible} {important ponts - too fast to transcribe}
Keep your eye on implicit and explicit behavior personalization.
Analogy: Will a tiny spark create a huge fire? Maybe, maybe not. Will gasoline and a match create a huge fire?
Maybe, maybe not. What’s the key? The key is it’s not the match or the gas, it’s the condition of the forest (is it dry or wet, etc.)
Modern companies should realize that they need to “pay” with participation and not with money (the old way.)
Wow - a whole discussion on how to court bloggers, reach out to them, provide content, access to management, etc.
<Note to readers. How do we “build our Rolodex?” We don’t. The “C” word is worse than the “F” word for us. Alt search engines are run by people, and we enjoy relationships with great people. Pleople Are Not Contacts, not for us.>
<end of session>
March 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Nice post, Very informative.
nhick
http://www.itrush.com