Tips From Rand Fishkin On Social Media Marketing And How To Make Content Go Viral

Rand Fishkin is the CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org).
Here are his tips on Social Media Marketing and how to make content go viral

• Research. Find out who in your industry has had success in this area, and of course who has failed. How have they made it work? Talk to your peers to find how they went about launching viral content and discuss it with marketing professionals who have experience.
• Brainstorm. Getting ideas together at this stage will be a lot easier because you already know what works. Pick some of the best ideas, execute them and show them to a sample audience such as a group of friends, or people you think can be critical of you.
• The Big Push. If your audience is ready to spread it then you have to come up with a strategy that will push the content out. This can be done by emailing bloggers, submitting it on social media sites, talking about it on your own blog, posting a Twitter on it, emailing influential friends. If you can take a campaign wide once or twice, the next time you produce something you won’t have to push it as hard because the audience already recognizes you. It will spread naturally.
• Only kill content if you are getting negative feedback or a lot of criticism. Not all publicity is good publicity. You don’t want to become an online laughing stock.
• Even if nothing is happening, leave it out there. Sometimes a year later it will go popular for no particular reason. That’s the great thing about the web - you can put something out there, think it has failed, and a few months later it turns out to be a big hit. It can be down to bad timing, or the right person not seeing it first time round.
• Keyword Research. One of the things you should always advise your clients is to execute their campaigns intelligently from a search perspective. The links they provide must have the right keywords, and the same thing has to be said when they're optimizing their viral content - such as videos, pod casts, blogs etc.
• Make sure that it’s easy to link to your URL, that you have a link to it, share this, here’s a banner, here’s a badge - ie a piece of content you can talk about. It has to be easy to share and easy to spread.

Make sure the content is kept on your website so that people are linking to your site rather than going to YouTube for videos. Do this to make sure you are earning all the link benefit.

Source - Rand Fishkin Interview

Videos Taken Down From YouTube

Ever wonder exactly how many videos are taken down from YouTube because of copyright violations or other reasons?

Folks at the MIT Free Culture student group created YouTomb to document all YouTube videos that have been taken down.





More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

According to YouTomb's stats, the companies that have recently taken down the biggest number of popular YouTube videos are: TV TOKYO, Viacom, Warner Bros, World Wrestling and other media companies. "YouTomb is currently monitoring 157340 videos, and has identified 4389 videos taken down for alleged copyright violation and 13330 videos taken down for other reasons."

To read more click here - TechCrunch
To know more about YouTomb, Click here YouTomb

YouTube - Statistics and Info

YouTube's new layout can give you a lot of information for your video.

You can now see the sites linking in to your video with the number of click through.





A great move by YouTube, makes our work a lot easier :)

Facebook To Lift 5,000 Friends Limit

Facebook will soon remove a limitation that restricts users to no more than 5,000 friend connections

The official reason as to why the restriction exists is that Facebook wants to make sure that people only add “real” friends to their account, and the restriction is on the high end of the number of friends that any one person could reasonable have. The unofficial (and actual) reason: scaling problems made this necessary.

But those scaling issues have been resolved. Facebook says that “less than 1,000″ users have 5,000 friends today. There are around 70 million active Facebook users, so the number of users who are affected is around one thousandth of a percent. But a disproportionate percentage of bloggers and press are at the limit, so the issue tends to get a lot more attention than it otherwise would.

High profile blogger Robert Scoble is among the 1,000 Facebook users who’ve hit the cap, and has complained about the restriction in the past.

Facebook also says that the “Pages” feature is meant for people and brands that want to have a lot more “friends” than are allowed via normal accounts. An example is Barach Obama's Facebook page, which currently shows 842,786 supporters.

But for many people, being a friend is much different than being a fan, and the level of interaction allowed is also significantly different. And the new Friend list feature, which allows users to classify and group friends, makes organization easier anyway.

YouTube offers new analytics to track video views

YouTube has come out wiht a new analytics service named YouTube Insight, its a free software tool that lets video creators see detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site, giving them a glimpse of chronological and demographic audience trends.

YouTube Insight tools provide aggregate data on viewer behavior for anyone who uploads their own videos to YouTube, as well as advertisers looking to place advertising on the site.

Previously, YouTube offered video creators basic tools for tracking how many comments viewers make on their videos, average viewer ratings and the ultimate ranking of a clip relative to all other YouTube videos. Insight provides context on where viewers come from and when viewers watched a video.

Source - ITPRO News

Chevy Brings Back Famous Baseball Commercial

Way to go Chevy!! Nice concept which has generated significant buzz:

Debuts a fresh take on the famed 1970's commercial "Baseball, Hot Dogs,
Apple Pie and Chevrolet"

DETROIT – In 1974, Chevrolet eloquently captured the Zeitgeist with its
classic commercial “ Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.” Now, more
than three decades later, Chevrolet pays homage to the spot originally created
by Campbell-Ewald with a modern spin by ad agency Deutsch Los Angeles.

Launching on July 1, prior to Major League Baseball’s All Star Game and as
part of Chevrolet’s ongoing sponsorship with MLB, t he new spot titled “Love
Affair” ( :60, :30) uses vintage footage from the original commercial and adds
modern elements of baseball including “stolen bases, goat cheese pizza, bottled
water” and “free agents, rally monkeys, fantasy leagues.” The “Love Affair” spot
is part of Chevy’s integrated marketing campaign in support of its MLB efforts.
The campaign includes broadcast, radio, print, on-line, in-stadium, Customer
Relationship Management fulfillment pieces and in-dealership components.

The original song was composed and recorded by famed jingle writer Ed
Labunski in 1974. The Chevrolet commercial also starred Labunski playing the
piano and is widely considered to have changed car commercials and automotive
branding forever. The original spot tied for first place in Car and Driver’s
January 2005 Ten Best Car Commercials.

“The spot marries baseball and Chevy’s nostalgic past with its progressive
present ,” said Ed Peper, General Manager, Chevrolet. “The original commercial
described the connection between Chevy, baseball and American culture so well
that it was the ideal choice to showcase how Chevy and baseball have evolved
over time. While Chevy and baseball have changed, the American love affair with
the two continues.”

World-class photographer/filmmaker Peggy Sirota directed the spot and sought
to capture both the spirit of the original commercial and iconic shots of today.
Her real, yet casual style contributed to a snapshot-quality look, incorporating
new images of skyboxes and mochaccinos, as if they were shot by fans
themselves.

“We saw a real organic, emotional connection between Chevrolet and baseball,
both then and now,” said Eric Hirshberg, Chief Creative Officer/President,
Deutsch LA. “Chevrolet and baseball have changed over the past 30 years, and
have not only kept up with the times, but remained a central part of the
American tradition.”

The comprehensive campaign retains Chevy’s tagline “An American Revolution”
but adds its tagline specific to the effort, “Chevy. Baseball’s #1 Fan.”

The campaign breaks nationally on Saturday, July 1 on Fox and on ESPN on
Sunday July 2. Additional elements will include: program ads, Sports Illustrated
& USA Today inserts, billboards, stadium signage, car toppers, windshield
clings, mirror danglers, wall signs, coasters, buttons, flyers, posters,
interactive efforts on MLB.com, ESPN.com and FOXSports.com, Yahoo Fantasy
Baseball promotion, and an XM Satellite Radio sponsorship, among others.

In 2005, Major League Baseball and General Motors Corporation announced a
three-year sponsorship agreement which made Chevrolet the “Official Vehicle of
Major League Baseball.” The agreement continues through the 2007 Major League
Baseball season and gives Chevrolet exclusive category rights.

Excel templates

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