Pillar #10 – Viral Marketing________________________________________________________________________
Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use
pre-existing social networks to increase brand awareness, through a selfreplicating viral processes. Viral marketing is often known as word-of-mouth marketing, in fact it’s any medium which your existing customers use that enables a peer-to-peer recommendation to be made. Viral marketing means that your customers do your marketing on your behalf. The process of encouraging viral marketing to take place is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to tell their friends about you – and to give them a reason to do so.
Pillar #10 covers what viral marketing is and how you can use it as part of your overall internet marketing strategy. I would like to focus on two main viral marketing opportunities. Firstly Social bookmarking – something that you can easily build into your blog with ease and secondly Video marketing. By driving people towards your videos on video sharing sites like YouTube you increase the ranking of your videos on those sites by increasing your number of views. This increased ranking of your video makes it more likely to be found on YouTube by people who haven’t heard of you before. You then have an opportunity to drive people back you your site after viewing your video.
An early example of effective Viral Marketing – HotmailOne of the first examples of a super-successful viral marketing campaign came back in the late 1990's. Hotmail was just developing as a company and doing OK – until they hit upon an idea. Why not automatically add a little bit of text at the bottom of each email that people sent saying something like, “Would you like a free email account too? Visit www.hotmail.com”
At the time (the late 1990’s) many people still paid for an email account. So, this fact, combined with the “free email” message at the bottom of each mail exploded Hotmail’s business. Hotmail’s message spread like a virus – hence viral marketing. This one idea is probably the main reason why Hotmail became so big so quickly. Hence, in my opinion, this one line of text is the reason that Microsoft paid millions of dollars to buy Hotmail.
So, a simple email signature worked for Hotmail. But that’s not necessarily what I’m recommending for you. Your viral marketing strategy does not necessarily have to revolve around an e-mail signature. Remember that a viral marketing campaign can be anything that encourages your users to pass on information about you, your business or your business’ products to their friends. The question is what’s the right viral marketing strategy for you?
Social bookmarkingSocial bookmarking allows anyone who views web pages the opportunity to save a list of their favorite pages online, and at the same time, if they wish to do so, to share these favorite web pages with their friends. Two examples of social bookmarking tools / websites are StumbleUpon and Delicious.
There are two main reasons why it’s a good idea to encourage your website visitors to book your web pages online. Firstly, other users of these social bookmarking services can see to most recently popular web pages that have been bookmarked. This provides a way for other people to discover your web pages on these social bookmarking sites. Secondly, search engines also like these social bookmarking sites because t shows which web pages are popular with users at any given moment in time. Therefore, if search engines crawl these social bookmarking sites and find that lots of users are bookmarking your site, then your site will be more likely to be ranked higher in search engines – social bookmarking also helps with your search engine optimization.
Don’t think that social bookmarking is the same as traditional bookmarking where people save their favorite websites on their internet browser software. That way of saving bookmarks is just for their personal use as the information is stored on their internet browser software on their computer. Search engines can only crawl bookmarks that are stored online – so that’s the kind of bookmarking that you want to encourage.
Social bookmarking and tagsAnother great reason why social bookmarking is so good is the use of ‘tags’ with each bookmark. A tag is a word or a phrase that a user associates with a web page. Again using Freddie Faldo’s golf shop site as an example, people may decide to save his home page on their bookmarks and add the 3 tags ‘golf’, ‘golf clubs’ and ‘golf shop’ to the bookmark. This tag addition will make it easier for them to find your website in their bookmarks in the future – it’s like listing the web page in multiple categories. It’s a more modern, more user-friendly version of storing web pages in folders.
Another reason why tags are great is that they help to educate search engines about the subject matter on your website. i.e. if lots of different people are saving your home page on a social bookmaking site using the tag ‘golf store’, then this will give search engines more of a reason to rank your home page higher for the keyword phrase ‘golf store’.
Delicious.comFigure 10.1 shows the Delicious.com social bookmarking site homepage. This is a great example of the kind of website I have been referring to.
Figure 10.1 – Delicious.com – a popular social bookmarking site
Browsing popular bookmarks on Delicious
But how do you encourage your website visitors to save your website pages? Apart from producing great, valuable content that people will want to come back to and regularly revisit in the future, the next thing that you should do is make it easy for people to bookmark your web pages.
AddThis.comYou may well have noticed on web pages – especially on blog posts that you are occasionally invited to bookmark the page or share it with your friends. Websites commonly link directly to the ‘add’ page on social bookmarking sites to increase the chances that people will bookmark the page. One popular free service that makes it easy to add this service to your website is AddThis.com (figure 10.2).
Figure 10.2 – AddThis.com
AddThis.com is easy to integrate into your websiteAddThis is a service that people may recognize when you add it to your website – because it’s already very popular and on lots of other websites.
Once a user clicks on it for the first time, it gives you a list of the social bookmarking service for them to select the one that they regularly use (figure 10.2). If it’s Delicious.com then once someone selects the Delicious icon in the AddThis window, they’ll proceed to a window like figure 10.3.
Figure 10.3 – Adding a web page to Delicious.com bookmarks
Entering a bookmark’s URL, title and notes on Delicious.com
After you select your chosen bookmarking service through the AddThis service, AddThis will remember your bookmarking service for next time. This reduces the amount of clicks that it takes for someone to save your web page to their bookmarks.
StumbleUponStumbleUpon (Figure 10.4) offers a similar service to Delicious.com. StumbleUpon lets users ‘randomly find’ other people's bookmarks by searching the StumbleUpon website within certain categories.
Figure 10.4 – StumbleUpon.com
StumbleUpon lets users ‘stumble upon’ new, related web pages
The service will then recommend other websites that people have already tagged in a similar manner. The more that you can get people to ‘stumble’ (bookmark) your web pages, the more likely it will be that StumbleUpon will recommend your web pages.
A special request to all readersThis is probably a good time to ask for your assistance to help me get the 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing book in as many people’s hands as possible. If you’ve found this book valuable so far I’d really appreciate if you could share http://www.13pillars.com with a few of your friends. If you could tell your Twitter followers, share it with your Facebook friends and bookmark the page on an online bookmarking service line StumbleUpon it would be much appreciated! Thanks! :)
Video MarketingThanks to every-increasing broadband capacity, online video is becoming more and more the norm. At the time of writing around 10 of the top 100 websites in the world are video-based. This means that ignoring video as a medium to drive traffic towards your website could be a significant mistake.
I’d like to share with you a few of the top online video sharing sites, show you how easy it is to create your own videos for these sites, share with you how to include a ‘call to action’ within your video and recommend a great free service that les you upload your video to many of these sites at the same time, tracking your video views too.
Figure 10.5 – YouTube
YouTube – the most popular video sharing website by farYouTube
YouTube is the granddaddy of all online video sharing sites. In fact, by June 2007 it was 50 percent more popular than all other video sites combined, according to Hitwise. But even though YouTube is still miles ahead of other video sharing sites in terms of visitor numbers at the moment, as a content producer it would be folly just to rely on YouTube as a marketing medium. I’d advise on distributing your videos to at least 10 video sharing sites.
I’m assuming that you’ve seen it before, but figure 10.5 shows you what the YouTube website looks like. I published the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oheBDHB-IZU (An introduction the 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing) in May 2007, and over the first year it was on the first page of YouTube search results for the phrase ‘internet marketing’. At the time of writing it’s now had over 14,000 views.
There are a few small things that I did to make the introduction to the 13 Pillars video more popular of YouTube and drive more visitors back to my website. I’d like to share them with you now…
YouTube is one of the websites which will reprint your URL as a live link if you include ‘http://’ in front of it. If you include this link in the description of your video you will get a live link back to your website, meaning that people will be much more likely to visit your website after viewing your video. Although it’s a ‘nofollow’ link, it will still increase your website visitor numbers.
Include your keyword phrase in your video title and your video description. i.e. Including ‘internet marketing’ within the video title and description made YouTube much more likely to rank it more highly in searches for that keyword phrase.
Drive visitors to your newly published video and ask them to help you by rating the video, adding the video as one of their favorites and adding a comment to the video. All these measures are indicators to YouTube of your video’s popularity. And if your video quickly becomes popular then YouTube are much more likely to rank it highly themselves.
Once of the best ways of driving visitors to your video is to have your own email list of appreciative subscribers. If you regularly over-deliver, you’ll find that members of your list are much more likely to be willing to help you when you ask a favor from them. This is just one of the reasons why it’s an extremely valuable thing for your business to build up a list of subscribers – even although you don’t have an email marketing strategy at the moment.
Other Video SitesAs mentioned already, there are other popular video sites available apart from YouTube – get your videos in as many places as possible! So which sites apart from YouTube should you be using to host your videos?
Yahoo! VideoYahoo! Video originally began as a search engine during 2005. It combined traditional search engine techniques to crawl other websites to look for videos on other sites together with a web 2.0 facility that allows users to upload, share, tag and host their own videos on Yahoo!
However, as part of a recent upgrade, Yahoo is indexing more video from several new media sources, including CBS News, MTV, the Discovery Channel and The Food Network which the users of Yahoo! can see embedded within the Yahoo! video player.
Figure 10.6 – Yahoo! Video
Yahoo VideoMySpace Video
In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV. Since launch it has been rebranded to MySpace Video. (Figure 10.7)
Figure 10.7 - MySpace Video
MySpace Video
MySpace Video works in the same way as most of the other video sharing sites. However, because it’s part of the MySpace network, you need a MySpace account to upload videos.
However, this also means that if you are already an active MySpace user, when you up load videos to the MySpace Videos service, you can share these videos with your existing MySpace contacts.
Metacafe (Figure 10.8) is another similar online video sharing service. However, it does have a couple of policies that differentiate it:
Using its unique ‘VideoRank’ system, Metacafe attempts to gauge viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove most popular to its viewers.
Additionally, Metacafe pays video creators for original work that has exceeded a certain threshold of both total views and Videorank score via its Producer Rewards Program.
Any video that is viewed a minimum of 20,000 times, and has achieved a Videorank rating of 3.00 or higher (and does not violate any copyrights or other Metacafe community standards) is awarded $5 for every 1,000 views.Figure 10.8 – Metacafe
MetacafeRevver
Revver (Figure 10.9) is another popular video sharing website that hosts usergenerated content. It attaches advertising to user-submitted video clips and shares all ad revenue 50/50 with the creators. Revver includes adverts on all its videos, whether you like it or not which may be a problem for you depending on what your business offers.
Figure 10.9 – Revver
Revver
Each video is automatically made available in both Flash and QuickTime formats and you are given the HTML code to embed either format along with the ability to add your own branding or logo into the Flash player interface.
Uploading to Revver is easy and it provides a progress bar to show your upload status. They review all videos before making them live and this process can take up to 24 hours.
DailyMotionDailyMotion (Figure 10.10) is a French-based video website which was founded in 2005. The videos that it features on its site are often of good quality in comparison to many other video sites. As of April 2009 DailyMotion was ranked by Alexa Rank as being the 67th most popular website in the world.
Figure 10.10 – DailyMotion
DailyMotionBlip TV
Blip.tv (Figure 10.11) is a video sharing site which features videos that tend to be more professional in quality rather than simple clips. On Blip.tv the videos are like mini TV series and often very entertaining. You can search for your favorite episodes by category, use the search box or search by popular tags. You can also become a subscriber to your favorite shows so you do not miss an episode.
If you like to produce videos, you can create your own show and advertise it to others through a trailer or you can participate as a critic and rate the shows.Blip.tv also offers advertising schemes with profit being split 50/50 between you and them. You can also submit your videos to iTunes through Blip.tv, creating a video podcast.
Figure 10.11 Blip TV
Blip TVBrightcove
Brightcove (Figure 10.12) was originally a company who helped create video content on websites such as the New York Times and MTV but they’ve recently launched a video service with the motto ‘Share your videos in style’.
Figure 10.12 Brightcove
BrightcoveEvery publisher who creates a Brightcove account is assigned a channel, their own page on Brightcove.tv.
Publishers can customize their channel through the Brightcove Console. Simple details like the channel's name, logo, and description can be updated in the user's profile. The content of a channel is defined by changing the settings of individual titles, lineups, and players to allow distribution and promotion on Brightcove.tv.
Brightcove.tv - along with syndication, search engine indexing and a user's own site - serves as a distribution and promotion tool for video publishers.Veoh
Veoh (Figure 10.13) lets you upload a range of video formats with no limits on file size, resolution, or length. If your video is over 45 minutes a viewer will need to download it to watch the full video.
Figure 10.13 Veoh
Veoh
To download and watch videos on your computer rather than watch videos online, users must use the VeohTV desktop application. VeohTV is also what you need to be using to upload videos over 100MB. You can also upload videos directly from a URL or if you have a Veoh Pro account you can upload via an RSS feed.
A Veoh Pro account is free. However, it requires a credit card account number to confirm your address. When that is given, you can then take advantage of advertising programs where you can share revenue 50/50 and sell or rent video downloads through Veoh's e-commerce system (you keep 70 percent of the sale price). As a Veoh Pro account holder, your uploaded video will be transcoded into Flash 8 video. Flash 8 is superior to the Flash 7 format used for converting video submitted by basic Veoh users.
ImeemImeem (Figure 10.14) is a video sharing service where users interact with each other by watching, posting, and sharing content of all media types, including blogs, photos, audio and videos.
Launched in October 2004, the Imeem has a social network structure as well as a content browsing/filtering structure similar to that of YouTube. It works on an advertising-based business model and is free to use.
Figure 10.14 – Imeem
ImeemThey also provide a broader range of privacy options and incorporate peer-topeer technology for better security and unlimited bandwidth.
Editing video
For PC users you probably already have a piece of software installed on your computer – Windows Movie Maker (Figure 10.15). This allows you to edit and produce your own video. If you have a Mac the alternative is Final Cut Studio and if you are using Linux then there are plenty of open source programs that you can simply download for free – try searching Download.com.
All these video editing software will allow you to import your own videos into the program, add titles, endings or music to it. They will also allow you to create videos out of still photos as well.
If you have a number of still photos that you want to create a movie with, you can import the photos into your movie editing software and then drag the photos into your video timeline. Then you can then choose video transitions from your software to include in-between your photos. Transitions mean that each new photo can appear either from the side, up or down or in fact in one of any manner of options preinstalled in your video editing software. You can also apply effects to your individual photos such as slowly zooming in or out.
Figure 10.15 – Windows Movie Maker
Windows Media Player – the free video editing software from Microsoft
When you create a sequence of photos and ass multiple effects, you will be surprised at how quickly your photos start to become a video – and how quickly and easy the process is. After you’re satisfied with your video sequence it’s also easy to add beginning titles and end credits should you wish to do so. It’s also easy to import audio.
Adding audio to your videoBearing in mind copyright restrictions, you should be careful about the audio you use with your video. However, there is a website called PodsafeAudio (figure 10.16) that download and use any of the audio tracks on the website – as long as if you credit the artist.
Figure 10.16 – PodsafeAudio
PodsafeAudio is a great place to find royalty-free backing music
Simply mention the artist name and song title at the end of your video clip to use the audio legally. There are lots of great audio tracks on PodsafeAudio including some great tracks from unsigned, independent new artists. Simply download the audio that you wish to use in MP3 format to be able to use it as a backing track for your video.
Including a ‘call-to-action’ in your videosIt’s important to include a ‘call-to-action’ in your video – a call-to-action is simply asking the viewer to do something after they have viewed your video. This must be measurable, and of potential benefit to your business.
I’d certainly recommend including an easy-to-remember domain name as a subheading throughout your video in additional to a clip at the end of your video telling the viewer why they should visit that domain.
However, if you find that video marketing is an important part of your overall marketing mix I’d say that it’s important to have a unique URL within your video i.e. a URL, domain name that is not mentioned anywhere on your website, or anywhere else. That way, when people visit that website address you know that it can only be your videos which are responsible for driving those visitors.
For example, your video could be an introduction to a subject matter and for more information they can visit your website address to watch more videos or perhaps download a free report. Just remember to make the first free video valuable and informative.
A common successful strategy for the web pages that viewers are asked to visit after viewing an informative video is to ask for someone’s name and email address in exchange for more great content. Remember that if there is no link to this website address from anywhere else online, you know that your visitors have landed on your web page because they viewed one of your videos on a video sharing site like YouTube. More information about tracking your visitors will be covered in Pillar #11 – Visitor Analysis).
Saving your video in the optimum formatThere are literally tens of different formats in which to save your video – and then there are so many different sizes of videos. Until recently, 320x240 pixels was the size that most video sharing sites preferred. This happens to be in the traditional 4x3 television screen size.
However, more recently video sites have started to prefer videos in widescreen format which is 16x9 screen size. As broadband speeds have increased, so have the number of pixels per video. 16x9 videos for online distribution are now most commonly uploaded in 640x360 pixels size. At the time of writing (April 2009) that’s the size which I’d recommend.
When it comes to video format many file types will work just fine, but most video sharing sites recommend MP4 format with h.264 codec. However, you’ll probably find that WMV or AVI will work just fine. If you’re worried about your video format compatibility it’ probably best to create a test YouTube video site first-of-all to confirm what your video will look like when it’s published.
Figure 10.17 – TubeMogul
TubeMogul helps you upload your videos to multiple sites and track video viewsUploading you video to video sharing sites
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