Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group, had recently written a guest post on TechCrunch regarding the strategies his company uses to promote his clients’ videos online. He writes:

“Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.”

Dan argues that content is not king and you can get at least 100,000 views even if your video doesn’t have killer content, given that you use the following techniques:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: Dramatic Hamster
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: UFO Haiti
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: Stolen Nascar
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: Yoga 4 Dudes

Then Dan continues to go into the specific marketing strategies that his company uses in order to make these videos attract at least 100,000 views.

He writes:

“The core concept of video marketing on YouTube is to harness the power of the site’s traffic. Here’s the idea: something like 80 million videos are watched each day on YouTube, and a significant number of those views come from people clicking the “Videos” tab at the top. The goal is to get a video on that Videos page, which lists the Daily Most Viewed videos.“

How do they do that?

• Blogs: They approach bloggers who write about relevant topics and actually pay them to post their embedded videos.
• Forums: They start new threads and embed their videos. Sometimes, they even kickstart conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different (fake) users.
• MySpace: They embed the videos in the comments section of MySpace users’ pages. 
• Facebook: They build a large friends base on Facebook and then share the video with their entire friends list. Other times they create an event that announces the video launch and invite friends to watch it by writing a note and tagging them. They also post the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: They send the video to an email list of users.
• Friends: They make sure everyone they know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Dan adds: “Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this happens quickly.”

Here are some more techniques Dan’s company uses:

1) Title Optimization - they use catchy and misleading titles for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand. Examples of phrases used: “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” and “leaked video.”

2) Thumbnail Optimization - attractive video thumbnails, Dan says, are what will get users to click on your video as opposed to the rest of the videos on the Most Viewed page. Edit the video and make sure that the middle frame is interesting. The middle frame is important because YouTube provides three choices for a video’s thumbnail, one of which is grabbed from the exact middle of the video. The thumbnail should also be clear and should preferably have a face or person in it.

3) Commenting - different people in Dan’s office log in to their YouTube accounts and post heated comments back and forth in the comments section under the video so as to create a controversy and get attention. They also delete negative comments about the video or brand. Dan writes: “We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”

4) Releasing Videos Simultaneously - if they have multiple videos, they post them all at the same time. The logic behind this is that if someone watches the first video and is intrigued then he would want to watch more later, so why make him wait?

Once the first video is done, they delete their second video and then re-upload it. This gives them another 48-hours to push it to the Most Viewed page. They repeat this with all the next videos.

5) Strategic Tagging - Dan’s company discovered that instead of using tags to optimize the video for searches on YouTube, one can use tags to control the videos that show up in the Related Videos box. They choose three or four unique tags (tags that are not used by any other YouTube videos) and use only these tags for all of the videos they post. This allows them to have full control over the videos that show up as “Related Videos.”

When views decrease, they start adding some more generic tags that will help people find the video when searching on YouTube and Google.

In conclusion Dan writes:

“The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.”

Well, it wasn’t surprising to see that Dan got a serious beating in the comments section of this post. Michael Arrington himself commented: “I will post a longer response to this later, but frankly I’m disgusted by this.” And later…”I think it would have been better to have published this anonymously, and certainly without the links to Dan’s business.”

Another reader commented:

“Misleading titles, creating fake user accounts and talking to themselves, deleting comments they don’t like, paying bloggers to post videos … what a great company that would be to work for, I can’t imagine why anyone (knowingly) would use them, with all of the “fake” views the videos get because of them.”

Dan comments back:

“What we do is grease the viral wheels. If that means commenting back and forth between fake users, who cares? It’s all about entertainment - we’re just making the whole experience entertaining, not just the video itself.”

To which another person replies:

“Of course, Dan. Who would care about a little fraud in pursuit of a buck? I mean, as long as it moves the goods, there’s nothing wrong with fooling the populace.

Idiot. The reason your trickery is necessary that your venal predecessors in advertising have burned their credibility in other media already. And now here you are, a leech on a new medium, feeding off the trust that other people have built up. Pathetic.

I can’t help but note you don’t provide a single verifiable fact about your business above. The simple assumption is that you lie to your clients just as glibly as you lie to the general public. If fake videos and fake comments, why not fake views, fake click-throughs, and fake campaign success? I’m sure it pays just as well.”

For me, it was quite interesting to read this post, entertaining to read the comments, and hilarious to read Dan’s follow up post of apology and defensiveness. Especially since all of this seemed quite coincidentally to cause quite a controversy.

In any case, here are my thoughts on this post:

Some of these tactics such as creating an attractive thumbnail and title optimization make sense. However, why mislead people? Why not give the video a relevant and catchy title so that if someone is looking for a video of this kind or from this brand, he will find it?

Using a company like Dan’s to spam random people to death on various social networks with videos they don’t want to watch, about topics they’re not interested in, with misleading titles, and fake commenting, can only damage your brand, not help it. If I as a user, receive an irritating spam video from a certain company, I would only think negatively of it. These sorts of strategies abuse the democracy of Web 2.0 where people come to view and rank content that is relevant to them. These schemes create false impressions of high ratings and manipulate the democratic ranking system on which Web 2.0 is based. 

In my opinion, Content IS king. Relevant content is even more king.  - if you produce an entertaining, creative, clever video and share it with people who actually find an interest in the relevant topic or brand, then you win. Why push people to watch content that doesn’t interest them? What is the point of delivering your content to an audience that will only get irritated? 

I’ve said it over and over again, when you market your brand on social networks, you must make sure that you’re delivering the right content to the right people. Find the people who might be interested in your product within your social network. Converse with them. Find out what their needs are. Make sure that the content interests them. Don’t just spam people. Social networks are all about your honest interaction with others. Don’t create fake profiles. Don’t create fake commenting. Be yourself. You should get to know your community and become a truthful and active participant in it. Marketing on social platforms if done in an open, honest, and intelligent manner can be very effective indeed. However companies like The Comotion Group only hurt the reputation of other marketers who try to sincerely interest users in products that match their needs and do not try to mislead them into clicking on content based on false declarations.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for the picture.

Allen Stern wrote a very interesting post recently about how people such as Robert Scoble use Facebook and Twitter as more of a publicity network than a social network to brand themselves and expose their videos, posts. Currently Scoble has 6,892 followers on Twitter and 4,892 friends on Facebook. He has been complaining about the fact that Facebook limits him to only 5,000 friends.

When looking at Mashable’s account on Twitter, we also see Pete Cashmore twittering only new posts on Mashable and nothing else. As Allen points out:

“A social networking tool becomes a publicity tool when “I speak, you speak, I reply, you reply” becomes “I speak, you listen”.

In all honesty, while at first I used Twitter for social purposes, now I find myself twittering mostly about my latest blog posts and using Facebook mainly for my social interactions with people. For me Twitter has become quite a difficult platform to interact with friends as random thoughts and links are being continously thrown on my screen. Facebook on the other hand allows me to interact with my friends in so many different and interesting ways that I hardly need an additional platform to do that. With all due respect, Twitter has merely become for me one of the many applications that I use on Facebook.

It is true that many bloggers and site owners use both platforms (and others) to expose their posts/messages to the world. As Allen writes:

“Are these new publicity networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) the new press release? Think about it for a second, a press release is sent out to x journalists, news providers, etc. These new publicity networks do the same thing except in a quicker, more efficient way. In fact, Marshall over at RWW says these publicity networks are paying his rent. Naturally I am not suggesting that everyone uses these networks in a publicity-oriented manner, but it seems many of the smart marketers are doing so. As long as the people attached to your account (personal or business) understand that’s the use, then it’s a perfect marketing opportunity. In fact, these publicity networks may just overtake RSS in the long-term. And if you are working with a social media consultant who isn’t leveraging these new publicity networks where appropriate, you need to find a new consultant.”

I agree with Allen. All these social networks are vital tools for any marketer today. However, marketers must remember that conversation is a crucial part of the marketing process today. You must offer friends relevant and interesting content in order to catch their attention. Therefore whatever way you use your networks, make sure to continuously offer them content that interests them and serves their needs as well as yours. Choosing your friends based on common interests (such as Web 2.0 for example) is one way of ensuring that you are delivering news that will probably interest them and serve their purposes as well.

I just finished reading an excellent post by Brian Solis regarding conversational marketing.

Brian writes:

“If it’s one thing that we can learn about Social media is that people and the markets they represent have rallied against marketing and slick marketers and have demanded personalization, transparency, and sincerity.

Social Media is about breaking down barriers to engage in conversations.

Conversational marketing isn’t a bandwagon or a golden ticket. It is a call for reform, evolution, and humility.

We’re witnessing the shift from B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) to P2P (peer to peer) marketing – or better described as conversations between people, not companies doing their best impression of adults in the Peanuts cartoons as they talk to audiences in a monotone, robotic, insincere voice, “wah wah wah wah wahhhhhh.”

No longer are companies controlling the message to their audience but the audience has taken control over the conversation. Each social media platform has its own unique audience with its own opinions and ideas and the marketer must find his place within this network. People are not looking for catchy slogans or traditional advertising technics - they are looking for sincere interaction with the community.

Many traditional marketers have a hard time understanding this new form of conversational marketing and this situation provides a great opportunity for those marketers who are social media experts to step in and lead the way.

However although there are quite a few people who call themselves social media experts, only a small number really understand the art of conversational marketing. This type of marketing is influenced mostly by sociology. As Brian writes: “Relationships are the new metric for ROI.”

Are you as a marketer able to build many long lasting relationships with other members in the network? This is the key to conversational marketing. Engaging in conversation with individuals - commenting on their content, sending them personal messages, interacting with them.

Marketers must remember that they are not welcome within social networks. Many are seen as intrusive if they do not truly know how to become members of their community. Marketers need to earn their right to become members. How can they do this? By learning as much as possible about each network and its members - their likes, their dislikes, their views, etc. Think of each network as a country with its own culture and remember that you are entering a living, breating community made up of diverse individuals.

Doc Searls  writes: “The framing for conversational marketing should be conversation, not marketing. Think about what you want in a conversation, and let that lead your marketing…[conversations are] about paying attention, not getting attention.”

In the end of it all, the success of your efforts in any network will depend on how much you give back to the community. The more you give of yourself, the more you’ll get back.

 Thanks to Somethin’ New for the pic.

With the growing power that social networks are gaining, we’re seeing a lot of companies and figures leverage the popularity of these networks to gain exposure for their brands. Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John Edwards have all been vigorously spreading their campaign messages on Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Friendster and Second Life. Many companies such as: Apple, Joost, Nike, Adidas, Nikon, Nintendo, just to name a few, have also been using the different social networks to speak to and understand their customers.

Yet many marketers just don’t realize how to use the enormous potential of these social tools correctly. Twitter, MySpace, etc. all constitute channels that marketers can use to communicate with, and better understand their customers’ needs. Yet instead, many marketers view these platforms not as a way to better understand their customers by interacting with them, but as a means of reaching their target audience and spamming them to death with dull content. Whether you are a public figure or a company, here are a few tips on how to market and build your brand correctly using social tools:

1) Create a profile

It’s important to have a profile on a few of the most popular social networks out there. Profiles allow you to share information about your brand, with the rest of the world. Remember to be genuine and open. The more genuine your profile, the more it will appeal to people. Also, the more customizable the profile, the better. Customization allows you to add backgrounds and color schemes that match your brand.

2) Network

Become an active member of the community. Connect with other members. Go through different profiles and see who interests you. Add them as contacts, send them messages, and leave comments on their content. You should also start/join groups, participate in forums and chats that relate to your brand. This will show everyone that you’re really a part of the community, and not just there to promote your brand. Remember to engage in conversation with the people in your community and not “sell” to them. Talk TO them, not AT them. Make sure you read comments that have been left on your profile and react to them. Never be rude to someone even if that person disagrees with your views. Turn debates into something positive.

3) Keep it fresh

In order to get users to remember your brand, you’ll need to actively update your profile, upload pictures, videos, blog posts. Be creative! This will spark a continued interest in your brand and keep people coming back for more. Keep your profile interesting and fresh.

4) Widgets

If you create an exportable widget with content related to your brand, you are encouraging people to place the widget on their profiles or sites, allowing them to expand the recognition of your brand. It’s always better to have a widget which will add some value to those who place it on their own pages, like the MyBlogLog widget for example.

5) Promotion

Promote your various profiles on your main site and offer RSS feeds for them

Simply placing your profiles on every social network isn’t enough. You have to do some PR for them through strategic tagging, linking, and having others point to them, in order to spark the viral potential of your brand.

In conclusion, social networks provide a powerful tool for you to engage with the world. We are living in an age that marketers could only dream of. Never has there been a better time to spread your message to the public. Make sure you do it right.

Thanks to Mandy for the pic.

Technorati tags: branding, social tools, social networks, community, barack obama, hilary clinton, john edwards, twitter, myspace, youtube, friendster, second life, apple, joost, nike, adidas, nikon, nintendo, videos, blog, widget, mybloglog, promotion, rss, tagging

Peter Himler wrote a very interesting post about how marketing campaigns can reach a saturation point where they begin working against the business goal,rather than advancing it. He used the iPhone campaign as an example:

“…we’re left with the iPhone’s pre-release paid TV spots that permeate “The Daily Show,” and elsewhere….With all the free, gushing attention, why continue to run the ads? In my opinion, the ongoing paid campaign could produce a public backlash. I mean who on this planet has not reached an iPhone saturation point?”

This is so true. It made me think of all those Mc Donalds and Coca Cola commercials I am so sick of watching. After watching those ads so many times, I don’t have the desire to run out and get a hamburger and coke when I see them, but rather to change the channel. For marketers, it is as important to know how to run an effective, aggressive promotional campaign, as it is to know when to scale back a little on advertising.

Another interesting post I read is Jason Linkins’ article which talks about how non-traditional news sources stood out in their iPhone coverage.

He writes:

” One remarkable example was Justine, from Justin.tv, who hit the Mall of America armed with a camera on her hat and a pursebound Sony VAIO. She was bringing on-the-scene reports via blogging and vlogging, uploading photos to Flickr, and connecting with Twitter users for comments and assistance. That’s one person, fully mobile, operating across four platforms in near instantaneous fashion, and connecting to and with the people on the scene in a way the mainstream news cannot.”

Its amazing to see how news is covered on the internet these days in real time, in a way that was never possible before. I’ve previously written a related post regarding the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings by students and staff.

Speaking of web 2.0 coverage, I’d like to thank Steve Rhodes for the above pic which he took in front of the San Francisco Apple store the night before the iPhone launch. Steve has a lot of amazing pics from that day on his flickr.

Technorati tags: publicity, promotion, peter himler, saturation, marketing, iphone, advertising, mcdonalds, coca cola, jason linkins, web 2.0, justin.tv, blogging, vlogging, flickr, twitter, steve rhodes

The industry and media hyped up the iPhone like no other gadget in modern history. Last week, when the product hit the shelves, shoppers ran to purchase and stood in lines for hours. Frankly, I must say I am a bit puzzled.

As Aner Ravon writes:

The iPhone is supposed to change the industry, yet it uses yesterday’s technology.

1. EDGE is a different name for horrible browsing experience. The only equivalent I can think of is a scooter engine trying to pull a Rolls Royce.

2. Side-loading only? You mean I need to connect my phone to the PC again? wasn’t it all about mobility?

3. Camera without zooming? Are we back in 2003 and nobody told me?

Jeff Pulver adds:

When I heard that in the United States in order to use an Apple iPhone I also had to be a subscriber to AT&T Wireless, I said No! It is not that T-Mobile has the best coverage (or the best service) but in principal, I am not in favor of any vendor whose device is locked into a certain service provider. What ever happened to my freedom of choice? I hope AT&T is paying Apple enough money to cover all of the sales they are losing from customers who have relationships on other carrier networks who would have also purchased the device if the AT&T phone service wasn’t a requirement.

What’s your take on the iPhone? Regardless of all the criticism, I must say that Steve Jobs and Apple have done an amazing job in marketing their product, so hats off to them for that.

Thanks to Andy for the pic.

Technorati tags: iphone, aner ravon, jeff pulver, apple, at&t, t-mobile, steve jobs

A few days ago I received the following comment on my blog:

“Hi, Added a new value add to my blog this weekend - a news widget from widgetmate. I always wanted to show latest news for my keywords in my sidebar. It was very easy with this widget. Just a small copy paste and it was done. Great indeed.”

This comment was posted under my WeFi Makes Connections Easy post and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. Tip to the people who are trying to market this product: If you’re going to market something. Do it right. Adding spam comments to posts that have nothing to do with your product, and sending the exact same email to my inbox a day later is not the way you want to go.

Blogger doesn’t offer an option to detect spam comments. The only options you have are to add a captcha to prevent automated spam or to moderate the comments, but I find that this takes away from the value of an instant response and I don’t want to resort to this solution. I think Blogger could do better. The least it could do is see if similar comments were posted to a particular blog multiple times, or use the Akismet model.

I did a little research on the topic and found that other bloggers have also received similar comments from Widgetmate. It’s remarkable to me how big Google which is supposedly such an active spam fighter can be defeated by some small time spammers that are using cheap marketing technics to promote their latest product.

I am interested to hear from you guys if you also received the same post.

Thanks to Naomi for this pic.

Technorati tags: commenting, blogging, blogger, widgetmate, widget, marketing, spam, akismet, google

Subvert and Profit which label themselves as “a new kind of black market” pay social network users to digg stories for advertisers who want to be spotted on Digg’s homepage.

Digg users can now sign up and receive $0.50 for every digg they make. Advertisers pay $1 per Digg vote. Other services like Spike the Vote (which is now offline) and User/Submitter (which is still online but allegedly ceased operation), have tried this model before. Since this sort of manipulation of digg votes in exchange for money is in clear violation of Digg’s terms and conditions, many of the users who were involved in these activities were banned from Digg. Subvert and Profit are pretty sure that they have programmed some terrific algorithms that will prevent their users from being tracked. Spike the Vote also believed that they had a bulletproof mechanism to cheat Digg, but in the end, their model didn’t work, users got banned, and their domain name was sold on ebay for $1275 and donated to digg. It’s nice to see that digg users are trying to fight back.

I find it quite sad that these blackmarket companies try to abuse the wonderful new age of Web 2.0 where democratization of content rules and users are able to share and recommend services and products which they actually like and enjoy. It is one thing to promote a product you use, like, and think can be useful to your community. It is another thing to digg a story for a product you don’t even know just to get hard cold cash. If companies such as Subvert and Profit succeed in their mission, all such social networks will turn into “spam networks” which will eventually cause real users to lose interest and stop participating. What good will this bring the advertisers when such sites are only filled with paid users trying to make a fast buck and not even interested in the actual content?

We must remember that sites like Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, are not just sites. They are communities made up of people who feel secure enough to bond and share their favorites with one another. Once we lose this security, such networks will inevitably be subverted. Not by Subvert and Profit but by the real users themselves.

I posted a comment expressing my feelings on the matter on TechCrunch, and Ragnar Danneskjold, co-founder of Subvert and Profit replied the following:

“You’re forgetting two things:

- The majority of people are stupid. Thus, “democracy” propagates dumb content.

- Democratic web 2.0 sites are already rigged to a large extent, and most people don’t care

We’re not going to ruin anything.”

I am glad that Mr. Danneskjold has such high regard for people. It is good to know that as a marketer, Mr. Danneskjold thinks of his target audience as stupid.

Will we as members of these social networks let Mr. Danneskjold and his legions overtake our communities?

Technorati tags: subvertandprofit, digg, socialnetworks, crowdsourcing, advertising, spikethevote, usersubmitter, cheating, ebay, phill midwinter, web 2.0, web, content, sharing, community, delicious, stumbleupon, network, techcrunch, ragnardanneskjold, marketing

There are many different ways a company can increase traffic to its site. In today’s digitalized world online promotion possibilities are endless. Successful online marketing depends largely on your ability to identify those channels that provide the best opportunity to reach your target audience. Online social networks, forums, blogging, SEO are just some of the ways that you can increase your site’s traffic.
Here’s a list of 10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic to your site.

Social Media Marketing is a great way to let people know about your site. Promoting your site on Digg or Delicious can increase your site’s traffic by a few thousand visitors per day but be careful. These sites are community oriented and if you only get on the site to promote your business and don’t contribute anything meaningful back to the community, the community will turn against you.
I am a big believer in the power of all these new online marketing strategies. I definitely feel that companies that will not take advantage of these new marketing strategies, will be at a great disadvantage to those that will.