It is that simple. Know your brand, know your target audience and what is going to move or inspire them. The outcome? They will want to share it, talk about it and better yet, become your brand evangelists. Grab their attention, reach the masses and gain millions of page views in the process. I look forward to your inspiration!

Best Nicole

2009’s crop of top viral video advertisements show us that people are willing to embrace a host of creative approaches on the social video Web, from beguiling mini-films, to user-generated advocacy, to YouTube celebrity endorsers, to elaborate commercial-grade productions. That’s good news for creators.

Regardless of the approach, the key for marketers is a solid understanding of what a brand is, who is the brand’s audience, and what moves them. Strangely enough, this formula sounds like traditional advertising. This year’s Top 10 is certainly a glimpse of how the viral video ad business is evolving, and as marketers, what we can learn from that evolution.

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1. Inspired Bicycles

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Advertiser: Inspired Bicycles
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: Inspired Bicycles’ team rider Danny MacAskill scales fences in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. The video is as mesmerizing as its hypnotic soundtrack from music group Band of Horses. It’s a solid example of how a brand pursuing a niche market – mountain bike trailblazers – can reach the masses with a brilliant viral video execution.

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2. SIGNS

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Advertiser: Schweppes
Ad Agency: Publicis Mojo and @RadicalMedia

Why it works: A love story with few words, Signs compels you to watch until its poignant end. It conclusively dispels the myth that viral video executions must be short and gimmicky to grab your attention.

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3. Piano Stairs

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Advertiser: Volkswagen
Ad Agency: DDB Stockholm

Why it works: “Take the stairs instead of the escalator and feel better” is something we hear but didn’t often see until this sly video from Volkswagen appeared on the Web. It’s part of an inspiring campaign, The Fun Theory, that encourages people to come up with fun ways to “do good.” The video itself did well indeed, imbuing Volkswagen with a fun new ethos and racking up millions of views in the process.

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4. BooneOakley.com

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Advertiser: Boone Oakley
Ad Agency: Boone Oakley

Why it works: Boone Oakley, an ad agency from Charlotte, North Carolina, uses an interactive YouTube video to tell its story and showcase client work. Audacious and attention-getting, it puts the young company on the short list of ad agencies who get it.

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5. Hosting Your Party

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Advertiser: Microsoft
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: This is the ultimate anti-viral: a video that generates millions of views simply because of how profoundly it misses the mark. Comments have been disabled, but all you have to do is talk to someone you know who’s watched it to know why it was so generously passed around.

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6. YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge

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Advertiser: Samsung
Ad Agency: Viral Factory

Why it works: One cunning way to get people talking about and sharing your video is to make them wonder how you shot it in the first place. Samsung went to great lengths to protect the “trick” in the video for their new HD camera phone, which got tech geeks riled up to try solving the puzzle. Geeks happen to be the audience most likely to buy the HD new camera phone, which is why this video makes our Top 10.

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I can’t stress enough the value that is waiting  for all of you who are hesitant to dive in. Connecting and engaging with your customer is only going to enhance your relationship—which in turn will turn into increased sales, repeat sales and additional sales to your customer’s friends. Are you  ready to gain the sales you have lost and build upon that to get more sales in this new economy? Let us know. We want to hear from you.

Best Nicole

In a post at the Viral Garden blog, Mack Collier discusses why so many companies struggle to launch and maintain active online communities. To find success, you’ll need more than a message board and good intentions, he says. Here’s some of his advice:

• Communities grow and thrive when you offer members something of value. “[They] do not form around the idea of being monetized,” he says. “Want to make money off your community? Fine, but you can’t monetize something that doesn’t exist.”
• They don’t materialize out of thin air. “One of the biggest myths about online community building is ‘if you build it, they will come,’” says Collier. He suggests reaching out to your target audience and explaining why they’ll benefit from participation.
• They benefit from the enthusiastic support of key participants. Some members will take a natural lead—identify these evangelists and show your appreciation. “Empower them to promote your community to others,” he says. “Showcase their contributions. And above all else, say thank you.”

The Po!nt: Don’t take anything for granted, and have a clear purpose. “[B]efore you start your online community-building effort,” advises Collier, “think about where you are, and where you want to be. Is the goal to make money, or is the goal to create a group of happy people?”

Source: Viral Garden. Click here for the full post.

 It is for all of you who know that you must enter this new world of engagement that I post the article below. It provides you with 5 great ways to ensure that the social media strategy you implement will bring you the success that you are aiming to attain.

Best Nicole

Last October, Gartner unveiled a study that stated that by 2010, 60 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies with a web site will be involved in some form of online community that is utilized for customer relationship purposes. What the research also goes on to state is that 50 percent of those that set out and establish or become involved in these communities will fail in their efforts. That’s about 300 Fortune 1000 companies that will fail at social media: a striking number, especially in light of recent economic pitfalls.

If half of these Fortune 1000 companies — with all of their resources — will fail, does that give any hope to the smaller businesses who venture into the social media realm? To be fair, smaller companies tend to have some advantages, such as being able to act faster in their social media efforts due to the fact of less “red tape” to deal with. However, in this area of online marketing, what it basically comes down to for any size company is understanding what is really involved in launching a social media strategy.

A lot of companies hear the buzz word “social media” and think “oh I’ve got to have some of that,” or they see that their competitor is doing something in social media, so they think they need to match that without fully understanding what they want to do. These are recipes for failure in social media.

Success in social media requires some advance planning on your part, as well as some fundamental shifts in marketers’ attitudes toward online marketing. By following a few simple steps, you can avoid the fate of those 300 Fortune 1000 companies that will fail at social media over the next couple of years.

1. Identify Your Audience

Before you set off down the road of social media, it’s best to take the time and do some research into where your audience is holding conversations about you, your brand, or your industry. Your audience may be busy discussing your industry through a photo group on Flickr, and if you spend your time trying to get articles ranking on Digg because you read a cool article on a blog about Digg’s power to drive traffic, you’re really just wasting your resources.

By taking the time to identify where your audience is active in the social media sphere, you can save yourself a lot in both time and aggravation. Going to where the conversation is being held is one of the fundamental elements to social media success. If you don’t do the research to find out where your audience is engaged, you have no chance of connecting with them.

2. Define Your Success Measurements

How will you decide whether your social media efforts are truly successful? Unlike PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimization), the majority of social media efforts do not have a direct ROI measurement through traditional analytics. So how do companies determine if their efforts are worth the return?

The area of social media you are focusing on will determine the types of metrics you’ll need to look at. Let’s take an example of looking at video sharing. Most video sharing sites do not allow direct linking from the actual video into your site, they usually allow that in the description of the video, so how do you measure success if you can’t correlate links to clicks and purchases while viewers are watching a video? Companies have to step back from gauging success of social media with the amount of traffic generated or products bought in this case.

With video sharing you must look at other key factors such as the number of views, number of comments, how many links to the video are generated and even how many times the video has been favorited or how many stars it gets in ratings. There’s also the matter of how many subscribers to the channel the video generates to factor in as well. In essence, all of these factors are measuring the success of brand/product/company exposure, which are elements that can be measured.

3. Plan a Strategy that Includes All Stakeholders

Launching a big offline marketing campaign requires a strategy that involves marketing, sales, and other departments within an organization, and likely some outside vendors. Why should social media be any different? A social media strategy helps you plan for both the expected and unexpected. A social media strategy also helps to get all the key players on the same page, it brings all of your resources together and helps to make sure they are working with each other, rather than operating as separate silos.

Without an overall social media strategy, the potential for failure rises even higher. If one department is responsible for the social media efforts and they are just operating on the directions of “get us out there in the community,” failure is right around the corner. Anyone engaging customers in any medium needs to understand the company’s overall marketing goals, messaging, and customer service strategies.

In addition, if different stakeholders in your company are not communicating, you will eventually run into trouble when your social media efforts bear fruit. For example, if your strategy involves Digg and you manage to hit the front page, but you didn’t have IT involved, it’s possible that the onslaught of traffic Digg will send you will crash your site. If your Public Relations department promotes a special event for online participants and your SEO team wasn’t involved, your efforts may not rank well in the search engines.

Without a cohesive strategy, major blunders like these are more likely to happen, and the risk of your social media efforts failing increases tenfold.

4. Be Transparent

One of the quickest ways to fail in social media is to not be transparent about who you are and why you are “here.” Social media is really about building relationships in communities and the conversations you have. Relationships are built upon trust, and if that trust is broken in any way, your efforts are wasted.

When you become involved in a community, make sure from the start to share who you are, your relationship to the company, and your contact information. This tells the community you are “for real” and that you aren’t there to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

If you plan on masquerading as a customer who uses your products and just loves them, you might want to think twice before employing this tactic. If you are found out to be an employee of the company by a community member, all trust is lost and your reputation within the community is destroyed. It usually goes downhill from there, with the possibility of a bigger PR nightmare once the mainstream media becomes involved.

5. Recognize that It’s Not About You

Companies can be very egotistical when it comes to marketing. For years, it’s been all about getting your message out there so the customer will buy your product or service. With social media, this kind of thinking will get you ignored, or could even cause a backlash against your company.

Social media is about building relationships, and it’s about conversations. Conversations involve more than just you pushing your carefully crafted message onto the consumer. Social media is about a community sharing experiences, and companies listening to that.

The old adage “God gave us two ears and only one mouth for a reason” speaks volumes for social media. Companies should be out there listening to end users, asking questions, looking for feedback, embracing new ways end users are utilizing their products and services. Forcing your prefabricated marketing message upon a social media community will only generate resentment and ultimately failure in social media.

Perhaps if companies take the time to work on some of these elements with their efforts in social media, fewer failures will be seen in 2010 than what Gartner has predicted. Social media can be a very effective way to get instant feedback that’s more “true” than even a focus group could give. Social media can also be a very effective and successful marketing tool, but only if companies take the time to strategically plan for it and not just rush into it head on.

Best Nicole

Anyone can throw ads up online. But, running ads that actually motivate people to take immediate action — beyond a simple click — is not easy. So, how can you convert ad viewers into product buyers, leads, new-member signups and video viewers?

Working in a performance-based ad network with more than 1,000 active campaigns at anytime, I’ve seen the tactics that work. Generally, they follow tried-and-true principles of direct response advertising but are adapted to the fact that people online tend to absorb information by superficial browsing.

1. Stand out from the crowd: Getting attention is a major challenge in the oversaturated advertising world in which we live, and no one will respond to your ad if they don’t see it. So be bold, be in your face, be different.

2. Make them an offer that sounds too good to pass up: Direct marketers have long understood that it’s the offer that makes people “act now and save.” However, nowadays, any discount under 50% off doesn’t get people excited. Better yet, find something you can offer for . Try to state the offer in a way that seems to provide tremendous value.

For example, a theme park I once worked with offered to waive $15 off of its admission price to upgrade to an annual pass. By restating the offer as “Buy a day, get a year free,” consumers immediately began multiplying their savings by 364 days and came up with the incredible number of $18,200! It was a deal too good to pass up.

3. Assume your audience has ADD: Studies show the Internet is a browsing medium, filled with multi-tasking. So don’t make people wait for your fancy Flash animation to play out or have to scroll down to the bottom and read through all the fine print. Get to the point! Generously speaking, you’ve got about two seconds to state your value proposition and make your amazing offer in order to hook them.

4. Create a landing page designed to do one thing only — close the deal: Here are a few rules to create a landing page that works to convert:

• Keep them captive — Get rid of all navigation. Once you’ve got the prospect in the showroom, would you show them the door? If you need to cram more info in to your landing page, do it with a pop-up.

• Make the desired action the point of focus — If you want orders or leads, start your form above the fold. Put in a big arrow that points to it and lay out your page to lead the eye to that form. If you are using a play button, the same rule applies. Drive the eye to the desired action!

• Alleviate all fear — There are a lot of fly-by-night operators online. Add credibility enhancers like testimonials, press quotes and logos, third party endorsements, and an “About the Company’ paragraph to show you can be trusted. Use money-back guarantees or other risk reducers to overcome people’s reluctance to part with their money. If you’re asking for personal information, include a privacy statement to make prospects feel that their info is safe.

5. Tell them what you want them to do: If you want people to take a specific action, don’t make it a guessing game. Come right out and tell them! (It’s incredible how many people don’t.)

Of course there’s more, but if you keep the above in mind when designing your next online campaign, you’ll be well ahead of the curve in your ability to drive conversions.

Marketers are directing their 2009 budgets toward content, custom media and social media initiatives, according to a new study from online marketing resource and vendor-matching tool Junta42.

More than half—56%—of marketing and publishing decision-makers plan to increase their content marketing spending next year, Junta42 found after surveying its community of corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals.

What’s more, a full 31% expressed their intention to increase spending on content significantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly.

Even in the face of dramatic cutbacks and decreased budgets, only 4% of respondents said they planned to decrease spending on content dramatically next year, while 9% said they planned to decrease it slightly.

“These findings are an acceleration of what we’ve been seeing for the past few years,” said Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and author of “Get Content. Get Customers.”

Notably, surveyed marketers were very clear that social media will be at the top of their investment list next year.

In terms of most important products/tactics, social media–other than blogs–resonated with 68% of subscribers, followed by e-newsletters/email (60%), blogs (56%), case studies (55%), online video (51% ), white papers (46%) and microsites (43%).

“If marketers will spend less in 2009, it won’t be coming from their content development budgets,” Pulizzi said. “More and more marketing professionals now realize that tomorrow’s marketing is all about developing a conversation with customers.”

The Junta42 community is made up of both corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals. For the study, 42% were corporate marketers, 22% were traditional publishers/media, 19% were marketing/advertising agencies, 15% were custom publishers and 3% were association marketers.

In addition, 85% of the surveyed audience makes marketing purchase decisions for their organizations.

The Junta42 email study was delivered during the first week of December. A total of 1706 subscribers were invited to take the study, of which 196 completed the survey.

IF these stats are any indication using social media tools will definitely be a successful way to start the conversation with your customers. What are you waiting for? Brand evangelists for your products and services are eagerly waiting to hear from you!

Best Nicole

Fact is, a site needs to be well designed in all aspects. It needs to have a look and feel that ensures your audience can and will be able to use it. And that all depends upon what you want to accomplish and who you’re appealing to—from tween terrors to conservative CEOs.

That also means you have to take your audience’s level of online sophistication into consideration. Remember, just because you can use lots of gorgeous bandwidth hogging graphics and implement lots of cutting-edge social media, doesn’t mean you should (we all saw what happened in Jurassic Park, right?). Forums, blogs, reviews, etc., etc., are great. But if these features are just going to sit and gather cyber dust, what’s the point? Beware: a discussion board that hasn’t been touched since the Clinton era can speak far louder than your silent audience. Not to mention if it takes ten minutes for anyone to even see it!

And as for navigation…it doesn’t have to be your standard under the header, down the side (or both) affair. But it still has to make some kind of sense! If I need an instruction manual to figure out how to get to your home page, forget it! I can do without the built-in learning curve.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a relatively patient person who doesn’t mind a site that makes me think a bit by utilizing a ‘different’ navigational approach. But if your site makes me feel stupid or like “I’m not worthy”, then why should I bother? Perhaps, that’s the brilliance of sites like this. It’s some weird way of keeping out the undesirables. But if the majority of the population is made up of undesirables, who are you actually talking to? The Stephen Hawking’s of the world who managed to get past the intro page? Well, then good luck! Because unfortunately, most of the ‘chosen few’ are probably too busy creating black holes in science labs to visit your site. Either that, or the content better be freaking phenomal if I’m going to take the time to figure out the secret navigational handshake.

Ultimately, at the end (or beginning) of the day, you have to understand what your site is trying to do, how it helps to tell your story and whether it gives your audience appropriate opportunities to let you know if they’re getting it.

So if that turns into an ugly vs. pretty debate, please remember: “ugly” can be beautiful. There is beauty in simplicity—in just sticking to the nuts and bolts. And for the majority of sites, that’s all you really need. That, and great content worth hanging around for.

If you’d like to see more about the ugly sites debate, check out the following link.

Bye for now!

Margaret.