Online Marketing Blog

Every brand has a story and every story has a purpose.  But what does your story say about you? 

The Storyteller Marketing session was fantastic.  It’s a different way at looking at marking.  Some presenters didn’t even consider themselves marketers, instead, storytellers.  It’s all about finding or creating a story that will spread, in a positive way, around the web, from mouth to mouth and be more than just some advertising campaign.

A few good examples that they provided included Dove’s Pro-Aging, Kleenex stories and Apple’s recent Mac & PC.  Sometimes the stories are true, sometimes their created, but they are never fake.  You can’t pay someone to pretend to have a story as it doesn’t work.  It’s got to be real.

Viral makes you think of something horrible, right? Like an outbreak of a virus taking over the world’s population and turning us all into zombies? Well, trust me, when it comes to online promotions and link building, “viral” means “success”.

During the session this morning, we heard a lot of fantastic tips for how to create and promote viral campaigns. Fionn Downhill of Elixir Interactive gave some fantastic statistics about the use of social media for viral marketing purposes and how to leverage that to gain buzz for your product.

[Minor edit: Be sure to read the comment thread below for a response from the agency CEO.] An employee of an  Interactive agency sent out pitches to a number of bloggers this morning promoting a “viral video” that I wanted to share. Mind you, I’m not going to share the actual video because it’s sick, racist and violent. “Man makes racist insults, gets asphyxiated and beaten to death by young Asian girls and their parents while another man obliviously chats on his Bluetooth headset nearby.” If you’re into that sort of thing you can find it on your own.

What I AM sharing is the pitch email and a few screen shots. I get so many pitches each day even though there’s nothing on our contact form to indicated we’re interested in being pitched. It’s so easy to just click delete and move on to the day’s work.

A slew of SES Chicago attendees sat in on the session - Igniting Viral Campaigns - to learn how they just might create the next Burger King Chicken Campaign, in which Burger King was able to increase chicken sandwich sales with a website and a subservient chicken.

Maybe we’re not all looking to sell more chicken sandwiches, but we are looking to take a message and make it viral.

Each panelist provided insight on what they believe to be the keys to making content buzzworthy.

Bill Hanekamp, CEO, The Well hammered home the importance of relevancy to session attendees.

According to Bill, we all need to ask ourselves the following question:
1. With all the content on our websites, does anyone care?

Day 3 at SES San Jose found me assigned to cover the session “Link Baiting & Viral Search Success.”

Those who’ve read my previous posts should find it as no surprise that my level of excitement for this session superseded any residual aches and pains left over from last night’s “decadence based in relevance” superbash Google Dance.

(Personal Note: None of the stories you’ve heard regarding the TopRank team at this event are accurate. Except the one about how we met up with AC/DC’s tour bus afterwords and partied with them all night - that one’s true**)

This session, moderated by SES co-chair Chris Sherman included on its panel:

• Chris Boggs, Search Strategist, Avenue A
• Jennifer Laycock, Editor-In-Chief, Search Engine Guide

So what is the coolest new viral campaign online and why? Check out www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com and then come back here.

There isn’t anything on the page, is there?

Certainly not that photo of Aaron Eckhart that can be found by removing “too” from the URL: www.ibelieveinharveydent.com

There’s simply a message saying “Page Not Found”.

Do you feel like me the first time you viewed this site, thinking that you must have missed part of an exciting new campaign for the upcoming Batman epic “The Dark Knight”, of which Harvey Dent, Gotham’s DA and future criminal mastermind “Two Face” would, surely play an integral role? Do you feel compelled, like I did, to search out a forum for more?

Facebook recently deployed an applications programs interface allowing users to create widgets or share applications within their network.

One application in particular caught my interest as it allows you to turn your virtual self into a zombie and “infect” other people by biting them (through email invitation of course). Your zombie gains points as you infect more and more people. In the 3 days that I have had the application up and running, I have infected 6 people who have infected others as well.

After accumulating a certain number of zombie points by infecting others, your virtual self reaches the next level after which you are able upgrade to another type of zombie. In all, nearly 400,000 Facebook users currently subscribe to the zombie application.

There are two perspectives on creative link building that I’ve been thinking about lately involving creating content and resources that offer value and the sensationalism of content promoted through social news communities. My take is that link bait focuses on creating unique, useful and provocative content that people respond to by linking to it and sharing with others.

Digg bait, which is not limited to Digg but all social news and bookmarking sites, focuses specifically on the interests of social communities and what they respond to. With Digg bait, the power is not in the usefulness and value of the content, but the title and description of the news item, sometimes bordering on the sensational. Think tabloid style writing, “Elvis gives birth to alien baby”.

No stranger to either online marketing or a sense of humor, Ed Kohler has a pretty fun project in the works called Banana Name where he’s writing names of blogs/sites on bananas and posting to the site, BananaName.com.

Here’s the post he did for OMB.

In a strange way, this reminds me of Chris Pirillo’s “rent my chest” efforts, which started out with Ponzi writing ads literally on Chris’s chest. I suspect that became impractical and evolved into the more automatic version linked above.

Let’s hope Ed “keeps it real” with the bananas, which, he has a LOT of. Check it out.

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At WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas last November, Lawrence Coborn who runs Sexy Widget as well as RateitAll.com, made quite a splash with his presentation on marketing with widgets. We interviewed Lawrence Coborn here on OMB late last year.

Since then, many marketers have been paying more attention to marketing blogs with widgets such as via the Flickr image tool, the Swicki search tool and the MyBlogLog widget in the right sidebar of this blog.

Here is a an example of a new blog widget for Online Marketing Blog, or blidget from Widgetbox that makes a widget out of the content of your blog.

About a month ago, I did a post about a fellow who is working to raise money and media attention in order to secure a sponsor for a marriage proposal during the Super Bowl, “One Super Proposal“. My freind, Joe Morin is helping this guy out with media relations as is Greg Jarboe on the PR side of things.

Joe told me last night he posted an announcement that “JP” will be doing a segment on “Good Morning America” tomorrow morning. JP’s identity will be disguised so as to not tip off the lucky lady he plans to propose to. For those of us working during that time, I hope Joe and JP will be posting a copy of the show to YouTube or Google Video.

(I’m crazy for hatbait)
On the tails of the Drink Bait promotion during WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, Li from Search Marketing Gurus ran a very interesting “Hat Bait” promo during the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference. I believe she has the largest single collection of labeled SEO photos anywhere!

Everyone from Danny Sullivan to MC Detlev posed with one of Li’s funky hats. Now’s your chance to vote (via comments) on which photo of a search marketer wearing a silly hat is your favorite.

I think some other creative variations for “bait” that include some social media could be:

Song Bait - Video SEOs singing a particular song. Everyone sings the same song and views vote on their favorite.
Smile Bait - Vote for best smile.
Joke Bait - Video SEOs telling their best jokes.