Social Media Week: YouTube and Viral Videos

Lyn Mettler: “A Powerful Social Media Tool”

I love YouTube for business for a lot of reasons. The first of course is the fact that it’s the second most popular site for search behind Google. That’s a lot of people searching and you want to grab them if they’re typing in something related to your business.

How do you do that? Get up a channel and some video. Sure, it’s fine to put whatever video you’ve got laying around up there: commercials, promo videos, etc. But what will work much better is something informative and entertaining designed in “YouTube style”. What do I mean by this? It shouldn’t be overly polished, as people will take it as being overtly promotional and turn off.

Instead, have fun. Think about how you can turn one of your business’s key services or products upside down. Remember the blender that can blend anything? Take a look at some of the sillier videos we’ve done for some of our clients:

• What Not to Do During a Video Conference
• Scary Pruning
• Whatever You Call Them

If you just can’t come up with something genuinely funny or crazy, take an educational approach. We do a lot of videos for our client the Charleston Parks Conservancy that are simply helpful tips on gardening. The most popular one is about pruning Sago Palms (almost 7000 views)! Of course, it does help that their executive director has a great personality that translates well to video, but that’s not why the Sago Palms video is getting a lot of views. It’s because people are searching for Sago Palms, looking for information.

And don’t forget that YouTube is a social network. That means you need to pay attention to developing friends, commenting on others’ videos, increasing your subscribers and letting all those people know when you have a new video up.

Happy tubing!!

Laura Angermeier: “YouTube for All Facets of Life”

Pretty much everyone has watched a YouTube video by now, including both my grandmas and my 4 year old. It’s surprising to think that the site started in 2005 and has already become such a huge part of our daily lives. At my house, we use the site for all kinds of reasons, from learning about the latest stats on a new phone from CNET to watching a Dora the Explorer clip in order to make it the extra 15 minutes until bedtime.

Some folks use it just to pass around cute videos of puppies and kittens, but there are some serious rewards to be reaped from YouTube if you do it right! Major companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford Motor Company are on YouTube, reaching out to customers daily. People are watching 2 billion YouTube videos a day, so it’s smart to start your profile and get your message out loud and clear. Oh, and if you were wondering who has the top viewed YouTube video of all time, it’s Justin Bieber, with over 456 million views. WOW!

Holly: “Tips for YouTube Videos”

Social Media News of the Day: November 26, 2010

What’s on Your Black Friday List?

This morning the stores were flooded with people trying to find the perfect deal. I’m personally waiting for Cyber Monday to do some shopping but I’ve already heard from friends who benefited from the great price cuts.

This season it appears to be all about the techy gadgets! This should be no surprise with everyone from 6-year-old children to grandparents asking for the iPad this year. Beyond that, you have the Kindle and other ereaders, iPod Touch, some great deals on laptops and several different Android devices.

Marketing Daily is predicting that people will spend more money this year on gadgets than they will on travel! Do you think this is true and what’s on your holiday wish list?

The Mobile Performance

As I’ve said in the past, I love music! I’m also an Apple fan and when you put these two loves together you get some great videos! Here are some fun videos provided by Mashable of talented iPad and iPhone musicians. Enjoy!

Social Media News of the Day: October 19, 2010

It’s Time to be “Unsocial”

Imagine an application that combined Foursquare with LinkedIn and topped it with a dating site such as eHarmony. That’s exactly what one startup did with their new mobile app, Unsocial.

Unsocial takes your LinkedIn information and then lets you add tags to describe yourself. These tags and your location are used to match you with other users who should be in your professional network.

It’s only available in San Francisco as of now with the hopes of expanding. Has anyone had a chance to check this new app out? What did you think?

SIDE NOTE: Location services just keep on growing! Foursquare is on target to hit 4 million users and SCVNGR should surpass 500,000 users this week!

What Makes a Good Video?

Irony, humor, cute animals and children are my requirements and they seem to work for lot of others, as well! The Fine Brothers have found a winning formula with their YouTube video series “Kids React: Viral Videos.”

It shows children, ages 5-13, watching popular viral videos, such as the Double Rainbow, and captures their reactions! This is genius and made me realize that some of the things adults find interesting are just plan boring to children.

A few days ago, Mashable posted their favorite videos of the week, the hipster edition, and some of the clips had me falling out of my seat. The best part of these videos is because they are so true! My friends have long said, “If you say you aren’t a hipster, then you probably are!” Check these out for a great laugh!

Tweet

Social Media News of the Day: October 4, 2010

For All the Baby Mommas Out There!

Pampers and Amazon have joined forces to allow moms and dads (yeah right) to purchase diapers directly from their Facebook page. This was a super smart move on Pampers’ part considering women tend to spend hours on the social network.

This might not be the first time we have seen e-commerce hit Facebook but this is the first time Amazon has attempted it. Could Amazon dominate the e-commerce/Facebook market? What brands would you like to see start their own Facebook web store?

YouTube to Save Lives

In the wake of multiple suicides by gay teens, YouTube and Dan Savage have stepped up to help others who are being harassed for their sexuality. Savage has started a YouTube channel to inspire these youth and inform them that life does get better!

There have been several celebrities to add videos and words of encouragement, such as Ellen DeGeneres and Perez Hilton. This is a great story to show how helpful social media can be!

Popcorn for Everyone

A follow-up to all my blogs about “The Social Network” from last week:  Even though Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to see the film, it appears that the rest of his Facebook team does. There have been several reports that they rented out a theater in California and were going to have up to 1,200 employees attending the film.

Have you seen it yet, and if you have, do you think the Facebook team enjoyed it?

Social Media News of the Day: September 21, 2010

The New “To-Do” List

Foursquare is making some changes with their upcoming release: 2.0 for iPhone. The company is focusing on the considerably overlooked feature of the “To-Do” list. In order to get more people going to new locations, they’re adding an “Add to Foursquare” button that companies can embed on their website.

When a user visits your website and they click on the “Add to Foursquare” button, your venue will be added to their To-Do list. The user will then receive a push notification when they check into a venue close by, reminding them to visit your location as well.

This change will definitely make Foursquare more helpful and useful for those who manage a venue, and, don’t worry, the 2.0 version will come to Blackberry and Android phones too!

Get the Museum on Your Couch

YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum partnered up to bring art into the homes of everyday citizens. The YouTube Play channel allowed anyone to submit a music video, short film or abstract art video with the chance to win your spot at the Guggenheim Museum.

Out of 23,000 submissions, a short list (of 125) has been selected who will go against a panelist of esteemed judges. Then 20 winners will be selected. Starting October 21, 2010, the winner’s artwork will be showcased, so if you live or are visiting New York, check it out and tell us what you think!

Social Media News of the Day: September 9, 2010

Back to School…NO!

Summer is officially over and although I am no longer in school, the additional 15 minutes added to my daily commute for school bus traffic has made this point very clear! I love summer, like most, mainly because it means, sun, surf and fun.

Mourn no longer because there is a new YouTube channel called The Vacationer. There are tons of fun videos from travel spots all over the world, tips on how to plan your next vacation and information provided by the Travel Channel, National Geographic and others.

What a great way to have summer year round!

Forget the Heisman, You’ve Got Foursquare

Reggie Bush might have a Super Bowl ring but he is not having a good month. He and long-term girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, called it quits, and the NCAA might strip away his Heisman trophy. So what does he do to cheer himself up? Create a social media scavenger hunt, duh!

#RedZones is a scavenger hunt created by Reggie and his agency, Activ8Social. Eight social media savvy fans will have a chance to win an autographed football from Reggie by combining clues given on Facebook, Twitter, TwitPic and Foursquare.

Are you cheering for the Who Dat nation tonight against the Vikings in the NFL season opener? For those living in New Orleans, do you know anyone who’s found a football?

Social Media News of the Day: September 1, 2010

Now This is Just Weird

Bashkim Isai has come up with a plant whose well being and livelihood depends on the attention given by his Facebook friends. Sounds complicated, I know, but in reality it’s pretty genius. The watering and food system is triggered by social interaction. Not enough contact will cause the plant to die and, yes, too much interaction could cause its demise.

The Meat Eater does post on the Facebook page if he is hungry and needs more attention or if he has too much attention and is being over-fed. The page already has 1,200 fans and has only been active for a little over two months.

What a neat way to showcase the best part of social media: communication while reminding us how connected we are to the environment!

Everyone’s a Movie Star

A few months ago I helped spread the word through social media about a YouTube project called “Life In A Day” by Ridley Scott. The project allowed anyone to submit videos on YouTube of their life unfolding on Saturday, July 24.

As they edit the movie, they’ve released several submissions on their YouTube channel to keep people interested and entertained. The final movie will focus on 25 submissions and those chosen really will get the star treatment: attending Sundance this year!

I personally can’t wait to see how it turns out, and for those interested it will be available on YouTube after its release in several different languages! Did any of you submit your life?

Social Media News of the Day: July 28, 2010

YouTube Done Right!

At this point everyone has seen and fallen in love with the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. For anyone who’s not had the pleasure of seeing this become the archetype for social media campaigns, here’s a blog I wrote a few weeks ago to get you up to date! Old Spice is now seeing the fruits of their labor with sales doubling. Congrats Old Spice and Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice guy)!

We Will Always Remember @IvyBean104

The oldest tweeter, Mrs. Ivy Bean of England, passed away last night. Mrs. Bean (isn’t she cute?!) had 56,000 followers on Twitter and was an active Facebook member, as well. What she taught us at Step Ahead Inc. is that social media can be accessed and used by all ages, all over the world, and that in itself is a very powerful thing! Ivy, we will miss you and I will forever use you as my example when friends say “I don’t get twitter, it’s hard to use!”

Move Over Brangenlia, The New “It” Couple is Amazbook!

This is what the headlines would read if this blog was on OK! Magazine or People! Amazon and Facebook are partnering up to provide their customers with the most customized experience. You can link your Facebook account with your Amazon account, allowing the site to give you recommendations based on your interests and recent activity.

*** I would like to state that I do not read trashy magazines regularly but, come on, it’s beach season, people!

BP and the Case of Bad PR

Beyond the horrible images of the Gulf of Mexico drowning in oil, I can’t help but watch yet another disaster hitting BP: a PR nightmare that has ruined its brand. This is a company’s worst fears come true – a disaster impacting an entire nation brought on, it seems, by much of its own doing. Ouch. That PR team has its work cut out for it.

One of the most interesting developments has been the creation of a fake BP Twitter feed, BPGlobalPR, now with more than 163,000 followers and retweets galore thanks to its dry wit (“Investing a lot of time & money into cleaning up our image, but the beaches are next on the to-do list for sure.”) and tweets dripping with sarcasm (“Adopt a BP oil plume! $25 makes you 100% responsible for an oil plume and a ‘bpcares’ shirt!”).

And don’t forget YouTube, home of videos taking BP to task for its reaction to the oil spill. My favorite: BP Spills Coffee.

But BP certainly isn’t the first company to take a beating for its missteps. Lest we not forget Toyota just a few months ago and a bevy of auto executives from Detroit taking a private jet to Washington, D.C., to ask for a government bailout.

Unfortunately, these recent examples won’t be the last. But, today a reputation is destroyed in the time it took me to type this paragraph. (140 characters)

Before your company barely has a chance to catch its breath and craft a statement, blogs are buzzing, Twitter is tweeting and Flip cameras are rolling for a satirical YouTube video. Truly, your only course of action is to be as ahead of the game as you can be. This isn’t the time to say “no comment,” buying a couple hours for the staff to set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page.

In this day of social media and the instantaneous news cycle, you have to stay one – better make that two – steps ahead. If these events teach PR people anything, it’s to cover all your bases and that includes social media.

Do You Like Dominos? Cooking up a new PR Campaign … and a New Pizza

So if you remember, Domino’s faced a big PR fiasco last year when two employees made a video of themselves doing unspeakable acts to a pizza before they delivered it to a customer. While they were lucky enough to learn about it from a blogger/friend (not because they were monitoring the Web, please note), they chose to sit on it instead of acting quickly, resulting in nearly 2 million views of the video on YouTube, major media coverage and a public backlash.

Well, Domino’s did respond, but a little too late to repair the damage done. They created a Twitter account to answer people’s questions and also put up a video of the CEO on YouTube apologizing for the incident, noting the employees had been fired and explaining that is not what goes on behind the doors of Domino’s.

Fast forward about 8 months later. Domino’s has taken a hard look at itself in light of what happened last year. They’ve decided to be honest about their failings and are trying to regain consumer confidence in their established brand.

So when you think of Domino’s pizza, do you think yuck or yum? Turns out most people think yuck J. Domino’s took a look at what people were saying about their pizza offline and online and heard things like “your crust tastes like cardboard” and “your sauce tastes like ketchup.” And what do you know, Domino’s actually listened!

They’ve put together a new campaign courtesy of the creative folks at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (of Burger King’s “king” ads and other very innovative and different campaigns) called “The Pizza Turnaround”. The campaign acknowledges their criticism and shows how they’ve reacted: creating an entirely new pizza from scratch.

The Pizza Turnaround

They’ve put together two great little YouTube videos, one showing the company listening in to focus groups and coming up with a new pizza, and the second, my favorite, with the head chef showing up at the doors of some of the harsher focus group participants and inviting them to try the new pizza. Bold and real.

At the Door of Our Harshest Critics

I LOVE it! I wish I could get more companies to follow in their footsteps. They’ve turned a really negative incident with the employee video into a catalyst for change for the company. People can always identify with you when you acknowledge failings (we all have them) and try to fix them. I think this will be a turnaround for Domino’s … well, so long as the pizza is actually good. I haven’t tried it yet.

Oh, and by the way, I am one of the few people who genuinely liked Domino’s pizza the way it was . Yea ketchup sauce!

What do you think of Domino’s tactics? Smart or stupid?

Next Page »