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Here are some ideas for leveraging other social media tools to help promote your videos and increase awareness to them. Assuming the content is unique, original, entertaining, etc, the more people that view it, the greater the chance you have of it potentially “going viral”. Blogs – reach out to influential bloggers to check out your videos (more effective if you already have established relationships)
Facebook – Leverage your followers and share a video with them (the larger your network, the more impact this will have)
Email – Send the video out to your contacts
Your Friends – Ask them to watch the video and forward it to their friends too. You tell two friends who tell two friends who tell two friends and so on…
Influential Social Media Contacts – if you have these, leverage these – if not, begin to build these. The benefit is real simple, get them to show your video to their large groups of followers, who will in turn show it to their networks of friends, and it potentially keeps repeating.
Terms like viral video, viral marketing, etc., have in many ways become cliché. Everyone talks about them, but no one really explains it. There is no “magic formula” to follow for content to go viral but there are strategic elements that are usually present. Here are just a few of these elements to consider.
Let’s analyze a couple of viral videos to see how these elements are addressed
Some have called this one of the most inspirational videos on YouTube while others have criticized it. Regardless of your view, it has clearly went viral and generated millions of views.
Three distinct video types that each went viral but they all shared similar characteristics. However don’t forget, while viral videos have certain common characteristics, it needs a certain level of luck too!
To help you figure out which sites to participate on, here are some suggested things to try and/or think about:
Ask your customers and prospects – “Where are you online”? This can range from asking them during the checkout process or through the use of comment cards or by sending out a very simple 3-4 questions survey.
Ask yourself:
“Do I sell directly to a consumer”? If so, Facebook and Twitter could be good places to participate.
“Do I sell to other businesses”? Then LinkedIn, Blogging and SlideShare might be sites to investigate further.
Determine where your competition already participates. Not sure? Then run a search on them across the various main social media sites. Check out how they interact and assess whether you should be interacting at that particular site too.
Go into Social Bookmarking – Digg, iMixx, delicious, etc and search key terms as they relate to your target audience. Read some of the articles. See if they offer some clues for where these targets “hang out”. You may end up learning about some new influential sites, like the daily deal coupon sites, which are offering a powerful direct response for certain audience types
Social Media as we like to say is literally a “conversation on steroids”. Now that you understand where your audience is, the next step for you is to engage them.
In “Social Media 101”, by Chris Brogan, he offers his opinions on things to think about in the engagement process. Most importantly, you need to think from their (i.e. your audience’s) perspective:
What’s in it for me?
How does this impact me?
Do I have to do something?
What’s this going to cost me?
Think long and hard about these simple points. In doing so, you will make it easy for your audience to engage you. If you don’t, it will be just as easy for them to go somewhere else where someone is thinking about these points and addressing them for that particular audience.
Work on your Brand. Define your values, Articulate your unique expertise and then begin to craft it into short concise branding statements that are easily communicated.
Take a look at ours below and let us know what you think!
Address questions like:
What is your vision and purpose?
What are your top goals for next year and over the next few years?
Analyze your expertise and those you want to exhibit it to:
Make a list of your Core Strengths, Expertise, Accomplishments
Perform a SWOT on yourself – meaning make a list of your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats as they pertain to your expertise
Now, you need to blend the above two together.
My expertise is … _________ (ex: 20 years of selling in Country Club Row)
Three adjectives to describe my skills:
___________________, __________________, ___________________
(ex: well connected, satisfied customers, major sales)
Using the above, in 10 words or less, describe your expertise (for example – Career Sales of more than $15 million in Technology Sales) _________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________.
Branding never stops when it comes to relationship building. As you build relationships, you’ll find numerous points to communicate your brand. Here are a couple… think in terms of how to brand via invites, your responses to invites as well as through blog comments and more.
Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring. A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting. (For a while.) Seth Godin from “Purple Cow”
Given the hundreds of millions of people using various social media sites, what are you doing to be remarkable and standout just like Seth’s purple cows?
Be prepared to clearly articulate your expertise and brand build using very quick snippets or burst of information. The bottom line… make sure you are concise. Pack in as much relevant information as you can in a short sentence or phrase. Craft it in a way that plays well in social media. We need to get used to communicating this way. Think about this…
In Twitter, we only have 160 characters to communicate our bio and 140 characters to communicate to our followers.
In LinkedIn – roughly 10-12 words to create a Professional Headline
In YouTube – average video is under 3 minutes and the most effective are under 1 minute in length
While we may think branding at a glance is a relatively new phenomenon, the advertising world has been using it for years. Let’s take a nostalgic walk down memory lane to highlight this.
Do you remember that old Rolaids commercial? They asked us… “when antacid flares up, How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S. Rolaids spells relief”. So whenever you had heartburn and walked into a pharmacy looking for relief, you were conditioned to know that Rolaids was the relief you were seeking.
Here’s a couple more you may remember…
Wendy’s – Where’s the beef? – Value ->they offer bigger burgers than their competition
Charmin – Please don’t squeeze the Charmin. – Value –> their toilet paper is softer for your bottom than their competition’s
So… as you think about these examples, use this insight to help create a brand for yourself that clearly (and quickly) identifies the value you can offer. As we’ve seen, good branding is IRRESISTIBLE!
John Lynch also said… “You can’t tell people that you have X product and Z service to sell without first telling them who you are and why they should trust you”.
Think about this statement for a moment. This pretty much sums up why so many “fail” to generate results with social media – they are selling before they are establishing who they are and why we should trust them.
Gary, how did you create your strategic social media path?
You have to seek out the people that are out there already in your space. I spent many hours commenting in wine forums and on blogs, joining the conversation. If people were talking about wine, I was there to offer an opinion and to add value.
Millions of people are currently making forays into social media, but the large majority are not leveraging the benefits that can be attained. Why?
There are certainly many stories of people being creative or strategic in their use of social media but not millions. One very creative approach we’ve seen is here http://bit.ly/bIskL4. This is for a job seeker. If you take a thorough look at what he has done, he has chosen a strategic path to guide his use of social media and has integrated it.
However, for every creative and strategic use of social media, we’ve personally heard numerous stories about the challenges and unknowns that prevent those from using it.
These range from:
“I have to do WHAT?” After a successful 20 year career as a Senior VP at a fortune 100 company now I have to learn social media as one of the necessary tools to business? In the years leading up to this point, I had systematically rejected every invitation to join Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. The last thing I needed was another ‘email address’ to keep up with daily.
It just doesn’t work – “I want to go online and receive specific benefits – but it doesn’t seem to work like that”
It takes time to learn, and I’m not clear on the optimum way to use a particular social media outlet. e.g. Determining the answer to “What is the best way to use Twitter or LinkedIn to further me and my business?
It’s too personal. If you have a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, the link to person’s views, politics, religious affiliations, and other areas of interest are too far in the public eye.
Reluctance to try something new / confusion about the “correct use of these tools” – For example, Twitter has gotten so much PR as a communication vehicle for celebrities and much less as a business or job search resource.
This is natural. In some ways, it’s akin to the pleasure and pain concept. People will seek to avoid pain rather than accept some pain to achieve a greater pleasure. So what are you doing to make sure you are benefiting from. For some more ideas check out this link – LinkedIn for Business – 51 Ways to Benefit – http://bit.ly/cfGKt5
Social Media as we like to say is literally a “conversation on steroids”. Now that you understand where your audience is, the next step for you is to engage them.
Gary, how did you create your strategic social media path?
