The social “LOL” experiment!
While surfing the web today, I came across what has to be the funniest social marketing campaign ever created. It is called “The Skype laughter chain” and it is pure genius.
The entire social media campaign is based on the concept that laughter is contagious (even more so than a yawn)… And they prove it to the world with an ever growing viral chain of videos of skype users cracking up one after the other.
Marketing with “Yahoo Answers”
Did you know that Yahoo Answers is the #2 reference site on the internet? It’s right behind Wikipedia, and yet, it is often overlooked by most as part of an overall internet marketing plan. However, because of its high traffic, it deserves serious consideration.
If you aren’t familiar with it, Yahoo Answers is a place where people can ask a question about any topic and people can post replies. The person who asked the question chooses the best answer and that answer is featured at the top.
What’s great about it is that you can include one or more links in your answer - as long as they are justified, provide good value and honestly help to answer the question. And because so many of the users don’t give well-written, thoughtful answers, it’s pretty easy for your answers to stand out and get chosen as the top answer.
Social proof: The key to success
The only way to succeed with Web 2.0 marketing is by focusing all your efforts to just one clear and precise goal. And this is where most social marketers “get it wrong”.
The goal of social marketing is not to generate sales directly from Squidoo, Facebook or YouTube; the goal is to generate something far more valuable for your business: social proof.
Ironically, “social proof” has become a buzz-word in the web marketing arena. It has been twisted around so much that most people understand it as a synonym of “testimonials”. But it is much more than that. Testimonials are just one of the many ways to generate social proof… and there are many others. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Twitter Marketing 101
In this first episode of Marketing Factor TV, I’ll show you the basics of how to use Twitter.com to market your website or blog. This video is an experiment: If the feedback is positive, I’ll try to publish videos like this one on a regular basis (on a whole bunch of interesting topics), so please take some time after watching it and leave your comments… 
Are you LinkedIn?
If you are a professional with a large network of associates and co-workers or if you are self-employed and network for the purposes of finding new clients, then you need to be LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a Web 2.0 social network for business professionals that makes you more approachable and gives clients, associates and customers another way to contact you. As social networking increases in popularity people will seek out these means of contacting you instead of e-mail.
If you are looking for a new job LinkedIn is an excellent tool for helping you find one. LinkedIn posts new job listings every day and there’s a very good chance you’ll find one you like. You can upload your resume to your profile and also list your accomplishments and other noteworthy endeavors. You can also store testimonials and references here (these always bode well for business owners and make you look good in the eyes of prospects or potential employers).
Is YouTube your best option?
Video statistics these days are quite staggering. According to Google Trends, more people online are searching for online videos than they are searching for shopping or news.
That’s an amazing thing, because just a couple years ago, most industry experts swore that “shopping” was the pinnacle of the web and nothing would ever surpass it in search volume.
The experts were wrong… by a LOT. This makes the following stats even more impressive: ComScore Video Metrix reports that over 10 billion videos were watched in December 2007, with about 75% of all Americans online watching at least one video.
