Social Media – Circus or Captivating?

“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute”

– Hannum or Barnum?*

Even though historians debate about the origin of this well known quote, everyone has a sense for its reality. When we think of what drove the circus era, it was human curiosity fueled by promotion. Did the circus just locate on the edge of town, set up shop, and expect customers to come streaming in? Of course not, they did a lot of promotion. Before the circus came to town they had posters announcing their magic. Once set up, they teased their potential customers with a circus parade through the heart of town, giving glimpses of what great experiences lurked under the big top on the edge of town.

As we think about social media and marketing, we’re reminded of the public nature of social media. Most beginners to social media marketing have an apprehension to “broadcasting” their news to sites like Twitter and Facebook. The college frat stigma of Facebook still scares users. Horror stories of privacy breaches adds to their paranoia. At the cyber wigwam we have coined this phenomenon as “Blog-xiety.”  That’s another post. Yes, we do not want to be careless about our posts. Remember though, that you can reach roughly 1/3 of all internet users on Facebook. In our face paced world we are far outpacing the world of P.T. Barnum. Currently, there are 243 users born every SECOND on Facebook. So our advice is to think of the circus train when developing your blog posts. Broadcast them to Facebook. Remember this is your chance to promote your product or service to those 14, 580 customers born every minute.

* those wishing to read about the great giant fake lawsuit, click here.

Authenticity – The 12 new letters of Social Media Marketing

An advertising technique has emerged that pushes the needle from “fleeting trend” to “Here to stay” for social media. You can see for yourself how popular the “Haul video” is becoming. Just Google it. YouTube has a plethora of listings. Many are ready to offer a definition, everywhere from Yahoo Answers to Wisegeek.com. In simple terms it is a video that explains the shopping “haul”. Some have termed it an “unboxing for girls” technique. Unboxing is the video form of product reviews where a product is unboxed and the details of the product are reviewed as it is unwrapped. In the case of the “haul”, the video reviews the latest take from a shopping spree. Brand marketeers have quickly picked up on the viral capabilities and have made it easier for the “haulers” by providing promotional goodies to make the video more appealing. The claim is that this type of viral marketing purveys AUTHENTICITY. Friends telling friends. It is an interesting trend that pins a significant value on social media marketing. At the moment the teenage girls are the largest demographic of the “haul video” but other variants are bound to emerge. National Public Radio has a nice article. You can even listen to a broadcast sound bite.  Of course you can always Google it and find out as much as you want. My latest search produced over 12,ooo,ooo hits!

5,900,000 video views- Old Spice puts advertising on its ear (or pulled by the nose?)

Old Spice has everyone in the advertising industry a buzz with its latest social media centered advertising blitz. The salty dogs pirated the top viral video viewing sensation with their latest campaign. A series of YouTube videos starring manly man Isiah Mustafa featured responses to requests submitted through social media. The way this caught on has everyone thinking about new possibilities. In 24 hours, video views nearly reached 6 million. That’s double the viral views attributed to Susan Boyle. Just in! Sales for Old Spice have jumped 107% in the last month! Double, how’s that for ROI for social media? It goes to show that social media is just another tool and used effectively it can bring you more business. See Mashable’s report on the latest sales stats or watch some of the videos that enticed customers to dip into their treasure chests. You can see how to smell like a man, man! If you want to add social media as par tof your marketing campaign, visit Getting your start.

Gravatar, Oh Gravatar

A what did you say?

The Globally Recognized Avatar or Gravatar is a universal logo supported by all the bloggers in the WWW universe. A gigantic catalog of icons or logos that is keyed to your email helps identify you as you blog or comment on other people’s blogs. You can easily set up your Gravatar in the settings page of a wordpress.com blog. Or, you can go directly to gravatar.com. Canadian Christine McIvor has a neat little YouTube video that describes the process – Click Here.  She doesn’t get into a lot of detail about uploading the image but if you need help you can contact chiefblogger@tpmtech.biz. She does have an extensive series of video tutorials on a wide range of topics including blogging and social media. Check out Christine’s site here.