Nicholas Cifuentes

I came across a viral branding website yesterday for a popular television show on HBO, Flight of the Conchords. The TV show is about two men that live in NYC doing sketch comedy and singing their comedic folk songs inside a once a week half-hour show that looks at the everyday happenings of the two main characters, Bret and Jemaine

The idea.

Take a concept of the brand and distinguish it as a ’sensation’. I know that might sound complicated - but it’s really so easy, and I don’t understand why other companies aren’t utilizing their ‘usable’ assets for something similar.

This is exactly what the Flight of the Conchords are doing with their new micro-site - “Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece.” The concept is to learn the lyrics of one of the songs the two main characters sing, and then you are supposed to videotape yourself lip-synching the song, and then upload it to the website - where you might be added to a final “Fansterpiece” that will air on HBO. This content is being advertised only on social channels, and is completely viral - meaning this is not having any media or TV dollars spent on the campaign.

The contest was launched in mid-November, and will last until the new season of the show starts in mid-January.

Simple. Simple. Simple.

I can’t get over how simple this is, but how effective it has become. They don’t give away any lavish prizes, you don’t win a trip to any special destination or big lump sum of money - just about 10 seconds of a small amount of fame.

At the same time, they do a great job of implementing bookmarks or sometimes referred to as chicklets. These are the type of calls-to-action that include the ability to post the “contest” to Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, and you can also email to a friend. These are all tactics in “spreading” the word-of-mouth further into the social networks.

The video service they are using is YouTube, making it ‘free’, as well as very viral! This allows HBO to spread their contest through the social channels with little to zero promotion on their part, which was their full intention.

Statistics.

Since the website launched in mid-November - the main website where they utilize the videos, the YouTube channel that was created for the contest - has seen nearly 8,000 views since the project launched on Nov. 13. I know those numbers are not monumental, but you have to think about the ‘trickle’ down effect from this contest alone.

On the microsite, you also are able to access the Flight of the Conchord’s Facebook and MySpace pages. Their current Facebook page has a more than 245,000 fans, and they have a little over 25,000 friends on MySpace. These channels were setup well before the contest started…but both channels have seen an increase in activity in fans/friends since the middle of last month.

So What?

Well, I tell you this information because it’s important to consider the outreach of a ‘viral’ campaign, such as this one, and what it can do for a brand. Chances are, many people are going to submit videos to try and appear on the channel, and many more people may just watch the videos other people create. Either way, their creating a ‘buzz’ about the show and the new season, interest of not only current fans, but new fans of the show are found through the ability of allowing others to easily spread the contest into the social content networks, such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, and so on. They attach links to the show’s page on the HBO website, as well as create easy access to the show’s MySpace and Facebook pages.

Through a viral campaign like this, you should explore your brand further to see what kind of similar outreach you may be able to do. This is social media branding 101 friends - don’t take something as small and ‘funky’ as this to be something silly - when in all honesty, they spent next to nothing to engage new fans and current fans of the show - to stay tuned to the new season, maybe buy the DVD, purchase some apparel, or some other Flight of the Conchords related materials. It’s genius.

The point is - you need to think about social media branding if you have not already. Agreed, for some brands social media might not be the way to go - but as they say so often - “don’t knock it before you try it.”

Chances are, I think it will.

For more information, and if you have any questions on viral or social media branding - feel free to contact me @ nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com

Although this might be slightly old news, it still something worth writing about. A new report from Peter Schilling, the Director of IT @ Amherst College, said that 438 students who enrolled at Amherst this fall, 432 had joined the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook Group by the end of August (classes started the first week of September). Schilling also said that 3,225 posts were made in the group by that time.

To think that only six students out of an entire class are not on Facebook is quite an astonishing fact. Over the past four years Facebook has become a second language on college campuses nationwide. Ask almost any student what ‘friending’, ‘poking’ or ‘leaving a message on someone’s wall’ means and they will be able to tell you almost instantly.

Facebook is your identity.

For many teenagers, college students, young adults, and even adults; Facebook is simply irresistible. It honestly is. Just look @ the numbers:

• Just this past June, Facebook became the largest social network by reach at 132 million uniques, a 35% jump from the end of 2007, according to comScore.
• Facebook’s user base grew by nearly 25% to 102 million active users. Facebook nearly added 20 million more members during the third quarter, 80% of which came from outside the U.S.
• 17 countries now have more than 1 million Facebook users: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Chile, France, Australia, Colombia, Venezuela, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Argentina. South Africa and Belgium will be next to cross the mark.
• Facebook’s torrid growth in Europe and South America has continued. 10 of the 15 fastest growing countries in 3Q08 were European; 3 were South American.

Despite the international growth, Zuckerberg (Sir Mark), recently said in a German Newspaper interview that the company is focused on growth first, revenue second.

Sir Mark said:

“What every great internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don’t think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I’m pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today… Growth is primary, revenue is secondary.”

And when asked about a potential IPO:

“No, we are really not planning to go public. For the next few years we are really focused on user growth.”

Finally, when asked about why the company is allowing employees to sell up to 20% of their vested shares (up to $900K), Zuckerberg answered:

“We are not going public for a while. So we want the people to have enough money to life [sic] for the period of time until we go public. In the early days of Facebook I was able to get $900,000 dollar of liquidity. That made a pretty big deal to me. We want engineers or other people in the company don’t have to worry about simple things.”

Facebook Futures.

Recently, Zuckerberg spoke @ the Future of Web Apps Expo in London - although mostly a controlled PR show for web app companies; Sir Mark hinted at a few things, most interestingly the theme of ‘enabling people to share’.

Some interesting tidbits from the event: (thanks to insidefacebook.com)

• The vision of Facebook Connect is to enable people to do on the rest of the web what they currently do on Facebook.
• There’s no firm launch date for Connect, but it’s expected to be within the next few months.
• As everyone already knows, Facebook does not want to encourage third party applications that are only interested in occupying profile space. The recent redesign has been specifically developed to encourage applications that enable sharing between users. Part of this is the prioritisation of feeds over profile boxes.
• Talk of the payment system was downplayed, and was even referred to as “the rumoured payment system.” (It’s more than a rumour, given the solicitation for developers to sign up for a beta programme last year, but obviously there’s nothing to be announced imminently.)
• Mark talked about his loose theory of a “Moore’s Law” for content sharing: the amount of sharing that goes on is growing exponentially over time.
• Asked about Open Auth, Open ID and other standards initiatives, the view expressed was very much along the lines of not having done it yet as opposed to not wanting to follow open standards at all. Mark’s view of Facebook as it stands was that “It’s more closed than we want it to be.” However, he believes Facebook’s implementation of things such as the Platform APIs and FBML are more developed than their open standard equivalents.
• Asked if he would build Facebook (or any web application) the same today as he did four years ago he said no, especially given advances in cloud computing and the availability of other sites-as-platforms.
• Despite running a multi-billion dollar company, he still goes into the code base and fixes bugs from time-to-time as a way to keep in touch with how the site is being developed and abstracted. (Still doing the dirty work…what a guy!)

To see more about what M. E. Zuckerberg had to say about Facebook, see his BBC interview here & his FOWA interview coming soon here.

Final.

Whether you are a student, e-marketer, or just a normal someone (wink), you know where this is heading - Facebook is growing daily, and your just a small part of that. So go ahead and look @ those pictures from the rager last night…look @ those party invites you have yet to confirm, go write on Steph’s wall about her new dog pictures…go nudge that other someone, go see what the class is saying about the new Physics professor, go watch that video with that kid getting hit in the nuts with the soccer ball, go see how many comments you have that partially naked photo of you that you just ‘had’ to get up on the site as soon as you got back from the party, go add that fun application where you can send growing plants to your friends and let’s go buy fake gift icons for a $1 and send them to everyone too.

I am not making fun…I take part in this revolution daily.  I just always like to step out of the ‘branding’ work I do on a daily basis (sometimes it feels much more often) and realize the actuality of the framework in this platform.

It really is amazing…or scary.  You choose.

Fin.

As Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin prepare to square off tonight in the first Vice Presidential debate, I need to step back to a moment last week and talk about something Twitter launched for the election – that has the social media world stirring in its belly.

For the presidential debate last week, Twitter launched a niche application site called Twitter E08 that focused directly on the presidential election campaign in the United States. The website worked by simply filtering twitter messages (tweets) from all users by certain keywords and aggregating these messages into one page.

In addition, a user can go directly to the section on the website and send a message directly, and it is seen in the twitter timeline immediately. I love the idea of this, as does the community – if you head to the election page – you see it is constantly updating – the interaction is priceless, or useless…depending who you ask.

By promoting the election – Twitter has finally begun to think about ‘micro’ sites within Twitter that will not only aggregate conversations, but build out ‘channels’ per-say of different topics, sports, fashion, marketing, schools, and dare I say ‘business’?

Let’s walk into one of those channels, oh, look, a big transition ad for the NFL.  Oh look, now were in the football channel – with 543 other people talking about football. You see my point. I am not against this at all.  I am actually 100% for it.  I am sure Twitter is tired of hearing criticism surrounding their business model and how they generate money.  I think this election is the starting point for something ‘big’ twitter is considering doing.  Twitter is run by a group of 20 people, that’s it!  I am sure their partner channels and VC funds are well stocked, but naturally you think ‘bigger’ and growth.

I know we would hear endless people complain about a new layout, if the site were to take on niche groups and starts with ads galore; but I think only the current twitter use would complain. Look at the people who now wish to ban the new Facebook layout – because they are too lazy to see their precious applications are on the bottom toolbar – in static mode. Facebook was tired of seeing user pages that would just go down for miles with comments, applications, etc…this opened the door to keep everything within the “user’s level” – instead of having to scroll down 30 seconds to see what someone said about somebody else (you know you care about that!)

Either way, this election and what Twitter is ‘experimenting’ with is just the beginning of a new style Twitter will be undergoing. You know it. I know it.  We all know it.

Go Twitter!

Blogs. 

As an Internet strategist - my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution - all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.  

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research - taking notice of the growing digital space around me - thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.  

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry - allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.  

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.   

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly - through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis - blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.

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In a recent survey done by Careerbuilder.com, an increasing number of employers are taking a look at staff’s social networking profiles before hiring a candidate.

The survey found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out the profile pages of potential employees on social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to hire them. Another 9 percent said that they would begin to review potential employees social-networking websites in the future.

The research also revealed that while 24 percent of employers had hired a member of the staff based on their social-networking profile, 33 percent had decided NOT to make a job offer after reviewing certain content on a profile.  Use of drugs, alcohol and posting of photographs that seemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘provocative’ were identified as the most popular reasons why employers eliminated a candidate after reviewing their social-networking profile.

Should you be scared of this?

Yes.  You absolutely should.  If you dragged yourself out for a Saturday night pub crawl, blacked out at some point and the next day arrives with you not remembering what happened - be worried. In today’s world - transitioning from school to a professional career can be a lot of work, but just be careful with what you do on your social-networking profiles.  You don’t want to have last week’s party to be the reason you don’t get hired for that job you’ve always you wanted.  These pictures work great in college, and globally acceptable among that crowd - but the professional world is a much different story. Pictures and comments your friends might leave about you could become a liability in the workplace.  

First, privacy settings are your friend - use them.  You can set websites like Facebook and MySpace to allow only your friends to view pictures or profile specifics.  Blogs can be a huge risk too - so unless you are blogging about things like what I am talking about - keep it clean and remember, people can find what you are reading easily - so use those privacy settings. And even if you do have a job - remember that people get fired for unauthorized blogging all the time now - so BE CAREFUL!

Are you that person that Google’s themselves all the time?  You should be.  You have to keep up with what people might be saying about you on Yahoo! and Google. Or, if you are really curious, give Pipl.com, a “people search engine” a try.  What you see here is the same thing a possible hiring manager is seeing - be careful!

And another thing to be careful of - don’t befriend people who you don’t know.  You just don’t know if it will come back to bite you later.  Keep your friend list to ‘friends’ and associates in both personal and professional social networks.  

Case Study.

A bank intern, in 2007, was caught through Facebook lying to his boss about a family emergency, when he actually just wanted to ‘party it up’ on Halloween instead.

Kevin Colvin (pictured below) was an intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, was busted by his manager Paul Davis after Kevin told Paul that he had to miss work because of a family emergency.  His boss then turned up this photo of Colvin on his Facebook profile from a Halloween party he apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it.

Below is the short email exchange and incriminating photo.

NetSuite.

OK, I am not one that is normally critical of certain software or CMS programs – as all have their positives & negatives – but I have to stress the limitations of NetSuite and its astounding ability to ‘frustrate’ the creative design and marketing process of brand marketing.

If you are not familiar with NetSuite, it is an all-in-one set of online business software programs that include accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, e-commerce and website development.

NetSuite can be broken down into four main types of accounts:

1. NetSuite (Standard: Comprehensive Web-based solution for midsize businesses that integrates Accounting/ERP, CRM, Ecommerce and partner collaboration capabilities.
   
2. NetSuite (Small Business): One complete Web-based application for smaller businesses that integrates the front and back office, managing sales, service, accounting and Web presence.
   
3. NetSuite CRM: NetSuite CRM offers a Web-based CRM solution that gives your company all the traditional CRM capabilities you need to manage marketing through customer acquisition.
   
4. NetSuite CRM+: Total Customer Relationship Management CRM solution for businesses large and small with customer-centric view to manage initial and on-going relationships over the phone, in person, or on the Web.
   

What is NetSuite Good For?

NetSuite is ideal for businesses of various sizes – mainly small to mid-businesses, providing integrated accounting, CRM, online marketing, web management, inventory, and sales management, as well as vendor and manufacturer relationship management.  NetSuite keeps track of all product information, web pages, customer login information, vendor/manufacturer details, stock/shipping details, auto-responder and customer emails, SEO and ad tracking/web metrics information, online marketplace, as well as accounting/ERP details.

Otherwise, it makes the job easier for sales, accounting, and other internal groups within a business – providing a ‘streamline’ system that (doesn’t) always work.

The Various Troubles of NetSuite.

NetSuite has fixed a number of issues since its release in 2002, but many still remain. There is a plethora of issues that still remain when it comes to transferring a website to the NetSuite platform; such as setting up proper page redirects, setting up dynamic links, changing content, images and other aspects of the website – it often takes much time and calls to customer support to fix.  And when it comes to making changes to the website once things are setup  - it could take a few hours or sometimes even an entire day to show up on the website.

And sometimes smaller issues such as creating new items, losing customer order history, and more – although these problems seem minuscule, with NetSuite they take HOURS of extra work to fix, and can cost companies thousands of dollars in extra work and time wasted that could have gone into adding new products to the website or improving marketing and management systems.

The NetSuite Now.

Although NetSuite has grown to the point of debuting its own IPO, and grow exponentially, NetSuite is still only geared toward the small to mid-size business.  And at a price and support-process that seems very high and overrated respectively - you have to be careful when deciding to use NetSuite.

I am not here to ‘bash’ NetSuite – I think their software is wonderful for its all-in-one features and growing application development.  But, I also think that it really depends what type of ‘brand’ you are – whether you want to invest the time, effort, and often-headaches into the software system.

If you are an ecommerce brand that wants to just ‘sell’ your products and see a return – NetSuite is great.  But I will say this, if you are a ‘creative’ brand that really wants to stretch the wall with what you might have going on within the brand, from an internal and external marketing point – referring to design, development, UI functionality, internal marketing (NetSuite is good at), and external marketing such as social media and other ‘new media’ marketing tactics – you are limited.  Very limited.

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When it comes to growing communities in an online environment, collaboration is the key.

How often do you see people, young and old, carry on multiple conversations on Facebook? Younger people seem to have the instinct to know how to pool their resources – sharing information as easy as pressing ‘enter’. Approaching this concept on a business level, can be a bit different – collaboration is the common goal, and it take all parts involved to create this partnership.

However, if you think you know where I am going with this, I am not going to talk about in-house collaboration; that is for another discussion. I want to talk about external collaboration – aka ‘Wikis’.

Sharing information is what today’s ‘Web 2.0’ world is about. Allowing others to take part in your community, be it a blog, forum, website – a Wiki goes one step further. It allows ‘personalized’ information to take the forefront and become the spoken word for your brand. Creating a Wiki that might allow others to supply information, fill-in-the-blanks, and create viable documentation at the same time – is the best of both worlds.

Now, you may not have a brand that is suited for this, that is fine – but you may be surprised how many brands can build out external wikis and make them successful.

Evaluation

What do you do? Let’s think about what your brand does for you. Who is your demographic? What type of information do they read? – questions like this will open up discussions for the possibilities of creating an external wiki.

What don’t you do? This is even a better question to pose to your team. What about your brand is missing? What do you want to see improve, in terms of ‘collaboration’, amongst your brand?

How will a wiki improve my brand? This could be the end all question, and might make sense for you not to implement such a branding tool into your website(s). Even though the conversation might end here – just re-think for a moment ‘why’ this might be effective for you, and more importantly ‘why not’?

Benefits of a Wiki

Highly Targeted Traffic. A wiki produces this, plain and simple. If you create a wiki that is area-concentrated, and maybe, let’s use this for example only, in the surfing industry; after you produce enough content on the pages – you will begin to see your keyword searches improve for particular events that relate to your industry. Simply put, the web loves content, and because a wiki is 99 percent content, wiki pages end up ranking very high in search engines. NOTE: Pay attention to all SEO devices, don’t expect just by putting information on a wiki page for your websites to go right to the top of search engine results…we all wish that could happen – but it doesn’t. Play it Straight!

Branding. As far as branding and marketing strategy – a wiki can act as an authority for your industry if you develop the concept properly. If you want to be seen as an authority in the ‘surfing’ industry, for example – why not develop a wiki and build out a branding page of surfing, the best spots, wave lengths, daily tides, how to do it, etc, etc…I only use this as an off the cuff example – but you see my point.

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And there it goes! Facebook has finally done it - overtaking MySpace, in terms of users and signups with just a touch above 132 million people worldwide.

It is really amazing to think how quickly Facebook has overrun the social media websites - turning their aim and boosting profits by opening up their API to everyone - and for that, if you don’t know what that means, you can thank all those fun little, pointless, applications you attach to your profile…I do it too, so I am not  hating.

However, in all honesty, MySpace still has the base audience for bands and music, allowing a great way to stream music easily, and have a website in a couple of minutes - and be able to network the hell out of it!

But, from what I hear, coming down the facebook trail - will be some powerful music applications that will allow bands, both starting off and established, do the same, plus more. They will be allowed to post, sell their own music and related items through their facebook page!

Your blog is like a baby, you nurture it, feed it daily, take care of it when it is sick and watch it go to sleep every single night…yes, my friend – blogs are addicting.  It is 2008, time to build readership, and begin to grow your brand’s awareness through the social media channels.  As popularity has grown in blogs, and blogging, there are some key steps you can take to market your blog and grow effective strategies to increase readership.

Here are some key strategies for growing your blog in 2008:

Bring your Blog Home: One tactic to consider when trying to harbor more traffic, that will almost always work, is to localize your blog.  Targeting a specific market and reaching out to them, using their language, all is a great way to reach more outlets.  Localization allows you to cover topics that competitors probably won’t take the time to cover…something that should be considered when considering new material to write about.

Have Others Write It: User generated content is a great way to expand your blog’s reach.  You can ask the public to submit articles that you feel might benefit your blog’s purpose and publish them accordingly.  This can be gained by seeking out online writers, using article PR services to get content, and affiliating with other blogs in your field.

Start A Forum: A forum is great way to let your users interact with each other.  You want reasons for your audience to come back to your blog, socialize, and interact with each other online.  A forum is a great tool that will encourage this.  By creating this outlet, you create a magnet for your users, which encourage them to return to your brand daily.

Start a Newsletter: Newsletters are an excellent way to reach an audience with information that differs from your blog.  Depending on your product, newsletters are almost necessary to keep your customers returning.  Newsletters are an excellent way to send out narrow messages, or more concentrated, to your audience.  Create a weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly newsletter to connect to your followers.  One of the great advantages a newsletter has is being able to monetize it in several ways (advertising, premium content), as well work them into effective methods for capturing leads.

Social Media Anyone: Social Media Optimization starts with social bookmarking.  Creating an outlet for other readers to take your content and submit it, talk about it, or even blog about it in the social media channels will ultimately grow your traffic.  Allowing applications like Twitter, Facebook, Digg and countless other social news websites, can help disseminate your information to a target user.  Open up accounts in these channels and begin the process yourself, befriend the influencers in each channel and begin to watch your content wind its way through the Internet, and leads grow on your blog or website.

New Writers: New writers can be a great way to bring a new ‘voice’ to your blog.  Otherwise, a change of pace.  Just remember, when you pay someone per an article, make sure they are the best at what you need.  Don’t bring in writers who are unsure and could question your blog’s voice, keep it lively, bring in TALENT, and then you can pay more attention to marketing the blog instead.

Premium Content: This is a great way to further monetize a blog.  Premium content refers to exclusive content that is not made public to everyone and anyone who may fall upon your website.  Create member only pages inside your blog that you can tie to subscriptions and promote alongside your free content.  One suggestion I do have, when you do this, please make sure the content is original and most likely can’t be found anywhere else – it is what makes it PREMIUM!

Other Blogs Like You Too: Working with people in your industry can bring surprising results.  Collaborating with other bloggers in your practice would be done to initiate some sort of social network possibly, large writing projects, online applications, awards, and contests.  This helps build your brand and drive specific traffic to your website.

Videos & Podcasts: Consider video blogging, as a new tactic to your approach.  Your content can reach an entire new audience through some major social video websites like YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, and other high traffic video websites.  Podcasting works the same way, obviously your hearing instead of visually applying yourself.  Viral video marketing also falls into this category, and should not go overlooked.  You will be surprised how much traffic and new conversions you see using this technique.

Overall, in 2008, be creative!  High quality editorial content will keep audiences interested, however, building a supportive audience and broadening your distribution channels will only help the original cause.  Expanding your blog through some of these channels will increase your user participation, create new delivery channels, grow your reputation and influence the audience around you.

Get Blogging!!