By now everyone has heard about the Old Spice commercials.  The Old Spice Guy has been around for awhile as a kind of hit sensation that people love to watch, but Proctor and Gamble took it to a whole new level this week.  If you’ve been trying to figure out a way to make social media work for you, or wondering how it could work for anyone, well, look no further than Old Spice.

Last week, ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa appeared in videos on youtube aimed at specific users.  He would create a video in answer to someone’s question on line.

“The Old Spice strategy makes brilliant use of social media,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with market research firm Forrester. “The response has been terrific. Social networks are buzzing. Video resharing has been very high, and the Old Spice YouTube channel now has 75 million total upload views. And this effort shows evidence of going even more viral.”

Basically this creative account demonstrated how to make viral videos.  They should be whimsical, funny, short, and incorporate the ideas of your fanbase.  Most of the videos actually didn’t display the product at all.   They were stemmed from a successful ad campaign that was developed over time.   A viral video doesn’t go viral on day 1.  It takes a little bit of time to work its way into the public eye, and then it needs to be followed up on.  In this case they created these videos and put out there that all you had to do, was have an interesting question for this leading man in a towel.

These videos utilized a number of video experts to produce 150 questions over the course of two days.  This meant that a lot of control had to be given up by the powers that be in order for creativity to remain the most important aspect.  Fans noticed this, and appreciated the effort and made it a successful campaign.    Take note!

Did you know that today,  June 30th is World Wide Social Media Day?

No?   Well don’t worry.  It was the first one and it was coined not much more than a month or two ago by Mashable.  Mashable is a social media guru’s internet bible.  It is fully of blogs, articles, posts, about anything and everything social media.  It is the epicenter of social media news, as well as information on the hottest topics – such as the new Apple iPhone 4 or the Droid, and reports on anything major happening in the world of technology.

So what is Social Media day?  Mashable created this day in order to give people a chance to meet up and introduce themselves in real life, or to reconnect and network.  In over 600 cities – big and small – domestic and international – people got together for a few hours after work and mingled.  Some of the best networking can come from a general meet up with people you’ve already been interacting with.  And the best part about Social Media Day is that if you’re not following someone, but one of your other twitter friends is, then you have an automatic introduction.

A lot of people on twitter work in similar fields.  Primarily marketing, public relations, sales, and IT people congregate on line in certain communities and a day like this helps to bridge the gaps.  It is one of the best ways to network and create collaborations and projects because you’re already familiar with some of the things people are already up to.  And if for nothing else, you’ve created some excellent friends this way and it’s a perfect time to kick back, relax, have a beer, and enjoy the new relationships you probably wouldn’t have made if it weren’t for Social Media.

We won’t know til tomorrow if this was a success by Mashable’s standards, but it’s probably a safe bet.  Use meetup.com to find more meet ups in your area.  The hope of Mashable was to create one meeting a month in various areas.   Take a look!  And if there isn’t one in your area – it is really easy to start your own! Good Luck!

Creativity.   Some people have it, some people don’t.  Does it matter?  Is it necessary?

Like with many questions the answer is a solid… It Depends.

If you’re a businessman, creativity doesn’t matter.

If you’re an athlete, it doesn’t matter.

If you’re a marketer, it doesn’t matter.

Or does it?

If you’re a businessman – you will argue that your bread and butter is how well you run your business.  How successful a business is.  The numbers are proof of everything.

And that is entirely true.

But do you do it alone?   No.  You have a team of people including a few creatives as well.

And odds are, how you became successful had a fair amount of creativity in it as well.  Did you do something that was ahead of its time?  Did you involve a certain department or technique that others thought was crazy?  You were clever and you used creativity to make your business just that much better.

Same goes for marketers and athletes as well.  IF you do everything by the book, if you pay attention to every rule, and every guideline for how you’re supposed to do something you are only as good as the person telling you.

You have to believe that you can be and do more.  Boundaries must be pushed. Limits have to be surpassed. Ideas need to be created and followed up on. Creativity is in every breath you take if you have a dream and a goal in mind. Devising a plan to get where you want to be is nothing less than integral and you won’t get there by going with the status quo.  Be different, do things differently, don’t follow the herd.

Your business will be that much more successful.

You’re races/contests/games/matches/etc will be that much more fulfilling.

Your marketing campaigns will be fresh and pop and receive the recognition they deserve.  All because you took a few minutes to explore your creative side.

Go ahead – develop that fun website, interesting blog, unique project.  What do you have to lose?  And what is there to gain all because you took a step in a direction that most don’t.  Isnt that what sets apart the winners from the losers?  Hard work, determination, and creativity?  I’d think so.

Regardless of the type of business you have, your presence needs to be online. You now know that you need your SEO to be up to par and whenever anyone searches for you on Google, you must be one of the first page results. You also should know by now that you cannot in any way shape or form pay Google to have this done, so now you must solely rely on keywords to get you where you want to be. But where do you start?

Well, in any good online marketing plan your website first must be excellent. That goes without saying because it acts as your homebase, and a functional, well thought out page will make or break your whole initiative. But then what?

Well there’s Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube, just to start and a dozen other places that your business probably fits into. Get yourself a Facebook fan page first. It’s an easy enough service to set up that you can plug in your information and start a small Facebook ad campaign to amass some people to “Like” your product. Simply update a status everyday to remain relevant, and as a bare minimum.

And/Or go to Twitter. Twitter is NOT a place for you to advertise. It is a place for you to connect with your customers or clients and build relationships. Think of it as a sophisticated customer service center. It’s a place where you can monitor what’s being said about your company or industry. Interact… do NOT send automated messages.

LinkedIn is for your professional base. Create a company page – add a career page tab onto your career profile to enhance it and add videos of corporate culture, or to talk about your employees doing excellent work. The key to LinkedIn is joining and participating in groups.

YouTube is an excellent place to post your videos – especially if you have any kind of How-To’s involved in what you do. YouTube needs to be broadcast to other platforms though, so make sure your presence is already set up and functioning elsewhere.

So your website might be the first place to go, but you must follow up everywhere else. And make sure to search out those niche sites that will be oh so important to you!

The biggest buzz words in any professional circle today are “Social Media.”  What is it? How do you use it?  If you have Facebook/Twitter is that it?  How do you know if it’s working?  Who’s supposed to do it?   — It becomes a giant mess when companies start to think it through.  It is really hard to resist the urge of speaking directly with your client base.  They have feedback that you desperately want, and it’s right there for the taking.

Or is it?

Many companies today are creating social media policies and strategies thinking they know what they’re doing once they’ve read a few articles.  The problem being is you cannot just fall into social media marketing.  It is like anything else – needs to be studied and carefully constructed for the optimal results.

There are two people that are needed to pull of an excellent social media strategy: the Social Media Strategist and the Community Manager.  The Strategist is the overall brain stormer, the one who makes things happen in the big picture with all of the technical aspects of the project.  The Community Manager sits in house and connects with the community.  The CM will act as the project manager, the online marketing director, customer services, sales, event planner, and face of the brand.  This person will be full time social media in your company and put your brand everywhere it will go.  They must be a jack of all trades and master of social media and networking.

Together, these two people will acheive your goals in every aspect.  They will NOT just use facebook and twitter to get your brand across.  That is only 3% of what they’re job is.

If you are not ready to pull the trigger on a full blown initiative, you are not ready to tackle it on your own.  Sit down with a consultant first to take inventory of your business, your current talent, and where you’d like to see your business in a year or two.  This might included a strategist and a community manager, and it might just mean having your customer service share one account to interact with people.

Think it through with various people and departments.  Don’t just get a facebook fan page and twitter account and think your job is done.  Consult professionals!

You’ve done all the necessary components for getting your web presence up and running.  You’ve created a twitter account, a Facebook fan page, you remodeled and branded your website, and wrote a blog.  You keep checking Google to see where your business ends up when you type in Keywords, but it just won’t climb and get onto that first page.  Now what?

Google will never accept money in order to put your product or search item higher on the ranking list when someone performs a search.  Working with Google’s search engine means you have to prove to them that you’re worth having a  high ranking.

There are a few things you can do.   If you remodeled your website on your own, pay a company who specializes in web re-design to help you, or at least give a quick consultation on the things that you could do better to draw in customers.  If you are up and running on all the social media networks, dedicate various members of your marketing team to be in charge of the specific areas.  One of the best things you can do, is hire a Community Manager.   This person sits as a part of your marketing staff, and their entire job is to do online marketing.  They will coordinate your efforts, live, eat, and breathe your brand, and put your name out into the world.  They will interact with your customers and THAT is how you become more SEO friendly.

Social Media is a conversation that happens on line.  Keywords are flung around everyday, and the ones that are used most often are the ones that Google rewards with high rankings in their search engine.  In order to achieve this, you must be active in your community and participate in daily goings on with your customers.

Facebook serves over 400 million users worldwide, and a good portion of that are ACTIVE users.  It is a market just waiting to be utilized, but do you know how to harness its power?

First, you need a Facebook fan page (that goes without saying). Its very easy to set up… just go to any fan page you know and on the bottom left side there’s a “Create a Page for My Business” and it sets everything up for you.

Second, it needs to be tended to, maintained, and nurtured in order to grow and become useful and credible.

How do you do that?  Well, it’s easy really.  Brand your business – know your audience.   Deliver daily status updates regarding news articles and tips that focus on your product and your industry.  Use the tabs provided to showcase contests, polls, videos, or any other kind of interactive media.

The trick is to keep it updated and have it grow organically.  One of the best ways to give it a little kickstart though, is just take out on of the ads that Facebook offers.  They’re inexpensive, and you can pay-per-click or pay-per-impressions.

And then watch your market come to you.

Information architecture is the most important and effective way to build website success, driving deliberate traffic in ways you deliberately want to showcase. The logistics and mechanics of good web design rely on information architecture. Think of it as your website’s blue print. How does your website guide information from page to page. What is the link structure and web content of the website as a whole? What are the website’s goals and who is the audience? Information architecture should be both conceptual (first) and organizational (second).

Web Site Family Tree
Similar to the structure of a family tree, information architecture links website content by their relationships to the primary page. The diagram, sketched out, is connected by lines to illustrate the relationship each web site page has between eachother. This illustrates the hierarchy of a website and helps the conceptual process before building a website.

Implementation
Once you’ve got the basic structure of a website, you can now begin to build it. For information architecture and user interface, it is all about navigational choices. Good information architecture can help direct users to certain areas of a website. For example, if a non-profit wants users to donate to their cause, information architecture will put the donation button in a prominent place where a user’s vision is sure to notice, hopefully swaying the navigational choice towards donation. Everything from link verbiage, placement, size, color, and imagery can affect a user’s choices on how they will navigate through a website.

Using design principles and tying them into web design through information architecture is an excellent foundation for website design. Designers should keep design principles in every step of website design, including link navigation and information architecture.

The buzzword for viral marketing and “word of mouth” is common and popular among web 2.0. Using social media, you can create brand awareness towards your brand identity, and increase your product sales through viral marketing. Here are some tips and tricks on how to go viral.

1. E-mail Marketing – E-mail marketing can go viral too. Just look at the loads of e-mail memes and chains that get passed around from inbox to inbox. You can use this to your advantage by manipulating your e-mail newsletters to make it easier to go viral. Make sure you include share links in your newsletter to make it easier for people to spread and share. Adding links to your other web presences will also help tie everything together and get more traffic to your business. Make sure you cross your t’s and dot your i’s by in turn, promoting your e-mail newsletter on your website, facebook, twitter, etc.
2. Host Contests – This can be done in many ways. Two of the common platforms are through blogging and Twitter. You can create your own Twitter hashtag to track the contest tweets and watch your tweets go viral as people find out about the offer and retweet. The key is to have an exciting product or offer to giveaway that people will actually want. You can combine both twitter and blogging by linking to the blog giveaway post and promoting it through twitter. Many companies find influential bloggers that have high social networking potential to host their products through a giveaway.
3. Appeal to Emotions – Your message has to stand out and appeal to the emotions. This is the number one way to create a good viral marketing message. Equal parts psychology and marketing strategy, the message has to stand out in people’s minds. Your message will not go viral unless it stops people in their tracks, and is powerful enough to make people want to share it. Your message needs to have a strong emotional connection with the reader. One way to do this is to create a public service announcement or tie it in to a charity or cause. Make people want to care, and make them realize they do care.

Understanding the psyches of consumers and potential consumers to spark viral marketing takes thorough market research, the ability to carve out a demographic and niche, and the willingness to try new things.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an internet marketing strategy that helps your website rankings on search engines. With search engine optimization, you can manipulate your web design content by using keywords or phrases that search engine spiders can find. This will allow your website to rank higher on search engines and thus drive more traffic to your page, positioning your website and business among the top rank of searches.

Keywords
Placing keywords and phrases into your website is one of the main strategies of SEO. A good tool to figure out proper keywords is theGoogle Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool gives you data on monthly search volumes per keyword variations to give you an idea of the best keyword to use. Make sure to place your keyword frequently throughout your website or web article. At least ten times per 500 word article is a good basic amount for search engine optimization.

Meta Tags
Meta tags exist within the html of a website and provides a meta description and meta keywords hidden within the html tag of your website. Search engine crawlers can see this information and optimize your website based on your description and keywords. This can help your SEO by giving information about the content of your website that search engine spiders and crawlers can find.

Text Links
If your website has image links, flash or javascript navigation, be sure to add text links within your website for search engines. Text links, and text in general, are how search engine spiders find your site. Deep links are hypertext links that link to a specific page of a website, rather than the main page itself. Deep links from a high ranking site are sure to help your SEO.

Fresh Content
It’s important to keep your website fresh with content, keeping your website relevant to search engines. A great way to offer fresh content is by starting a blog on your website. This provides a simple way to update your website, as well as provide keywords for SEO. Quality and unique content is important for search engine optimization so it might be a good idea to hire a copywriter or SEO specialist. Contact Tempo Creative for your internet marketing and SEO needs and we can help get the job done.