It’s got to be tough being in the advertising business these days. DVRs (digital video recorders) are allowing viewers to skip commercials, premium channels offer fewer advertising opportunities, circulation numbers for print publications continue to spiral downwards, and research shows that most users avoid anything that looks like a banner ad on a Web page.
Ugh, so what’s an advertiser to do?
This morning, I had the pleasure of seeing Dave Nelsen, President of Dialog, talk about social media for business. While discussing YouTube, Dave showed us a video that he called “the future of advertising.” The T-Mobile Dance is a 2:41 minute video of commuters at Liverpool Station in England dancing their hearts out. As more and more people join in, onlookers snap photos, take video and share the experience with their friends through their T-Mobile phones, of course.
Dave made the point that this video represents the future of advertising because:
The company got me to willingly watch a loooong ad. This would never happen on TV!
Because YouTube allows comments, over 16,000 people have commented on this video, creating incredible buzz and feedback for the company.
The video was so successful that T-Mobile created a YouTube channel for its “Life’s for Sharing” campaign. Fans can even create their own videos and T-Mobile posts the best of the bunch. There’s a video of a Korean baby singing Hey Jude and a singer jamming from atop a bus. How’s that for a user-generated content strategy?
Matrix Group collaborated with author and certified financial planner Kelly Campbell to launch a redesigned Web site for Fire Your Broker. The redesign features Kelly’s book Fire Your Broker, a practical guide to help individuals take over their financial futures and find the right broker.
Our work included:
A new blog where Campbell addresses financial issues, and offers insightful tips on how to prepare for retirement and sustain financial security beyond one’s working years.
The incorporation of other social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to help establish a fan and follower base.
The implementation of Expression Engine as the CMS.
A fresh look and feel that serves that highlights Campbell’s expertise and perspectives on the nation’s brokerage industry.
From homemade movies on YouTube, to movie and book reviews, comments on blogs, and entries in Wikipedia, user-generated content (UGC) has changed the Web forever. I can’t imagine the Amazon shopping experience without comments and ratings from other moms, the posts from the 500 or so people I follow on Twitter could keep me occupied and interested all day, and I thank God every day for the thousands of homemade Thomas the Tank Engine movies on YouTube that keep my five-year old enthralled on a rainy day. Mashable reported that more than 82 million people in the US created content online in 2008.
We did it! We launched a microsite for the Matrix Group 10th anniversary! It took us several months and a whole lot of research, but we did it. Why create a site for the occasion?
10 years feels like a real milestone to us, especially to me. Like I say in my “Where We’re Going” letter, when I started the company, I wasn’t thinking about balance sheets or Web standards. I just wanted to help companies with their Web sites. And when my Advisory Board Chair asked me about my five-year plan (during year one), I just laughed; I was so focused on surviving the first year, five years felt like a lifetime. So it felt right to create a microsite that lets all of us at the company see where we’ve been and think about the future. Read the rest of this entry
I just got back from a week in Mexico. Despite the dire warnings from the national media, my family attended a wedding and vacationed in Playa del Carmen on the Riviera Maya. Were we nuts to travel to Mexico, home of the dreaded H1N1virus?
If you read The Washington Post, you’ll think we were insane to go. The Post has stories about swine flu pretty much every day. I count no less than 10 stories that feature or mention swine flu in today’s online edition of the Post. The Post also tells me that the World Health Organization is set to declare swine flu a global pandemic.
So why did we decide to go? First of all, what was not widely reported was that the CDC downgraded its travel advisory from a recommendation against non-essential travel to a travel health precaution. Second, reviews from bloggers in the US and Mexico assured us that Playa del Carmen and the Yucatan Peninsula were safe, having pretty much zero cases of swine flu. This, despite, the news media reporting that swine flu was all over Mexico. I found this blog post by Toni and Cheri useful, TripAdvisor (one of my favorite sites for travel and restaurant reviews) had a whole forum devoted to swine flu and Playa del Carmen, and a Google map of swine flu cases around the world showed no confirmed or reported cases close to where we were going. All of this information, together, reassured me that I would not be putting my family’s health in jeopardy by going on this trip. Read the rest of this entry
Have you visited a Web site recently that had a list of topics and some topics were in a larger font or in a different color? That’s called a tag cloud and I love them. But what exactly are they?
Wikipedia says that a tag cloud is a visual depiction of the tags (topics) on a Web site. The tags are usually listed alphabetically and font size or color is used to show the relative importance of a tag.
But first, let’s talk about tags. The choice is tags is incredibly important on a Web site or blog. Your tags should represent what’s important to you and your target audiences. Personally, I think you should limit your tag universe to a couple of dozen topics so that you can focus your content and visitors can easily grasp what your site is about.
So once you’ve got your tags, you’ve got to tag every piece of content. Yes, it’s extra work but it will pay off. With tagging, you can display related content and of course, you can have a tag cloud!
Take this blog. You’ll see from the tag cloud on the right that the tags with the most number of posts are: marketing, social networking, blog, leadership, Google and Twitter. It’s great for me to see the topics I post about most frequently and I can easily see if I need to post on other topics so as not to bore my readers. Read the rest of this entry
Many of my friends and family ask me, “what’s your favorite site?” Recently, my answer has been “Twitter and StumbleUpon.” I love these sites, I keep them open all day long in my browser, and I tell everyone about them.
I can give you all kinds of reasons why I love Twitter. It’s terrific for knowing what my friends are up to, it’s a great way to promote my company and blog, but most of all, I love the crazy variety of sites and pages I learn about. My favorite tweeters are people who introduce me to new sites, interesting statistics, gorgeous photos, and news articles I would otherwise never chance upon. One of my favorite tweeters is Guy Kawasaki. Some of the recent gems I learned about from Guy are: 9 resistance-boosting foods and ingredients to help you win the cold war, 50 of the world’s best food blogs, and 10 evolution stories Darwin would love. I suspect that Guy spends all day trolling the Web or has a vast staff that does same and then he tweets the coolest and most interesting of his finds. Thanks, Guy! Read the rest of this entry
