Monthly Archives: November 2011

The Accidental YouTube Viral And Its Power

Sunday afternoon saw a video posted on a YouTube account that had been a YouTube member for a while but had never uploaded a video. That user, ladyk89, had a bit of an eventful journey on the Croydon Tramlink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i47HoiM0Au8 [This video was later removed, I'm sure you could still find it if you so wished]

Uploaded on Sunday 27th November, I didn’t stumble upon it until the 28th when it had ~10,000 views.  I bet that was enough of a surprise to ‘ladyk89‘ but right now that same video is just under 2.5million views after 2 days.

My first thoughts when I saw this video were not about the content, and I won’t post any thoughts to do with that here, they were about the fact the video was uploaded so badly and that it wasn’t serving any ads. Many advertisers who allow their ads to be served on YouTube videos don’t specify which videos they do (or more importantly here, do not) show on. For that reason, if ladyk89 had monetised this video she could have been looking at a rather tidy sum of money just for posting her experience in the form of a video.

Forget the money though. Whether you agree with the subject of this video or not, her rant is illegal in this country. While the video was still around 10k views, a comment (which has subsequently been deleted) appeared which gave a potential name of the young mum in the video and I have no doubt that the comment was exactly what lead to an arrest by yesterday afternoon. The power of social networks strike once more – remember the naming and shaming of ‘people’ involved in the Croydon riots?

 

This was clearly an accidental viral, from a user who probably just planned to share her video with a few friends to show them her ordeal. From that she’s managed to enable the police to make an arrest they would have been unlikely to make. She could have also earned herself a few quid in the process!
It’s amazing how many businesses spend inordinate amounts of money coming up with a ‘viral’ marketing video, when someone on their commute with a phone can get a million views a day without trying!

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Know Your Buyers

Often, when I ask someone I’m working with who their ideal client is they’ll give the same answer:

“Well, obviously, anyone who buys my product (or service)”

Obviously they’re right. But knowing the difference between the people who buy your product and the people who are most positively effected by your product can be extremely powerful.

This isn’t a new concept. I spent a long time thinking “if I could just deal with more people like x then my business (and my life) would run a lot simpler”, just as most of us have done. The most groundbreaking ‘discovery’ I made was to work out what made working with x so much better for all involved. Turns out what I’d ‘discovered’ was the act of identifying buyer personas. You might have one, or many, but it’s important to get them identified. A buyer persona is simply a representation of a type of person who has a specific benefit to be gained from working with you. You may give these a name, you may not, but the point is that they are specific. Here’s one of mine:

  • Business owner (don’t shy from being obvious!)
  • UK based
  • Established (5+ years)
  • B2C product/service
  • Intrigued by Facebook success stories
  • Searching for knowledge NOW

None of those points are essential to work with fifty6 (I could deal with a marketing manager of a new, stateside, business to business operation) but those are some of the points I found made up my ‘ideal’ clients – the ones I could do my job best for.

Take an hour to sus out one or more of yours, and you’ll already get your cogs turning on how you can use them. Next time I’ll be talking about what you should be doing with these Buyer Personas, be sure to subscribe to be alerted.

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Promoting Your Google+ Page

As mentioned previously, Google+ (Google Plus, G+, whatever you want to refer to it as) started letting businesses add profiles recently. Great news, we all proclaimed, and then promptly did next to nothing with it.

I’m not going to re-iterate how to set up a G+ business page because it’s been done well elsewhere, but I will talk about the next important step: promoting your page.

G+ New Logo

Use the fact that Google+ is different
To think about promoting your Google Plus page, you’ll want to first thing about what makes it different to your Twitter or Facebook presence – or, indeed, your website. Do you want people to add your business to their circles so that you can vainly spout figures at your peers, or because they will actually gain something from being there? More importantly, will they get something different from your G+ page than they would on your Facebook page?

I’ll not do all your thinking for you, but I’ll point you at this post on How to use Google+ Hangouts for Business for a nice taster on something you can do on Google+ that you can’t do elsewhere.

You still want to let your other connections know you’re there though
That means that you most certainly should share your new page with your connections on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin et all. A little crossover never hurt anyone! Encourage your connections, as you always should, to share your new page to their connections too. Much like networking meeting, you’re not marketing to just the people in the room but to the people they know too.
Don’t just ask your connections to add your new page to their circles either, give them a reason to: “Add my G+ page to your circles and write on the wall to get my ebook” will convert far more than “I’ve got a G+ page, add me to your circle PLEASE”.

So Google+ doesn’t have a Facebook ads equivalent?
At the moment, Google say that they won’t implement an ad platform into Google+. Let’s gloss over two massive facts against that (Facebook said the same thing for a while, and Google is based largely on advertising revenue) and use the ‘work around’ (which is clearly an accident…):
Google Adwords. If you don’t use it already then get involved (either learn for yourself, or get someone on board who knows what they’re doing) and if you do then let me ask you this:

If you were Google, which advert would you rank higher: One which pushes traffic to a businesses website, or one which pushes traffic to a page on your own website?

Yep, so would I. Higher rank => higher quality results => less outlay => more clicks => more connections => more business.

Want me to elaborate? Have any comments or suggestions? Use the comments below!

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Google+ Adds Business Pages

Google+ are continuing their charge on the other, more established, social networks by taking the blindingly obvious route of giving businesses a platform for presence. By now every serious business should have a Facebook page (although I’m well aware that they don’t!) and so the thought of getting on board with Google shouldn’t be too scary.

The great thing about this move for Google is that they have an added selling point – +1′s to stories (think a ‘like’ on Facebook or a ‘retweet’ on Twitter) you post as a Google+ page all have a positive effect on your overall SEO. That’s a really clever move, because it means businesses will NEED a presence on Google+ to keep up with their competitors in both social media and search results.

Right now, the presence you can have on G+ as a business is a very simple one. Simple, but effective. Get on board, and get one up on your competitors. If enough readers want to know how to best set up their pages, I’ll happily write something, just let me know.

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