Social Media Strategy – Running a Customer Contest via Flickr or YouTube

I want to share a good example of how to run a photo/video contest through a social media site like Flickr or YouTube and how it can work for your company’s online marketing strategy. I think this is a brilliant example to get your customers involved. It is also an easy way to implement with very little IT investment - a matter of copying and pasting a code snippet from Flikr on your site. A few years back I did a similar contest with an online store and it was high maintenance (manual process) as I had not thought of this method, nor were the social media sites as friendly to execute such a campaign.


Here’s how you can use social media site for a contest and tips:

• Host the contest on a video-sharing (like YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler) or photo-sharing site (like Flikr).
  
• Advertise the contest details on your website with simple and clear instructions. Give the link for where to upload the media piece for the contest. Is it a video or photo contest? Be clear on what they should tag the video or photo so you can review them and pull them through your site (like a mashup).
  
• Define a specific tag or channel that can be used for your contest - making sure the tag is not so generic that it could accidently be used for other photos or videos.
  
• Use the top favorites is an indicator of finalists - no need to collect votes via a form on your site. YouTube or Flickr does all the work and tallying for you!


• Entice the contestants to send out the link of the contest on your site to their friends and family to vote for them. This is where it can become very viral!
  
• Advertise your contest everywhere you can. If your company has a blog, Facebook or twitter account – make sure you cross-promote the contest and link to it! Try sending out a press release if it is a big contest.
  
• Use a mashup to advertise and show off your contest. A mashup is a mini application that combines the submitted videos or photos that were defined under a particular tag on the social media site (i.e., YouTube or Flickr). You can obtain the code snippet from the host site and display the mashup on your website, blog etc by simply copying and pasting the html code. The mashup is dynamically (shows up right away) updated whenever anyone submits a piece to that category.
  
• Define a deadline date and use three to five top votes as finalists and send out a message to all participants asking for votes on the finalists. You can obtain longevity and more interactivity when you include your customers with the final voting!

This is a continuation from my “How Social Media Can Help You With Your Online Marketing Strategies” blog after attending Darren Barefoot’s The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101. He mentioned a case study that is similar to above idea.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

Social Media Strategy – Tips for Attracting Influential Bloggers

Enticing influential bloggers to blog about your company can be a very successful online marketing tactic. This is such an exciting topic that I wanted to share some examples of social media strategies and tips to help you execute them.

This is a continuation from my “How Social Media Can Help You With Your Online Marketing Strategies” blog after attending Darren Barefoot’s The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101. Some key take-aways are incorporated below.

This is a great tactic if influential bloggers write about you or your company, it can reach a large network of people (potential visitors to your site), help with your search engine optimization and page rank, and your overall company branding and awareness.

How can it reach so many people?
Large influential bloggers may have their blogs fed into a huge web network that is tapped into subscribers, aggregators (dynamically pulled through sites that serve posts in real time), directories, search engine results and social tagging sites. If it is a high-traffic blog, it can literally tap into hundreds, thousands or even millions of readers!

11 tips on how to entice bloggers to write about your company:

1. Pitch a story in an unusual way – I would not be surprised if a site like TechCrunch gets at least 25 pitches per day. So don’t send the same kinds of pitch the others are, or you won’t be given a second.
2. Show your creativity - Send something creative, yet relevant. Don’t send a press release or dry marketing fluff.
3. Make sure the story you are pitching is newsworthy – Pitch an event, product/company launch, something innovative, or something that is time-sensitive.
4. Don’t send a blanket pitch - If it is evident that you blasted an e-mail to a bunch of bloggers, it will be ignored. Customize it and be personable and down to earth. Know the author and talk to him/her. Corporate sales tactics won’t work.
5. Try to offer exclusivity – Bloggers may want to be the first to blog about a story if it is a huge. They want to be on the cutting edge of their topics or expertise.
6. Make sure you understand and relate to the blogger - Research the author and question yourself if it is a complementary blog to what your story is about. Sometimes you can read the blog author’s biography or understand the objective or theme of the site just by reading a few posts. Know whom you are talking to and talk his or her language.
7. Give schwag – Some bloggers like to receive free giveaways and I bet that something that comes via snail mail or Fedex can possibly receive more attention than e-mail.
8. Beware - Understand a journalist vs a new-age blogger. Some journalists can get freaked out if you are too personable and creative.
9. Pay it forward - If you have a blog of your own, post or comment on the blog. You can use this tactic to return the favor (after they blogged about you) or use it as a tactic to get their attention before sending them your pitch. If you have a fair amount of traffic and first blog about them, they may be aware that you sent them traffic if they watch their server stats or have a reputation management service (like Google Alerts). So when you send in the pitch they may want to return the favor. Note: this is usually with smaller blogs as the larger ones cannot review all the server stats and may not notice you. You can also send them a quick e-mail saying “Hey I blogged about you, check it out here…”
10. Be persistent – Don’t get disheartened if you were turned down or not noticed. Try following up, but be courteous with the timeline and your persistence – don’t stalk them either.
11. Make connections before you need them. Mediocre marketers try to befriend bloggers when they need them. Good marketers befriend bloggers before they need them.

Other tips on getting bloggers’ attention:

• How to Get in TechCrunch - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/how_to_get_in_t.html
• Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged - http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/08/top-ten-things-you-can-do-to-get-blogged/
• Blogger Relations 101 - http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/blogger-relations-101/
• How to Suck Up to a Blogger - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_suck_up_.html

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

How Social Media Can Help With Your Online Marketing Strategies

What is social media?

Looking back to the ‘70s or before, some marketers recognize that hanging around the water cooler at work, talking about happenings and experiences was a form of social media. So, technically, we can say that social media has really been around for decades!

Wikipedia equates social media as the newer age interaction with regards to technology and the Internet:

"Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings."

Recently, I attended a British Columbia Association of Integrated Marketers (BCAIM) luncheon seminar and wanted to share useful insights when considering social media for corporate goals and implementations. The topic was "The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101 with Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications.

So why is there such a buzz with social media with marketers?

• Because it really works.
• Many online marketers have found that they can leverage social media to get the word out about their company, product or services at a larger scale.
• If executed right, it can have a great return on investment and be an integral part of growing a business online.
• Social media has much more impact and can scale up easier than traditional advertising tactics.
• Social media has lower costs than traditional marketing tactics – with barely any technological setup or subscription costs attributed to it. Beware though, a major misconception is that social media is 100 percent free. That is totally incorrect, social media needs the human factor to massage, tweak, and invest time in. It is an ongoing project that will need love and attention, which in return can be employee salaries or outsourcing costs to manage such campaigns. If you really think it is magic and it’s only a matter of setting up a Facebook or blog account and walking away from it – you’re mistaken!
• More people are participating and hanging around social media because the tools are more assessable for the average person (cheaper laptops, cameras and camcorders) as well as the free or cheap delivery forms available (blogs, wikis, forums, podcasts, video and image-sharing portals, micro-blogs [like twitter], social networks like Facebook and MySpace).
• These social mediums allow users to communicate with the masses and more important with silo communities (people with the same likes and dislikes as you). And these silos may not be obtainable within your physical community, so the online availability just snowballs and allows you to reach audiences you never had before.

Julie and Darren shared with us that social media can help your company with:

• Media relations
• Customer engagement
• Market research
• Advertising
• Competitor intelligence
• Word-of-mouth
• Public relations

How social media helps with your corporate goals may depend on what mix of forms you choose to participate in. These forms are changing and new ones will always be introduced. Keeping that in mind, you may need to adapt to the protocols for each medium.

If you follow some of the basic tips (some are from the seminar I attended and some are also from my own experiences and other readings); you should be able to reap the benefits of social media:

• Be authentic and transparent - Don't try to hide behind anything or a customer persona (like a fake happy customer). You'll always be found out and it will harm you. If you don’t agree, read more about the Wal-mart fake blogs; also known as “Flogs” .
• Listen before you leap - Understand how and why others use the medium. Feel comfortable first before jumping in. Lurk and check out how others are using the medium. Once, I was pressured by my boss to jump in and comment on the blog sphere and I sort of spammed it (didn’t know the rules yet). I was called on it right away by another comment and they were appalled. That is a great sample of what not to do! I realized that I had to learn more on how to better interact in the blog sphere.
• Monitor the web - Keep track of who is talking about you and what they are saying. Use tools that help for your company’s reputation management. I use Blogpulse and Google Alerts, they are both free tools. If you are a larger company global company you may consider a reputation management service that is more robust and a subscription service (like Meltwater News or Sentiment Metrics).
• Participate in the conversation - Jump in and get involved, especially when it is negative. If you don’t participate or own up to negative comments, it will not leave a good impression and you cannot rectify and turn the situation around. In the social sphere, negative comments can be embedded everywhere. If you show some sincerity and honesty when responding to a negative comment, you will be respected – everyone knows you are human. Don’t ignore negative situations or it will snowball. Kryptonite Lock did exactly what not to do, read more about it here on how it harmed them.
• Try different forms of social media and integrate them - Try at least two to three different forms of social media tactics and cross-promote each of them. For example, have a Facebook group and cross-promote your company blog. Twitter about your new blog posts. Connect your twitter to your blog and Facebook status Feed.
• Commit to social media and be realistic - It takes more than just opening an account with a tool and waiting for people to come find you. This is the hard part, only commit to ones that you can really nurture and spend time with. Book time every day or week to participate, massage and learn from it. Make a true commitment.

I really think Social Media should be a part of your online marketing strategy, read my blog on “Multi-dimensional Online Marketing.” At Sitemasher, I have found some effective tactics with Facebook, blogging, social tagging and micro-blogging. I still have lots to learn as this is such an evolving medium, so I may also pick up Barefoot's new book to learn more from an expert, once it’s published (probably early 2009).

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!