What’s Hip Hapnin?

This was my response to a recent profnet on viral marketing for small companies.  I thought it was worth sharing.

The larger your potential audience the harder it is to make something become viral.  The problem is that we all have the same base interests but our higher level interests are weird and varied.  Everyone watches when somebody starts to take their clothes off, but only a few people are interested in bird watching or canoe making.  So as a small business if you are marketing to everyone in America between 20 – 30 and you want to stand out then you are in big trouble.  There are millions of people competing for the attention of the audience and they are all using tactics focused on the base interests of the masses.  But if you narrow that audience to a tiny niche that is made up of your very best customers creating something just for them making something viral becomes very easy.   I like to focus my clients not on building an audience but on building a congregation.  An audience tunes in occasionally but has no loyalty.  A congregation is much smaller but more passionate.  A congregation will evangelize you to their sphere of influence.  A congregation will forgive some of your mistakes.  So if I am a small company with a niche product and I want to create something viral my first step is to build a congregation.  The second step is to give that congregation what they want.  Once you have done this making something spread virally through this congregation and the people they influence will be easy.  It is much better to have a few hundred people who are crazy about your products than a few thousand people who are familiar with them.

I found this page a minute ago while looking for images of canoe’s. “The Strippers Guide to Canoe Building” I thought it was a perfect title.

I thought this picture was just too amazing not to post - brilliant marketing

“Our target market is men who will die someday”

I spent the morning looking at literally hundreds of websites for associations. I am working on  three different websites right now for non profits and associations so it wasn’t a total waste of time.  I feel strongly that they should try to take their offline networks and put them online.  That way the conversation can continue even when your not physically together.

Here are four sites that I felt have done a good job for various reasons.

International Association of Amusement Parks and Attraction – This site does a good job of knowing and understanding the audience.  There are a couple things I don’t like but overall it has solid navigation and user interface.  What I do like is that they treat every page as if it is an entry point to the website.  It is obvious that the Industry Buyers Guide is a very important part of this website because it has prime real estate and it is found on every sub page. The lefthand navigation is very clean and clear.
Military Officers Association of America – I liked the navigation, I also like that they have a bunch of blogs and they are starting to put their toe into the water of taking their offline social network online.

American Heart Association - They did a good job of driving website registration and building community.  “Join 617111  other women”  These women are not joining the American Heart Association they are joining the AHA community and inadvertently increasing the influence and thought leadership of the AHA.  They have done an integrated campaign around this “Go Red” campaign including makeovers for spokespeople on TV shows (giving them more opportunity to tell their story)

AARP/Divided We Fail – Their attempt to build a community around something they see as an important initiative.  Simple registration, clean modern navigation (you tube look)  They are obviously trying to extend their reach below their demographic.  (are AARP members allowed to use the internet?) They have also done some viral things.  They created a banner ad that people can place on blogs and websites they also created ecards you can send around.  There is also a place to “Share your Story”.   All ways to increase the size of the community.   I also like the logo

I have been asked this information a couple times in the last few days so I asked my buddy nelson @ SEO.com to look this up for me.  I knew you could do it (ever try to put “MySpace” into your ad copy?) I just didn’t know what the actual steps were.

You can completely block the use of your brand names in any Ad Text or copy.   To start this process you must file a complaint with Google.Here is a link to file a complaint: Google Trademark Complaints

These are the things that Google will need to know in order to stop people from using your name in their ads:

• Name of trademark owner (Either the company or person)
• Contact info for owner (if it’s not the company)
• If the name, the design or both are trademarked
• If you have registered your trademark with the US government, or any other government (you can only block your Tradmarks  in countries where we own the trademark)

If you want anyone (partners and resellers) to be an exception to the rule. you can add their google id or login email to your account.  (I am not totally clear on what this takes)

It is important to remember that this is only referring to using your name in ad copy.  Google is not saying that if some joker writes a blog post about how “Walmart sucks” that it isn’t going to show up in a search for Walmart

This was posted on the Advertising Design Goodness blog.

Not sure who the band is but the album is called “Doll House” and obviously the CD case becomes a doll house and you can put the band inside as paper dolls.

I had an interesting conversation with my Brother in Law - Eddie the other night. We were talking about how CD’s seem very old fashioned and outdated and we are embarrassed to buy them for people. Everyone uses iTunes but a download isn’t that fun to give. The problem is there isn’t a replacement for the CD.

vinyl>8track>cassette>CD>…

mp3’s are amazing but how do you give away something digital? So if the record companies are going to keep selling us old fashioned crap they could at least give me an incentive not to steal it. Don’t just sell me a disk for $20. I got in my car, I drove to the store, make it an experience. If all I wanted was the music I would jump on a torrent site and download the whole album for free in 10 minutes. Make me want to buy it because it is cool. Don’t force me to buy it because it’s the law.

Link Baiting is when you put something on your site for the sole purpose of getting somebody to link to your webpage. The idea is that if all of these other sites think you are good enough to link to then google should too. If google loves you then everything else in your life should naturally fall into place. You will lose weight, get a girlfriend, dominate at WOW, move out of your moms basement and regrow your hair.

So admittedly my blog sucks and so does most of my traffic. You may be asking yourself…”self: why would I listen to this guy when his daily visits are embarrassing and his pagerank pathetic?” I must admit that is an appropriate question.

In the spirit of open source here are unattributed ideas I have stolen from all over the web (If you think I stole one of them from you your probably right):

1. Write some crap and then hit the “stumble” button. This is the easy button equivalent of website traffic. You are garuanteed to get at least a couple hundred page views. Many of you are reading this now because I hit that button. Do me a favor and hit it again…Thanks!
2. Insult Nerds and things that they love. I love my MacBook but if I say something about it sucks and that Jobs looks stupid in his mock turtleneck i am guaranteed to get some action. (virtual action - not attention from girls)
3. Get a better design - this blog is a free template and it’s boring. But until I start to get a paycheck from it I am not going to spend a dime. But it is kindof a chicken and egg thing…If you are interested in a paycheck then spend the dime.
4. Social Networks - Everyone knows this one but let me just say that Digg has always failed me. I really need to say more things that nerds love. I can usually get some nice traffic from other sources like Reddit
5. Write better stuff - I suck at this one
6. Actually do something amazing - if you build it they will come - this is hard to do but worth doing. Why is it #6?
7. Top ten list are for sissy’s - 101 lists are the new top ten. But be careful because soon the 1001 list will be the new 101 list. You better get started now.
8. Turn your content inside out - On the old web people were really concerned about getting people to the website. It was all about “exclusive” content for subscribers. Those days are done only the WSJ does that anymore. Share your content, let your subscribers consume HOW, WHERE OR WHEN THEY MAY! Make it a website BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE. You can do this with RSS and a bunch of other crap.
9. Build some backlinks - Squidoo, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, DMOZ, del.icio.us, there are about a billion other sites where you can also get a link.
10. Link trading - I have a suggestion, only do this with websites that you would want a link from even if search engines didn’t exist. Why? Search is getting smarter all the time and soon they will see right through directories and link trading sites if they don’t already so don’t wast your time.
11. Give something away - I don’t know come up with something…(tip: it should be something you don’t have to pay for and that can easily scale - no duh) Free Templates are popular with geeks, Doesn’t have to be a Drupal or Wordpress template either. You could give away an Excel spreadsheet template that you use in your consulting
12. Email your friends and beg for links
13. Beg for links in your post (that is a hint once again i am actually asking you to link to me)

If anybody has better ideas than this please leave a comment.

This is great. This really made me laugh

Make My Logo Bigger!

I am not a designer and never pretend to be but I have spent a lot of time pushing back with clients for requests like this.  I have to admit I don’t always win and there are too many websites out there that I am not proud of.

This website is actually an advertisement for a content management system…I think they did a great job.

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So advertising platforms are generally pretty static - web, print, outdoor, radio, TV, etc.  There are a lot of variations within those groups.  Maybe we should call those variations “tactics”, an example of tactics on the web is you can have a banner ad, a context ad, or a text ad. Three different tactics but all are just forms of web advertising.  So this is probably a branch of the outdoor advertising tree.  Outdoor advertising has been around since the beginning.  If I remember correctly from my history of advertising class the first outdoor advertising was practiced by the ancient Mesopotamians they would put a muddy hand print on the door post of the hut.  This meant somebody inside wanted you to come in and give them a high five.  (this was also the invention of the high five) So although these guys didn’t invent outdoor advertising you have to appreciate the creativity it took to turn dirt into a medium…again.

 
What is this?  Well they call it Street Advertising this company is based in the UK they create a stencil for you and then powerwash it onto a dirty sidewalk, wall, or street. 

I thought it was a very cool idea.  I don’t see it taking of in SLC where I live because just like the image, the city actually is squeaky clean. 

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