Infographic by Infolinks.
For SmartBlog on Social Media, Jesse Stanchak (@SBoSM) analyzes the 1965 TV classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and suggests the same reasons for its longevity and continued popularity can be applied to online content that’s intended to go viral:
· It has an amateur vibe.
· It has a strong point of view.
· It tackles a persistent problem.
· It builds on existing work.
· It makes its point quickly.
Also see our previous blogpost, “Infographic: Understanding Viral Content Marketing.”
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you set your social media marketing strategy.
Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) reports that Christian publishers are getting better at targeting the covers of their books to the audiences for whom the content is intended.
“We have seen improvements from previous years” said Rick Hamm, announcing the above 3 winners of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s (@ecpa) Book Cover Awards, sponsored by Dickinson Press. Director of consumer research group Marshall Marketing and judging manager for the program, Hamm said this year's entries—the best in the competition’s 5-year history—had a clearer focus and better descriptions.
The ECPA | dp Book Cover Award is meant “to recognize the industry’s most effective book covers; i.e. those that best connect design components to their intended consumer.”
The judging criteria are based on research results drawn by Marshall Marketing to help Christian publishers “develop and design more on-target products” aiming at 4 book buyer “quadrants”:
· Loyalists – favor community, and status quo. They value rules, authority figures, routine, and stability. They prefer subdued images, simple designs with natural colors, and a straight forward message.
· Inclusives – favor community, but also change and progress. They are interested in diversity, health and well-being, ecology, cultural experiences and style. Inclusives favor bright colors, bold fonts, optimistic images, and prefer a sense of order.
· Pioneers – favor individualism, achievement and progress. They are the early adopters of just virtually everything. They love to test, experiment, and to take risks. Pioneers prefer intense images, highly stylized designs, innuendo, the exotic, the unique and symbolism.
· Individualists – are motivated by self-expression, fun, rewards, status and the status quo. They prefer easily digestible entertainment, mockery, and non-conformity. Individualists enjoy images of people having fun, images that are free-form or unique and images of materialism and/or consumption.
Do you agree the above covers are the most effective covers of 2011?
Social media marketing author Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) observes that people buy Christmas tree lights, put them up, spend money on electrifying them, and then take them down. He says
The very same non-economic contribution is going on online, every single day. More and more of the content we consume was made by our peers, for free. My take:
People like the way it feels to live in a community filled with decorated houses. They enjoy the drive or the walk through town, seeing the lights, and they want to be part of it, want to contribute and want to be noticed too.
Peace of mind and self-satisfaction are incredibly valuable to us, and we happily pay for them, sometimes contributing to a community in order to get them.
The Internet is giving more and more people a highly-leveraged, inexpensive way to share and contribute. It doesn't cost money, it just takes guts, time, and kindness.
No wonder most people don't insist on getting paid for their tweets, posts, and comments.
Viral marketing must be intriguing, riveting, worthy of repeat viewing, and personally valuable to the viewer. The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus (@calgaryphil) came up with a great idea and executed it well. The Chorus invited its Twitter followers to tweet ways to stay warm in a Calgary winter. Then it video recorded itself singing those tweets to Carl Orff's melodramatic music of “O Fortuna.” Even CNN reported on it. A creative example of word-of-mouth marketing!
Infographic by Voltier Digital (@VoltierDigital).
Also see our previous posts about viral marketing: “A Giant Wood Xylophone” and “Messiah and Viral Video.”
What viral marketing can Somersault (@smrsault) help you with?
iPad storyteller Joe Sabia (@joesabia) introduces his TED (@tedtalks) audience to Lothar Meggendorfer (Lothar Meggendorfer at University of North Texas Libraries), who created a bold technology for storytelling: the pop-up book. Sabia shows how new technology has always helped tell stories.
Also see our previous blogpost, “Infographic: The Periodic Table of Storytelling.”
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you tell your story and promote your brand.
According to Eloqua (@Eloqua), “you don’t have to sell high-fructose foods or video games to amass a meaningful Facebook fandom. Even a marketing automation provider can inspire a vibrant Facebook community.”
Our newest presentation, “10 Ways to ‘Solve’ Facebook for B2B” (#B2Bfacebook), highlights 10 actionable tips – real things you can start (or stop) doing to make a measurable difference in your Facebook marketing efforts. The tips are derived from our collaboration with BrandGlue (@glue), which grew our Fan page by 2,500%, increased Facebook-referred traffic by 150%, and increased Fan engagement to about 3x industry norms. The creative was executed by JESS3 (@JESS3) and PageLever (@PageLever) supplied the data.
When posting on Facebook, these actions hurt your efforts:
· Infrequent posts
· Inconsistent posts
· Declarative posts
· Repetitive topics
· No call to action
Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Social Media/Word-of-Mouth tab.
Here’s an example of leveraging the power of social media marketing. In Adweek (@Adweek), Tim Nudd (@nudd) reports a “clever little tourism stunt:”
The tiny village of Obermutten in the Graubünden area of Switzerland has gotten itself a sizable online following — putting itself on the map for would-be visitors — through its pledge to print every Facebook fan’s profile picture and post it on the town’s bulletin board.
The campaign, by ad agency Jung von Matt, has been a big success — with the town of 79 people now boasting more than 12,000 Facebook fans. The bulletin board quickly overflowed, so the townspeople have been finding various barn sides to use for the excess.
The case-study video [above] claims that more than 60 million people worldwide have now heard of Obermutten. Traffic to the Graubünden tourism website is up 250%. And the campaign cost of 10,000 Swiss francs reportedly brought in earned media of some 2.4 million francs.
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you strategize your social media marketing.
A survey and Infographic (see below) by Don Aguirre (@sundevildon), Bart Johnston (@bartjohnston), Libby Kohn (@libbyko), and Michael Nielsen (@ekimbackwards) of Archrival (@Archrival) concludes that college students are apathetic toward QR codes.
Students were shown a picture of a QR code and then asked questions like: Can you identify what this is? Do you know how to use it? How likely are you to engage with these in the future?
Here are just a few of our findings:
· 81% of students owned a smartphone
· 80% of students had previously seen a QR code
· 21% of students successfully scanned our QR code example.
· 75% of students said they are “Not Likely” to scan a QR code in the future.
MarketingVOX (@marketingvox) reports that a study by Ypulse (@ypulse) finds that fewer than 1 in 5 students have ever used QR codes, nearly 2/3 of students have no idea what that are, and 6% have seen them but can't figure out how to use them.
According to comScore (@comScore), "the people more likely to scan a QR code are male (61% of code scanning audience), skew toward ages 18-34 (53%), and have a household income of $100,000 or above (36%). They also are more likely to scan codes found in newspapers/magazines and on product packaging - and do so while at home or in a store."
