Going Viral – Amazon’s Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

Marc — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:44:52 +0000

The holy grail for many online social media marketers is creating a true viral campaign that sticks with consumers and (Deity-of-your-choice willing) resonates with the kids and inbeds itself into pop culture . Enter Amazon’s Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt product review by B. Govern, a hillarious customer review which has not only gone viral but changed the North American fashion landscape for better or for worse… Most defintely for worse!

Video – The Tool of Choice for Viral Campaigns

More often than not, online viral campaigns rely on free-to-air videos (read: YouTube) as they can communicate emotionality in one ‘super sweet’ multi-sensory medium. You’ve got the high impact visual – think Carlton’s Big Ad or Guiness’ Evolution… And you have sound; recall Bud’s Swear Jar Ad (don’t open this at work!) or Terry Tate Office Linebacker (really a blend of visual and sound, but I like it…) And best of all, video requires very little effort to take this viral goodness in – it’s a fantastic way to quickly reach a great mass of people.

Universal Search – Video, Forums, Reviews…

With Google Universal Search (a blending of video, reviews, forums, local business ads and traditional web content) increasingly creeping into Google’s interface, getting something to go viral around a top keyword could prove an SEO goldmine for marketers who know what they’re doing.

Imagine for example if your brand occupied the top positions on Google for a very lucrative keyword like heatlh insurance through a savvy blend of viral videos, relevant customer reviews or customer forums, local business outlets , etc…

Enter the Three Wolf Moon Shirt Review

Now imagine if you had a hideous piece of merchandise you needed to offload, say a whole warehouse’s worth of atrocious looking shirts with ‘artistically drawn’ wolves howling at a full moon – the type of shirt you’d see on sale at flea markets, strip malls and mega discount stores. How would you go about drumming up interest for this unique product?

Amazon's Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

Clearly you’d have your hands full… And that’s where a clever viral marketing campaign can pay off.

I don’t know how many Wolf Shirts Amazon has cleared off the shelves, but seeing how many mankinis I saw post Borat (don’t ask me where or how…), it wouldn’t surprise me if Three Wolf Moon T-Shirts were sold in the thousands following this review.

The Power of Social Media – Sales $$$

And that’s the moral of this story. Clever viral social media can get you sales. Just look at how many follow up (and absolutely hillarious) comments followed this review to end all reviews…

Another lesson to be drawn: viral marketing needn’t be all about video or require you to shell out an arm and a leg in production costs. A simple review, well-worded and witty, can start a revolution and even influence the course of fashion among meth addicts!

Have you bought your Wolf Shirt yet? Don’t be the last one in your neighbourhood to flaunt the power of the Wolf!

Social Media Optimisation – what the heck is it?

Marc — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:35:55 +0000

A client recently asked us about Social Media Optimisation or SMO as to ‘what the heck it was’ and if he should ‘get in on that action?’ Little did he know he was already applying many SMO techniques – he just didn’t know it!

SMO as defined on Wikipedia is ‘a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites’.

So if like our client you’re performing SMO if you are…

Adding links back to your site

Search engines like Google and Yahoo value links and reward sites who have many incoming links from other websites (especially relevant links from heavily trafficked websites). So listing your business on paid or free directories is a sound strategy for improving your natural (organic) search rankings.

How to find directories and acquire links

A good place to start: Type ‘Australia Directory Listings’ into a search engine and you’ll come across some popular directories, many of which are free. Simply submit your site and wait to receive confirmation of your posting!

Popular directories include:

Making your site easy to tag and bookmark

Giving visitors to your web site the opportunity to bookmark your content is also a sound optimisation strategy. Don’t lose your traffic! Make it easy for users to stick around and engage with your brand by providing them with the tools to reconnect with you again and again.

Popular bookmark tags include:

Adding content mashups

A further way to enhance your website’s content is via content mashups. Add videos, maps or streamed content from a news source provider to provide a better web experience or facilitate a sale. It’s surprisingly easy and a handy way to take your website to the next level and as search engines improve, those new forms of content will count ever more towards your quality score.

For example:

YouTube videos
Google maps
Or various forms of web feeds or data scrapings

Sharing your content

It pays to share. And that saying certainly holds true for the web. Sending your content on via newsletters or posting to your company blog interesting topics like ‘Social Media Optimisation’ can only serve to increase the number of repeat visitors to your site.

So share your content through:

Blogs (like this one)
newsletters

A little site called Facebook

And finally… Is there a person who has not heard of a little website called Facebook? Synonymous with social networking online Facebook is great way to network, keep in touch with friends and link to people with similar interest locally and internationally.

Launched in early 2004, Facebook has grown from a niche university social networking site into a worldwide phenomenon. By starting your own ‘special interest group’ on Facebook or joining an existing network of likeminded individuals, you can rapidly expand the reach of your content and broaden your link profile.

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