By B.L. Ochman

It’s no wonder every marketers’ dream is to have a brand video go viral. But the vast majority of viral videos don’t just happen organically.

Brands and agencies pay to go viral – even though it’s against YouTube’s rules.

The majority of marketing and entertainment videos go viral with “seeding help” from companies with names like “Pimp My Views”, 500 views and View Tornado – who claim to be the cheapest on the Internet.

All sell YouTube views, subscribers and Likes. Some use bots to repeatedly view and click on videos. Some use more legitimate methods, but all of them get paid for seeding.

Viral video is a myth
The reality is, “viral video” is a myth. The biggest and most successful online video campaigns are the result of carefully crafted and well-funded strategies – not friends sharing videos with friends, said Mitchell Reichgut, CEO of the social video platform Jun Group.

The seeding goal is to get 50,000 views to get a video on YouTube’s Daily Most Viewed videos. Instead of being a needle in a haystack of 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, a video on the Most Viewed page it can get 1/20th of the views on that page. Once it gets there, its thumbnail becomes important, as do its tags and descriptive copy.

Half a YouTube million views, $479.95
Prices for paid seeding vary widely. YouTubeViewsX promises a half million views for $479.95. Other firms promise 100,000 views for $2,000, stacking up 10,000 – 50,000 views per day – which will most likely make your video go viral by getting it into “You Tube Honors” “Most Viewed,” or “YouTube Partner.” Viral Views will get you 100,000 views or clicks for $300.You also can buy 7,000 YouTube views in 96 hours on ebay for $29.99.

These methods are widespread – and they’re also against YouTube’s terms of service. Which make me wonder why YouTube allows seeding.

If you get caught, Pimp My Views’ website claims, “YES! We can unfreeze videos that have been frozen from using fake/bot youtube views. This usually happens when the company uses bots or proxies to increase the views (i.e. low price companies). The videos will be stuck forever at around 300 views. Let us get your youtube views unfrozen for your video ans [sic]start soaring with youtube views once again.” Read More…

My faves, “Express Doubt,” and “Incite Rebellion”. Yours?

via Poorly Drawn Lines

By B.L. Ochman
These days, everyone and her dog has written a book. Thousands of them are about social media. But it’s not often I get a self-published book from a 13 year-old who also blogs, Tweets, makes videos, does his own PR, and sells his pastries.

Dominick Cura was 9 years old when he was told he could never eat cookies, cake, bread or pizza again. Like three million Americans (including me) he has Celiac Disease – an autoimmune disease triggered by inability to digest gluten found in wheat, rye and barley.

Now 13 and a 7th grader at a Seattle, WA middle school, Cura taught himself to bake gluten-free sweets, started the Eternally Gluten-Free blog, and wrote “Eternally Gluten-Free: A Cookbook of Sweets and Inspiration, From a Teen!”,” a self-published dessert cookbook. He makes videos demonstrating his recipes with his friends, and sells his gluten-free pastries in various Seattle locations.

“I was devastated when I got diagnosed with Celiac Disease. It seemed like I couldn’t eat anything anymore.” But Cura didn’t let it get him down for long.

After his diagnosis, Cura became a home baker, learning from cookbooks, and was soon developing his own gluten-free recipes. “I guess I wanted to increase knowledge about celiac disease,” he said, and he was soon sharing the message that a gluten-free diet isn’t the major burden it might seem.

It’s been trial and error, he says. His first angel food cake was “a rock,” he said. His cookbook has well-tested recipes including cookies, muffins, macaroons, pies, (can’t wait to try his ice-cream pie!) pretzels, pancakes, and smoothies.

While he loves writing and baking, he plans to become a film director. His first project? A documentary about Celiac Disease.

Highlights:
- Social networks are still the most popular online activity
- The U.S. does not have the largest social networking population (China has twice as many)
- Mobile is the new bottom line
- Since December 2011 YouTube views have dropped 28%
- Social business is shifting from buzzword to market reality

via Lee Maicon

By B.L. Ochman

From a programmer who made employers apply to hire him, to networking that’s just this side of stalking, job hunters in this tough economy are coming up with some unusual, and sometimes wacky, ways to find jobs.

Do they work? Depends who you ask. Hint: showing up at the recruiter’s gym is creepy, not clever.

As any job hunter can tell you, resumes tend to be swallowed by the black hole of the Internet. These days, job postings average 300 to 400 resumes, according to Resume Bear.

Frustrated, job seekers are going to new lengths to get the attention of potential employers. Here are examples of creative job-hunting tactics, and the results they produced.

Stunts, stalking, and gifts
1- Appealing to vanity. Advertising executive Alec Brownstein bought ads on Google for six of the top names on Madison Avenue. When those people did vanity searches of their own name, (c’mon, you do them too!) the first thing they saw at the top of the results was Brownstein’s ad: a direct pitch for work, with a link back to his site with his bio and portfolio.

Result: He’s now working at Y & R. Total cost of the ads, $6.

2- Turnaround is fair play. Young programmer Andrew Horner decided to have the sausage chase the dog with his reverse job application site. In 2010, he asked employers to apply for him to work for them. “I’m sure you are already racking your brain trying to think up a job position to offer me that will pique my interest, but in the unlikely case that you are not, I am confident that a quick review of my credentials in this format will win you over.”

His site immediately went viral. “I went to sleep and woke up the next day and my inbox was full of people who had submitted applications using the form,” said Horner.

Result: He got 44 legitimate offers, he told CNN, and landed a job at a company called Nail Your Mortgage.

3- New networking Journalism student Agneeta Thacker got her job as an intern at Flavorpill after her mother, a biotech patent agent who was tired of working alone at home, used office sharing service Loosecubes to book an extra desk at Flavorpill’s SoHo office. Mrs. Thacker told Flavorpill’s Leah Taylor how perfect her daughter would be as a summer intern for the online cultural guide.

Taylor says she hired Angeeta because “she was just as bright and enthusiastic as her mother, the Loosecuber, claimed she was (not always the case!). This was a wonderfully beneficial coincidence for all of us!” Agreeta says the whole thing was “a happy accident.”

4- My evil plan I want to work at Twitter. My blog and my Twitter account have large followings, so I wrote a blog post entitled, “The Top 7 Reasons Twitter Should Hire B.L. Ochman”

It got the attention of Twitter’s VP of Communications, but has yet to get me an interview at Twitter. It did, however, cause a Google executive to reach out to me and encourage me to apply for a job there. Call me, Twitter!

5- Advertise Ian Greenleigh targeted marketing managers and executives in Austin, TX, with Facebook ads, which said he was looking for a job, and linked to his Hire Me page

Greenleigh says, “Three weeks and less than $200 in ad fees later, I had multiple offers to choose from. … Several interviews and a test presentation later, I had my dream job, Manager of Content and Social Strategy at Bazaarvoice.”

5- Good deeds Sarah Evans, who recently joined Tracky as Chief Evangelist is a well-known social media blogger with 78,000 Twitter followers.

She wanted to help other job hunters, using her own social capital. So she posted an open call on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, looking for job hunters to profile on her popular blog, Sarah’s Faves. She got more than 50 applicants and profiled three.

One of her choices, Mark Edwards, landed a job as Digital community Manager for the TeshMedia group, entertainer John Tesh’s company. Read More…

By B.L. Ochman

“The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Will Combine Paid, Owned and Earned Media,” a new research report from Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang, warns that the lines between new and more traditional media channels have converged and companies must prepare for the continued convergence of media during the next 10 years or be “at a marked disadvantage.”

That’s putting it (too) mildly. Any brand that doesn’t adjust to media convergence now will be invisible in 10 years. Yes, I know that some industries and agencies are just catching on to the fact that the new communications tsunami is unstoppable, but there’ve been scores of books written on this subject and countless webinars, white papers, and conferences devoted to the changing ways of communications. As with all Altimeter reports, it is thorough, well-researched, and well-written. But it seems like old news.

Nonetheless, I’m sure the report’s clearly stated advice will be new and/or helpful to corporations and agencies that are still wondering why their traditional marketing and advertising isn’t effective anymore.

The report contains checklists and recommendations for breaking up silos within companies and agencies so all departments can work together to tell the brand story. It also highlights case studies by forward-thinking brands who have achieved success by integrating media channels.

Altimeter explains that media that is paid (advertising), owned (websites, brand pages and other digital properties) and earned (partnerships, subscribers and those who create and share content of a company’s blogs and social sites) will converge even more thoroughly and rapidly as consumers and digital devices become more mobile.

Some would argue that social media is a fourth channel, and others would say that shared media is another channel. As new media early adopters have known for a long time, convergence has already happened, and brands that don’t understand that will pay at the cash register until they do.

Bonus Link: Why Facebook, Twitter Are Accelerating the Convergence of Ad-Tech and Software

Taking a break. Bringing trashy novels, lotions, home-made jungle anti-bug herbal potion, camera, Benny and several friends. Also bringing massive amounts of anti-itch stuff because the mosquitoes always seem to outsmart my carefully researched combat plans. Will unplug, kick back, and see you next week. Will surely have Twitter withdrawals and so will see you there. :>)
Have a great weekend.

I want to work at Twitter because I think it is the most remarkable of all social media platforms. I am certain that I could make great contributions to Twitter’s ongoing success. So, in a bit of shameless self-promotion based on the advice of my dear grandma (who taught me that the one doesn’t get what one doesn’t ask for) here are the top 7 reasons Twitter should hire me:

1- I have great ideas about how brands can/should incorporate Twitter into their strategy. Most recently, I have created a Twitter-based campaign that an iconic brand will launch later this summer.

2- I’m passionate about Twitter. I have taught Fortune 500 companies including Meijer, Transitions Lenses, McGraw-Hill, and many others about the value of engaging on Twitter for the past five years. My most recent AdAge post about why Twitter is a better brand platform than Facebook has been re-Tweeted more than 2900 times.

3- Top influencers listen to me on Twitter. There are many big names among my top 100 followers but most impressive are folks who have tens of thousands of followers but who follow very few people. Among those who have me on their select list are BusinessWeek (which follows just 51 people) Jim Roberts (NYT), Jane Fonda (?!), AMC’s Mad Men (love you Don!), Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff, Accenture, and eToro. All in all, @whatsnext’s 100 biggest followers have a combined reach of 10,956,195

4- I am a strong team leader. I have helped several former employees become successful in their own careers, and each of them would tell you that I’m a benevolent teacher and leader.

5- I believe knowledge is most meaningful when it is shared. I have been sharing my experience and knowledge online since 1996, first in an online newsletter and many articles written for leading online publications, and, since, 2002, at What’s Next Blog. My writing in social media has been like my storefront, and has brought me a remarkable number of introductions and opportunities.

6- I produce results. I believe we’re long past the days when social media marketing just needed to be cool. I was chief architect for a social media analysis platform which produces multi-million dollar revenue; created a 25-author blog that now drives one in 16 visits to a top Internet retailer’s website; created a ground-breaking online treasure hunt in 2005 that got 10 million page views and one million uniques in four weeks with nothing but promotion on blogs.

7- I have a well-developed sense of humor, humility and irony :>)

By B.L. Ochman

Advertising, PR, and marketing agencies are rapidly waking up to the fact that they can no longer be competitive without including social and emerging media in the work they propose to clients.

But in many, if not most, agencies, social media is suffering from Slide 29 Syndrome.

That’s when an account exec calls the digital gurus and says something like this:

“For the past few weeks, we’ve been working on an RFP that we need to send to the client tomorrow. Please add some social media recommendations to the deck and get it us by COB today.”

They say that because they think social media is Twitter and Facebook and that you pretty much just need to throw up a page so you can broadcast your press releases and announcements.

Or, they say:

“We don’t have much money left in the budget and we need to add some digital to the deck. Send us some ideas we can add to what we’ve got.”

They say that because they need to bill a certain number of hours this week and they don’t want social media to use up too many of them.

And then the digital ideas get added on to the deck – usually somewhere around Slide 29.

Why social media gets buried at Slide 29
Most CMOs, account managers, and project managers in agencies or on the client side still don’t have real world experience using social media and therefore don’t understand that:

• Social media is a way of thinking, not just a set of tools.
• They don’t walk the walk themselves.
• Emerging media needs to be built in to the architecture of a plan, starting from the first brainstorm – not appended to a finished proposal.
• Social media is a conversational medium, not a broadcast platform.
• Companies that don’t listen to customers will often be bitten on the ass by them.
• Emerging media is substantially more measurable than traditional media, but the metrics are different.
• Social media is not a gimmick, or a substitute for a marketing strategy.

Bonus links
Mashable: How to use social media in your PR pitch plan.
Dave Fleet: Does social media make PR agencies obsolete?
Cartoon: Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid

This post first ran in 2010. Sadly, nothing has changed.

By B.L. Ochman

Back in 2007, I was called an idiot and practically tarred and feathered when I wrote a post giving reasons why marketers need to pay attention to Twitter.

Now that Twitter is six years old and has 140M+ active users creating over one billion Tweets every three days, the platform is more important to businesses than ever before.

And Twitter is a stronger platform for advertisers than Facebook will ever be. In fact, I’d put my money on Twitter to be here and be profitable long after Facebook fades away.

I think Twitter will monetize with brand partnerships like its current brilliant global one with Pepsi, and its partnership with ESPN. These are non-obnoxious, non-obtrusive ways to use advertising and promote content and brands. They will endure long after intrusive advertising on social platforms, including Facebook, have failed.

Marketers, and flaks in particular, need to remember that Twitter is about give and take. If you just use it to pimp your stuff, you’ll be zapped in mid-tweet: blocked for good.

Here are the top 10 things I think will keep Twitter important for businesses and appealing to users:
1. Twitter’s a top source of news. It’s real-time news from every corner of the world. Follow journalists, colleagues, competitors and anyone else who posts relevant, insightful information about your industry. Said David Carr in the NY Times, “By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.”

2. You can ask questions and get answers from experts. There are more than 650 Twitter Chats on every conceivable topic. Twitter Chat Directory

3. Advertising on Twitter actually makes sense. Promoted Tweets have a one to three percent average engagement rate according to Twitter’s advertising blog. If your promoted Tweet is interesting and relevant, people will engage with it. People are on Facebook to have fun with their friends and family. They’re on Twitter to get news, learn, have fun, and engage with brands. I believe advertising can be part of the mix.

4. Twitter’s a great customer service channel. Ask Comcast, Best Buy, Verizon, and any of the many brands who monitor their brands 24/7 and resolve customer issues before they become big problems.

5. The more you give, the more you get. If you follow the 12:1 rule – add value and help others 12 times, promote yourself once – you’ll get more than you give from others on Twitter.

6. Twitter is already strong in mobile. While Facebook is way behind in mobile, 55% of users access Twitter on mobile, with 40% growth quarter over quarter. Promoted Tweets fit perfectly into the mobile app.

7. Twitter gives anyone a chance to become an influencer. Anyone with valuable information to add, who’s willing to spend the time to engage with others, can become an influencer on Twitter. It’s about being part of the conversation. Listen well before you talk, and you’ll find when and what to add.

8. Twitter humanizes companies. People want to deal with people, not companies. When companies Tweet in a human voice, in a meaningful way, they can establish relationships that are stronger than on other social platforms because they are in real time and ongoing. Case study: British Heart Association.

9. 140 character Tweets make you a better communicator and a better writer. It’s hard to get a complex idea into 140 characters. Anyone can make a point in 1000 words. Who’s got time to read 500 posts that are 1,000 words long? Not me. But one can easily read 1,000 140-character Tweets in a day.

10. Twitter is a great real-time search engine. Better than any other in my opinion.

Here are some resources from Twitter that you can use to find all sorts of truly useful, and often mind-bogglingly wonderful information:

Twitter Blog

Recent Only on Twitter Moments

Twitter advertising blog

What’s where in Twitter’s new design

Twitter 101: how to get started with Twitter

Twitter basics

Twitter stats
• Twitter has 140M+ active users.
• 55% of users access Twitter on mobile, with 40% growth quarter over quarter.
• Twitter users create over one billion Tweets every three days.
• 60% of Twitter users tweet; 100% are listening.
• 79% of people follow brands to get access to exclusive content.
• During this year’s Super Bowl, one in five commercials contained a hashtag.
• Promoted Tweets get an average engagement rate of one to three percent.

Bonus Links
- Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet
– How to write kickass Twitter posts
- NY Times: Why Twitter will endure by David Carr
- Effectiveness of Promoted Tweets
Twitter image courtesy of Bigstock