Aesthetics can be really relevant in social marketing. As I have been working here at Yovia, I have been learning more and more about the blogging realm and social marketing. I often find myself thinking about what is new or interesting about how the internet works and how the world uses it. My thoughts often spin in a direction of how social marketing is doing something truly unique in the way we advertise. From these thoughts I wonder what the world of advertising entails and what it will look like.

Advertising with the radio, television, signs, fliers, and etcetera all strive for an edge on standing out to their audience. In some ways social marketing does this, but it is not as bombarding or saying “look at me!” or “listen up!” Although it works I think people are becoming more and more familiar and in some ways numb to some of these things.

So my point is, if people use social marketing they must be sure to go about in the right way. You have to understand how it works before you start talking to people because people could possibly be completely uninterested and you could be spam like all the other poor ads out in the world. I think what many people who use social marketing sometimes forget that in social marketing visual appeal is still important because this is still part of your message. Visual appeal follows over into the quality of the site you are posting or the button or widget you’re trying to get passed around. Visual appeal in some ways has a value proposition to it. An audience is not dumb and they can easily recognize spam. If you’re don’t care about the way your message appears sometimes and how it comes across, it mine as well be spam. So, to wrap things up they way you communicate your message is important dealing with visual appeal and even more essential on how you engage your audience.

By: Matt Hite
Marketing Manager Intern
Yovia.com

If you are new to social media, it can feel like learning to swim by getting pushed in the deep-end without your floatie’s.   You feel like you drowning in the massive sea called Social Media that is engulfing your being. You think to yourself; how could I possibly ever tackle something this large and win … its just too big?

The truth is … its not impossible because of the word ROPE. A rope is a length of strings or fibers, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. This is where two strings or fibers of media support one another, and the resulting whole is stronger than the mere sum of the parts. Another way to look at it is; don’t fight, but rather join forces.

The friends (fibers) that you make in one social media network, can often become friends in other social media networks, and can help you establish a presence elsewhere.

How Does This Concept Help?
The implications of becoming part of the rope are this; to gain a foothold in the world of social media, you do not need to be an expert in all the major sites. Choose 1 popular social media site to begin (Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon), and participate fully. Become a power house of that site.

Once you’ve become a power house on that site, maintain your profile and effort there, and expand to another form of social media where you see your content already doing well as a result of others.

All in all its very simple … maybe too simple. This is the key though to gaining a strong social media presence! Divide and conquer, then expand slowly to broaden your influence. When done properly, your reputation and work will pave the way in new frontiers, entirely due to braiding together to improve and strengthen your connection.

Israel F. Swanson

Director of Community Development

Yovia

Have you ever heard of TechCrunch’s “Elevator Pitches?”  I had not, until yesterday afternoon when the CEO of Yovia came down from his top floor, magnificent view,  warm and cozy with an espresso machine, office and asked for my help to record a video.  Excited by the prospect of stepping away from my computer and relaxing my bloodshot and tired eyes for a moment I jumped up and followed him upstairs.

He was going to record a video to submit to TechCrunch Elevator Pitches describing Yovia.  I listened in awe at the grander picture.  Listening to him speak, I thought to myself, “He did it!  We are exactly what and where he’d always promised he would take us.”

Don’t forget to Check out the Video!

Google is trying something new: Allowing YouTube video that is much longer than its previous 10-minute limit. It’s something of a test right now, limited to YouTube’s “content partners.”

YouTube outlined the new policy in an email to content partners last week:

  Long Form Content
You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB.

So what’s Google thinking about here? One obvious answer: Advertising. YouTube sells ads against videos uploaded by its content partners, but there are only so many ads you can sell against a short, under clip. Presumably YouTube wants to figure out if it can sell more of them against longer clips.

The problem I see evolving would be commercialism.  The idea of a short independent film overwhelmed with GEICO adds running rampant along the base line of the video player could result in an un-positive reputation for YouTube.

Israel F. Swanson

Director of Community Development

Yovia.com 

Ill take SMO for $500 Alex.

What is Guerrilla Marketing?

The nature of the beast known as Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered a form if not a definition of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice to be creative and devise his or her own unconventional methods of promotion in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.

In Guerrilla Marketing the marketer uses all of his or her contacts, both professional and personal, and must examine his company and its products, looking for sources of publicity. First and foremost the publicity that comes from already established contacts is free.

According to the rules of Guerrilla Marketing In order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer. It must build trust and support. It must understand the customer’s needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits.

Ill take SMO for $600 Alex.

What are the precursors to Social Media Optimization?

Israel F. Swanson

Director of Community Development

Yovia. LLC

Guerrill Marketing credit Wikipedia 

I’ve spent a little time and San Francisco and had the chance to witness what I would consider the best marketing and business strategy.  In 1980 David Johnson, took a look at what the people around him were doing, and with a little creativity became one of the most famous street performers in America, if not the world.  He tried dressing up like a robot, which everyone was doing in the 80’s, but realized that didn’t work, everyone else was dressing up like a robot and may of them were doing a much better job.  So what do you do when you are in a crowded market, and everyone is doing the same thing as you?  Do something different.  Pick up a bush and scare the crap out of people.

David Johnson is the World-Famous Bushman, at Fisherman’s Wharf.  He hides behind a bush and jumps out and scares the crap out passers.  That’s it.  He doesn’t ask for money, just has a jug, and people give him money.  So why does he bring in a reported $60,000 per year, with NO upfront costs?  A strong value proposition.  If he scares the crap out of one of your friends, you are probably going to give him money because of how funny it was.  Then, you and your friend he scared are going to walk across the street and watch him scare the crap out of more people.  That’s a viral ratio, and a strong business model.  You just “bought” something, which in this case was giving him a buck for scaring your friend, and are now going to watch other people use his product.  

The other amazing thing about Bushman is that he illustrates peoples willingness to pay for a quality product.  He gives his product away for free.  He doesn’t say, “Hey, give me a dollar and I will scare the crap out of your friend.”  People see his product, and decide that it was worth giving some money.  Bushman knows he has a value proposition and relies on the quality of his product to generate revenue.  Sure this model won’t work for everyone, but we can all take the time to see if we can’t employ some of his tactics.  Are you struggling to keep up with your competitors?  Take a look around, and ask yourself if you are doing the same things they are.  Maybe it’s time to do something a little different.

Watch the bushman at work, I picked this video because you can really see the crowd gather.

Mike Palmer
Analyst

As TV marketers start to get ready for the new fall season of TV shows, the challenge of introducing new shows is the same as it ever was.  Marketing a television show is steadily taking more and more lessons from Hollywood filmmakers, doing things like positioning new shows in relation to older shows, using big stars as a draw, and even using very movie-like trailers to promote the shows on television and online.  Now NBC has found a new angle for promoting two new shows: offering DVDs of the pilots on Netflix.  The pilots for Kidnapped and Studio 60, two new shows coming this fall on NBC are being offered on Netflix and actively promoted on the site through “you might also like” style banners where Kidnapped is presented to users who have previously looked at episode DVDs for “24.”  Just as Netflix remade the inside of their red envelope into must-have ad space to market new films, smart tie-ins like this combined with their highly user-friendly interface will help them fight off competitors and continue to take care of their legions of loyal customers.  Look for NBC’s rivals to copy this tactic very quickly.

Written By: Michelle Amos

YouTube blog has announced the release of the beta version of Video Annotations. Video annotations allows you to add commentary to your videos  (interactive commentary).

To quote YouTube:

With this feature, you can add background information, create branching (”choose your own adventure” style) stories or add links to any YouTube video, channel, or search results page — at any point in your video.

As the uploader you have complete control. You are able to insert commentary by adding speech bubbles, notes and highlight boxes at any point in your video. You can insert an unlimited number of annotations in each video as well.   Annotations, once published, are shown by default.  However if you want to turn it off while watching a video go ahead. Just click the button on the bottom right of the video player.

So how could something like this be of use in the Social Marketing arena?

Israel F. Swanson

Community Development

Yovia.com 

A man on a crowded New York City Subway Train yells out to the masses,

“ Would you like $1,000,000 cash?  Please come take my $1,000,000!”

The passersby look at the man in disgust, with rolling eyes they walk past the man and never look back.  They don’t discuss the absurdity with anyone and have completely forgotten about the man by the time the train stops at their final destinations.

Another man, on the same crowded New York City Subway train stands quietly next to a middle-aged woman.  He says “Hello” to the woman when she glances over her shoulder at him.  She returns his salutation.  The man then whispers to the woman:

“I am running an experiment and happen to have $1,000,000 in my bag right now.”

The woman looks at the man in confusion.  He says,

“I’m serious I have $1,000,000 in my bag and my intention is to give it to someone on this train today.  Can you help me?”

The woman, still skeptical asks the man

“What can I do?”

The man replies,

“Simple!  All you have to do is tell one person what I have told you.””

The woman turns away from the man and tells the young gentleman standing to her right in a very low voice the same message she was just given.  When she is done she looks back to the man holding the money.

“Thank You.”  He says with a smile and a wink. “Now just watch what happens.”

Soon the man was bombarded by money hungry New Yorker City commuters. He had told only one person about the money, but that‘s all it took.  They people surround the man with inquiries.

“Where did you get the money?” one man calls out.

“Why are you giving it away?” another stranger asks.

“What kind of experiment are you running anyway?” a blonde waitress questions

An old man asks “When are you giving it away?”

“Please sir,” a scruffy transient pleads. “ I could really use that money.  My father is in the hospital and this money could save his life.”

Soon people were not only asking the man with the money questions, but they were talking amongst themselves.  The news of the giveaway spread throughout the entire subway train with rapid speed.

As marketers we have to learn to get personal.  We need to befriend our consumer audience in order to engage and sell them on our product or service.  Consumers have been abused for too long and marketers who rely on conventional advertising are becoming an endangered species.

You have to get personal.  Even with a huge motivating factor blasting the message falls only on deaf ears.  We are all too skeptical to buy into conventional marketing anymore.  What has worked in the past is no longer working, let’s evolve before we are extinct.

Remember:

Put your message out in the right way and let your consumers do the pushing.

Written By : Michelle Amos

Lets face it, people today are tired of seeing ads and being sold stuff. As people become more familiar with technology this vehicle is growing. The internet is becoming more relevant and prominent to today’s times.

But, people today do not have the time or the inclination to have conversations with marketers although. People want what they want, and often get what they want when content is involved. So in a way the content is king. This can be looked at the same way television plays into marketing because just like changing the channel you can switch websites.

So this leads us to a question of how do you attract people’s attention who are actively trying to avoid you? Because the internet allows us to socialize with people this helps solve this problem to a certain extent, but the real question how do social marketers not get avoided? Because content is so important on the internet and within social marketing, being relevant is key.

As social marketers we need to truly understand who we are talking to, otherwise we could be wasting our words and wasting our customers time. We need to understand how people interact on the different sites we are linking to and what sites are relevant to our customers.

By: Matt Hite
Intern
Yovia.com