Bravo TV: Digital Media and Marketing Strategies

Written by Igor Beuker on May 26th, 2010

We often share our opinion on virals and seeding. Today I thought it was time again do some cross checks for you. How do others feel about making content go viral? We will share some quotes and tips of Dan Zarrella, author of The Social Media Marketing Book. Are you ready?

Ideas do not spread because they are “good-I have to myth-bust this,” Zarrella said. “There are plenty of good ideas that do not go anywhere and plenty of bad ideas that go everywhere.”

Ideas spread because they fill a need or stand up to certain pressures better than others, he said. At his presentation, he shared his advice for increasing the odds that your content will spread far and wide.

Among his tips:
* Seed your campaign with as many people as possible. If you introduce an idea to more people, it will reach more people. Grow your Twitter followers, your e-mail lists and Facebook friends.

* Personalize. Just like you’re attuned to hear your name even in a noisy room, people respond to personalized messages in a crowded social media environment.

* Avoid the crowds. Click-through rates rise later in the day and on the weekends, even though traffic is lower on Twitter and Facebook during those times. That’s because there are fewer links competing for people’s attention. Post your content during these times.

* Talk like a fifth-grader. Use short words when sharing content on social media. The higher the reading level, the less people share your content.

* Put out a call for action. “Asking people to retweet works,” Zarrella said. “Don’t do it all the time. But it does work.”

I can live with most of Dan’s ideas. I will ask him what viral performance and ROI tracking tools he recommends, since he calls himself ‘the social media scientist’, he must have some tips for you. Dan has some very nice Facebook insights on his site by the way.

To tap into seeding, I decided to share this Quickplan (PDF) Natural Seeding from our SocialMedia8.

If you like some more Quickplans about i.e. social media monitoring, influencer identification or outreach, grab them here.

For the people that have not discovered their VSPOT yet, take a look here. And sorry guys, I know sexs sells on Facebook- thanks to this post by Dan- but our VSPOT is very social, but not very sexy…

Business Intelligence 2.0 and What it Means for Business
by IT Strategists

Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0) is a term that refers to new tools and software for business intelligence, beginning in the mid-2000s, that enable, among other things, dynamic querying of real-time corporate data by employees, and a more web- and browser-based approached to such data, as opposed to the proprietary querying tools that had characterized previous business intelligence software.

As a technology trend, business intelligence is still a powerful tool for enabling businesses to obtain right information at the right time and in the right format. One buzz word that has entered the 21st Century while somewhat remaining in stealth mode is the concept behind business intelligence 2.0. Recent history has shown that technology in conjunction with social web trends that gain a certain degree of momentum in the online realm tend to magnetically attract a 2.0 or 3.0 to their name.

What makes the concept of business intelligence 2.0 interesting is that it does not necessarily present a new form of business intelligence, but rather highlights key components of existing business intelligence that can provide data for companies in real-time and/or using web browser access to data.

Does Web 2.0 to 3.0 have anything to do with BI?

In a word, yes. The idea behind the Web 2.0 to 3.0 technology trend is that the web is being transformed into a database through social networks and other online resources that are ever more evolving and growing; these are online trends that businesses can use to interact with businesses and customers (or even within an organization) and allows for a richer engagement experience B2B and B2C.

With so much online data sharing from millions of users from around the globe, why not tap into this wealth of information and create meaningful data measurements from it?

Being able to obtain real-time reports is not the only aspect that makes business intelligence 2.0 stand out. Although the hype about adding 2.0 to just about anything can at times be questionable, one interesting element behind adding it to business intelligence is that it brands BI with an association to the power behind measuring online data–not just based on internal data findings. While business intelligence has always been about finding meaningful data from varying resources, BI 2.0 emphasizes the importance of finding meaningful data from an online community.

Having raw data that is then compiled into organized and relevant information can reveal a wealth of insight for most businesses and especially for decision makers.

For example, take a small business who has developed an application that will enable you to navigate in the forest better. A company such as REI might “sponsor” that company and distribute that application “exclusively” for a specific time period to its much larger database of customers. This not only enhances sales of the application, but it also increases sales for REI because they are the only ones who have it and customers will come to their stores to buy it. These same customers will bring their friends and family who may or may not purchase the application but may buy something else instead. These two companies may partner with another company who specializes in video marketing. Another company is brought in to produce the videos within the campaign and finally a company who are experts in “buzz marketing” are on the entire “sponsorship” team. All of these companies benefit through the use of their special tools and relationships, thus the campaign is a huge success, and now other companies want to partner with these companies to establish their own digital sponsorships.

Most of the campaigns are distributed using various means of digital media marketing such as mobile marketing (SMS and MMS texting), video marketing (YouTube and Viddler), social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), and email marketing (primarily to the company’s customer database) with a viral marketing campaign.

Extensive tracking of all campaigns is essential to maximize ROI and reduce waste in sticking with a campaign that is not working. Digital media marketing allows companies to change their campaigns quickly without having to wait on deadlines or printing limitations that you find in newspapers, magazines, and television.

What Digital Sponsorship Marketing does is leverages the power of a group of companies instead of one to implement a robust and highly effective marketing campaign.