viral

2 ways to help your content go viral [video]

Sep 242012

Word of mouth is the king maker in today’s content playground. Here are two tips for getting audiences to share your articles and videos with their peers.

Getting your brand or agency noticed in today’s cluttered digital spectrum is one of the biggest challenges marketers face. What if you could get your audience to market for you, and like it? Word of mouth marketing has exploded thanks to social media platforms, and consumers are sharing their favorite brands and services with each other at an exponential rate. BuzzFeed CRO Andy Wiedlin tells iMedia’s Bethany Simpson ways you can get more social reach from your content.

MORE: 2 ways to help your content go viral – iMediaConnection.com.

YouTube video basics from its brightest stars

Marketing, Meme 422 Responses »

Aug 202012

You don’t need a spending forecast to tell you that online video is gobbling up an increasingly larger share of today’s advertising dollars. More advertisers are spending more money on video — whether we’re talking about pre-roll, branded YouTube channels, or integrations with existing content producers. But more money doesn’t necessarily mean smart spending.

Right now, YouTube has two strong opportunities for brand advertisers. They can either partner with established YouTube stars, or they can go their own way and launch a brand channel. (Obviously, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)

But while most of us are familiar with the opportunities and challenges of those two options, we’re less conversant with the nuances of YouTube’s culture. In the face of that knowledge gap, only a handful of brands have truly prospered with video. Many brands, perhaps even the majority of brands, haven’t had much success with video, and frankly, a lot of brands simply misunderstand platforms like YouTube, their audience, and the acts that have used YouTube to launch their careers.

Connect with the industry. Want to meet the brands that are driving the future of digital marketing? Attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Sept. 9-12. Request your invitation today.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend VidCon in Anaheim, California. While there were some good breakout sessions that were clearly aimed at marketing types, the real action was down on the floor, where fans lined up seeking autographs from their favorite YouTube stars.

Of course, “star” is a funny word in this context. Being big on YouTube doesn’t make you a household name. For every pack of teenagers I saw gushing over their favorite YouTube star, there was a somewhat bewildered adult chaperon who would say things like, “Whose autograph do you want, and why are they famous?”

As a category, it’s easy to dismiss YouTube stars as flukes — amateurs who got lucky early with a weird gimmick or a cheap stunt. But YouTube stars have something all brands crave — an audience. And they also have something else — a solid understanding of what will and won’t work on YouTube.

Watching the frenzy on the VidCon floor, as diehard fans rushed from one booth to the next, I couldn’t help but think that the marketers in their breakout sessions upstairs were missing the real lesson. Yes, in some cases, these YouTube stars present a huge — and relatively untapped — opportunity for branded integrations. That’s important for some advertisers. But let’s put sponsorship opportunities aside for the moment, because there’s something more fundamental that all marketers can learn from these YouTube stars. Each of them, in their own way, has broken some important ground in the Wild West that is YouTube. And if you’re looking to take your brand’s YouTube channel to the next level, it’s worth studying the people who’ve already blazed that trail.

MORE: YouTube video basics from its brightest stars (single page view) – iMediaConnection.com.

How 5 brands are scoring big on BuzzFeed

Internet News, Marketing, Meme, Your Brand 460 Responses »

May 212012

Jon Steinberg, BuzzFeeds president, notes that visitors to BuzzFeed simultaneously engage with an endless mashup of high- and low-brow content, from news to wacky animal photo montages. All categories of content are welcome, Steinberg says, so long as they meet BuzzFeeds simple threshold — is it shareable?

According to Steinberg, brands that work with BuzzFeed need to consider three things when figuring out how to create content worth sharing.

Does the content have a voice or point of view?
Is it a content gift?
What does the content do for the brand?

While the last question might seem obvious to anyone who works in advertising, the first two questions are a big part of what makes BuzzFeed such a unique play for marketers. Brands cant buy banners ads, although they can purchase placement for their post in a given vertical. But theres a catch — the content has to be good. If it is good, people will share it. If its a dud, BuzzFeed has an algorithm in place to swap it out for something better.

With just under 3 million unique visitors a month — and climbing, according to Compete — BuzzFeed is clearly a careful steward of its content ecosystem. It also tends to be way ahead of the viral curve. As any BuzzFeed user can tell you, what you see on BuzzFeed today will likely be on Facebook tomorrow. Naturally, thats a huge draw for brands looking to make a social media splash. But engaging with social media takes more than just showing up. So to help marketers reimagine themselves as social publishers, were showcasing five brands that have figured out how to buzz on BuzzFeed.

SOURCE How 5 brands are scoring big on BuzzFeed single page view – iMediaConnection.com.