Viral Videos are a Marketer's New Dream

Viral videos might be the next best marketing technique. On April 2, Sarah Ang posted on Mashable all the reasons why these viral videos are priceless to companies and organizations. First, viral videos don’t require a time limit, they can go on for as long as the company wants and they don’t have to pay for a time slot. The only expense is in the actual making of the video. Secondly, the videos can be more promiscuous or emotional in any sense of the word. This intensified emotional dynamic creates a better relationship with the audience which makes them more apt to pay attention. Thirdly, the videos go viral because of the viewers, not because the company is pushing them. The viewers can share and embed them in all different interfaces for viewing which helps the company to reach even more people than if they were to rely on TV ads.  Ang also touched on the fact that these videos can take attention away from recent bad publicity which always helps in a company’s image or even liven up instructional/safety instructions like this video from Virgin Air.

There is always the chance that the videos will flop rather than fly, but I think that the risk is worth it. Organic views beat out the best paid views and are more meaningful because the viewer actually wanted to see the video of their own free will. I think that more companies should take advantage of the viral video industry because they have so many more possibilities in regards to the film making. Plus, they also can spread their company image in a more effective way than simply planting their brand name on an image, much like Chipotle did in this heart-tugging short.

One of Marketers Biggest Secrets? Branded Viral Videos

Everyone has seen viral videos - from the Chocolate Rain music video to the Harlem shake videos to the Call Me Maybe parodies, viral videos are known for exploding in popularity, but often don't stand the test of time. That's all changing with the advent of branded marketing videos, according to mashable.com.

Sarah Ang wrote that brands looking to stay current with social media trends should try their hand at making branded videos. These videos should be short, compelling, "shareable" and, perhaps most importantly, engaging. Surprisingly, the brand need not be front and center in every shot - the power of the video comes from its message, according to Ang, and that in turn will make the video jump from 'interesting' to 'viral'.

I agree with Ang - I think videos produced by brands in general are important nowadays, simply because users spend so much of their time watching videos online at websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Hulu. It's rapidly becoming a necessity for brands to have videos online for their continued longevity. Some of the best branded videos I've seen have been short, online clips from big names that lead me to their website in an effort to learn more about their product.

I like that Ang pointed out in her article that product placement isn't essential. I myself tend to like videos more when I can watch an ad without seeing the product and it's "amazing new features" every three seconds. Brands that have a strong social media presence online already know this and are working it to their advantage - and those are the brands that are here to stay.

Pinterest is Relevant Folks!

In the past year, social media sites have been making additions to their programs, creating new apps and services while also fixing bugs and hiring “hackers” to help. In an article on Mashable.com we are informed of how much these fixes, innovations and additions are actually helping the sites to stay relevant and popular. More specifically; sites wanted to see how popular they were on the mobile front.

I personally don’t have a smart phone but, I have an iPod and iPad which are slaves to wifi. Therefore, my social media access is limited especially from a mobile standpoint. It was interesting to see that from a report from comScore, “Instagram users in the U.S. spend 98% of time with the network on mobile”. This apparently wasn’t surprising to Matt Petronzio, the author of the Mashable article because Instagram was actually a mobile-only site when it first came out and then later became desktop friendly.  

The second highest ranking mobile social media site is Pinterest which I thought was amazing. Users spend 92% of their time on mobile whereas Twitter users only chose the mobile experience 86% of the time.  This makes my inner Pinner sing with delight. I thought that Pinterest was mainly used by women who were crafting at home on their desktops. I feel so in-with-the-times now because whenever I latch onto wifi, I make additions to my boards. I also thought this was surprising because I always assumed that Twitter users essentially only used mobile because tweets are normally in “real-time” and not many people carry around their desktops.

A serious announcement on the funniest of days!

Today is April Fool's day, the day where people decide to play funny pranks on their friends and family members to get a really good laugh. Well apparently Twitter decided today would be a perfect day to launch their way into the wearable device world! Today they announced their new helmet  that will cover the whole head and allows for people to interact with the world through a special custom aviary interface. The device of course, also allows people to be able to tweet by using a simple pecking motion much like that of a bird. The device is set to come out in September at a surprising low price of $139.99 and will also include various items that are bird related.

I honestly am not at all sure if this is a very clever prank by the Twitter organization or not; but I don't know how many people would be interested in this product. It is a very cool idea but something still seems a bit sketchy to me about this all. The article from Mashable has pictures of the images of what this device will look like but each photo is captioned at the bottom saying " photos taken by secret source." I guess we will just have to see if more news comes out about this later down the road, but if you're interested check out the article here. Mashable