Internet

I’ve been doing a little viral video marketing research today, as TruthTest.org is soon to launch some videos to help spread the Truth or Deception pamphlet and Truth Test concept.

So without further ado, here are the 23 viral marketing tips I’ve collated. 

Video Creation

1. Ensure you identify the objective and target group of the video - these should drive the content and the publishing tactics.
2. Create videos that are entertaining, informative, polemic, shocking, controversial, timely or original. Great content does not ensure a video goes viral but it obviously helps.
3. Encourage viewers to engage with or spread the video message by asking a question at the end of the video. ie We think we’re on to something? What do you think?
4. Encourage viewers to spread the video at the start and end of the video with simple slides including your website name, url and a simple message

Video Publishing/Promotion

1. Consider using TubeMogul for wider distribution rather than just YouTube.
2. Ensure the title and description of the distributed video are keyword optimized.
3. Optimize the YouTube thumbnail of the video (three choices, one of which is the middle frame).
4. Publish the video on your own website and search engine optimize the page on which it appears.
5. Write a comment on the places where the video is published, invite viewers to comment themselves. Again asking a question is a good strategy.
6. Respond to comments wherever the video is published. Ask questions and promote engagement.
7. Send an email to internal/external stakeholders informing them of the video. Ask them to forward the email to people they think would be interested.
8. Encourage social media friends to watch and disperse the video.
9. Allow viewers to easily cut and paste video code into their website, blogg, forum etc
10. Allow users to send the video to friends via email
11. Allow users to subscribe to videos or more content via RSS or email.
12. Reach out to bloggers, forums, groups etc who could be interested in the video.
13. Post video on Facebook Video with a link back to the YouTube video and the website
14. Create a Facebook event for when the video is released.
15. Upload multiple videos at the same time, rather than spreading the release - this provides more content for people that are interested just then.
16. Consider using unique tags in YouTube tagging to ensure only your other videos are shown in Related Videos. Add more generic tags after a week or so.

Video Metrics/Tracking

1. Define the key metrics that you will track.
2. Metrics can be pulled from website analytics, TubeMogul analytics, YouTube statistics, email marketing statistics etc
3. Add ?video=1 to your submitted video URLs to better track inbound links in Google Analytics

We’ll be putting some if not all of these in action to promote Truth Test, I’ll let you know how we get on.

If you have any more tips, or have anything to say about those above, please don’t hesitate to add a comment to this post - I’d love to hear from you.

I’m currently working on a website for the Swedish company CS Group.  They sell advanced construction products such as wall panelling, hand rails and crash protection - basically stuff that makes buildings look better and last longer. 

After going through some Internet marketing basics with them and having a good discussion, we’ve agreed that the new website needs to focus on generating sales leads, rather than being a typical B2B brochureware site. 

To maximise the leads generated from the site, I’m designing all of the product pages on the site using  ”landing page” best practices.  The idea with a landing page is that you keep the design and message  simple and focus on qualifying and engaging visitors so that they take your most wanted reponse - which in our case is filling in a contact form.  We’ll be primarily driving visitors to the landing pages using search marketing (both ppc and seo).

Whilst, we’re still in the early stages of building the site, the basic landing page design has matured pretty quickly.  This is our latest mockup:

v3 landing page for CS Group

• top left: the page headline with sub headers and bullets listing major benefits and features
• top right: slideshow with photos showing product close ups and the product in use
• bottom right: quotes and references providing independent proof of the quality of the product
• bottom left: form to capture sales leads

One of the most important elements in a landing page is the lead capture form.  Whilst the whole site needs to feel right, it is especially important that a form that requests visitor information feels right - there has to be a reasonable payback for a visitor to leave their email address or contact details.  

In this case, we’ll be giving visitors to the opportunity to download a PDF brochure without filling in a form or providing any contact details.  To encourage visitors to fill in the form and leave their contact details, we will be offering to send them a free sample so they can touch and feel the products.  

For the record, here are two earlier versions of landing page mockups (which we won’t be using):

v1 landing page for CS Group

v2 landing page for CS Group

I watched Dragon’s Den last night (series 6 episode 5) and was delighted to see iFoods.tv delivering a strong pitch for their Internet recipe website which offers both professional and member contributed cooking videos.  Niall Harbison (chef) and Sean Fee (business partner) were asking for a £100,000 investment from the Dragon’s in return for a 10% stake in the company.

Niall and Sean seemed to be impressing the Dragons with 15,000 unique visitors a month to iFoods.tv and projected advertising income from year 2 at £480,000 and year 3 at £1,800,000.  However, the bombshell was dropped when the guys confessed that there was a similar website called iFood.tv - ouch!

The closely named competitor quickly put the Dragons off and no investment was made - the plucky guys from Ireland only received advice from the Dragons to change the name from iFoods.tv to something else.

But was this a good call from the Dragons, given the early attractiveness of the business?  That’s a question that intrigued me a little, so I conducted a quick online competitive comparison of iFoods.tv and iFood.tv to see which was currently the stronger Internet business.

Round 1: Search Engine Saturation

This is a check to see how many pages a website has indexed by Google.  The more pages indexed by Google, the greater the chance that one of those pages will match whatever someone is searching for, the more visitors a website should get from Google.

The results: As of now, iFoods.tv has 24,000 pages, whilst iFood.tv has about 180,000 pages.  That makes iFood.tv the clear winner with by far more pages indexed by Google (and probably the most content and video). You can check this yourself by typing “site:iFoods.tv” and “site:iFood.tv” in Google. 

 So far, good call Dragons!

Round 2: Inbound Links

Roughly speaking, the more inbound links a website has from other websites, the more popular it is.  Google and other search engines use this popularity as a factor when deciding which results to show first.  Of course, the quality of inbound links that a website has is just as important if not more so, but the sheer volume of links typically gives a good enough indication of a websites popularity.

A good way to check this is using AllTheWeb.com. Make sure you do an advanced search and exclude results from the website you are checking (thanks to Derek Edmond for showing me this trick a while back).

The results: iFoods.tv shows 200 inbound links whilst iFood.tv shows 2020 inbound links - so that’s another clear win for iFood.tv. 

The Dragons are proved a canny lot again.

Round 3: Traffic ranking according to Alexa

A quick way to compare the popularity of websites is at Alexa.com. Although not always 100% reliable (especially for smaller websites), Alexa often gives a good indication of website popularity in terms of traffic ranking, reach and page views.

The results: the Alexa results clearing show iFood.tv has a higher reach and rank compared to iFoods.tv, although iFoods.tv does seem to have overtaken iFood.tv in terms of page views over the last month or so. 

With a glimmer of hope for iFoods.tv, we’ll call this round a draw.

Round 4: Google results for a domain search

This shows the number of searches for the domain name (including the .tv extension) over the last six and three months - which can give a good indication of brand recognition over time (I learnt this handy test from SEOmoz last year).

The results:

• iFoods.tv - 6 months: 46,600 | 3 months:  3,020
• iFood.tv - 6 months: 17,900 | 3 months: 12,200 

Whilst iFoods.tv clearly has the best six month figures, it really worries me that the number of people searching for their domain name has massively tailed off in the last 3 months.  I hope this is an anomaly of some sort, but I can’t help thinking that their website growth has slowed down significantly. 

I’ll have to give this one to iFood.tv - sorry iFoods.tv.

Summing up

All in all, my opinion is that the Dragons were right.  Whilst the guys at iFoods.tv have a great concept which has been well executed by the looks of their website - the domain name was a bad choice.  They seem to have registered iFoods.tv in March 2007, whereas iFood.tv was registered in May 2006 - so they either didn’t do their homework, took a risk, or were unlucky (the first pages of iFood.tv may have been created on or before Apr 2007).

Whatever the history, iFoods.tv has a very strong competitor in iFood.tv, a competitor that seems to be winning on a number of key comparisons.

So, like the Dragons - I’m out, and change the name of the website guys.

Robert

P.S: If any Dragons would like to invest £100,000 for a 10% stake in an exciting Internet business (Yell meets MySpace helping companies of all sizes connect with their customers) with 30,000 visitors a month and projected income of £695,000 in two years (in just the Swedish market of 9 million people)…

…we’re just getting started and looking to expand internationally, so don’t hesitate to give me a call.