All posts in Viral Marketing

According to Facebook, users upload more than 300 million photos, generate over 3.2 billion ‘likes’/'comments’, and have 526 million active users on average per day. But do we stop to think about where our information is being shared and what happens after an image or a post has been uploaded? To show users just how easy it is to access user’s status updates and share it to the world, 18 year old Callum Haywood set up a website called ‘We Know What You’re Doing‘, pulling public status updates via Facebook’s Graph API that contain references to hating your boss, getting drunk, using drugs and changes to your personal phone numbers. The site created a massive media stir with questions being asked once again about online safety on social networks. We caught up with Callum to find out more about the man behind the website, and to ask what inspired him to set up the site as well as what users can do to ensure online safety.

Callum Haywood

Hey Callum, firstly, congratulations on your experiment, it’s gotten you worldwide recognition; did you ever envision that this project would get you this much media attention? Thank you, I had never envisioned that the site would get anywhere close to the number of visitors it has had in its entire online life. I had certainly not expected the media to pick up on it.

Could you tell us a little bit about your career background and how and when you got into coding and web development? I’ve recently finished my A level studies, and will be starting university later this year. I started coding when I was about 13 years old, just learning basic HTML out of an old book. I then got into web design using CSS, and this lead me onto PHP which is what the site is written in.

What inspired you to set up “We know what you’re doing?” Two things inspired me. First was Tom Scott’s video “I Know What You Did Five Minutes Ago” in which he demonstrates, using live data, the amount of personal information that people put online. Secondly is the simplicity in which this information can be obtained; within a few lines of code you can query Facebook’s Graph API for public posts and output them.

It’s no secret that in today’s modern age, we’ve embraced a “search” based culture. Whether it’s a new artist you’ve heard of, a recipe you’ve read about, or even a news report you’ve just seen on TV; we’ve become more inclined to search about those subjects to find out more information to such a degree that our collective thoughts can actually correspond with what people actively search. As highlighted in the graph below, people tend to aggressively search for the keyword phrase “english premier league” during the month of August corresponding with the cut off date for player transfers:

 

In fact, you could even make educated guesses about who’s going to win a presidential election based on searches; the graph below are for the keyword phrases “Barack Obama” (blue line) and “John McCain” (red line).

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just shut down the computer you’re on and go do something absolutely outrageous? Something you never thought you’d do, or be able to do? But, what if one of the world’s top search engines were to help you make those unfulfilled dreams a reality? If you haven’t seen their ads on Facebook already, this is exactly what the search giant, Bing, have set out to achieve.

Bing is for doing

Christmas gift
Image credit:  Flickr

Despite a tough economic backdrop and widespread fears over delivery times, this was another season of growth for UK online retail. It may seem a little early to be thinking about Christmas again already, but given that careful planning is often hailed as the key to success, what can you start doing now to prepare for next Christmas?

2010 is the year of the infographic. Infographics are probably the most popular way not only to visualize data but also to get links this year. In modern SEO linkbait is the most common method of “link building”. To be more exact: Linkbaiting is not link building as you don’t build them manually like say in directory submission but you create content and then get the links by people you do not even contact.

Infographics have proven ideally suited to both spread awareness about issues and as viral content people share and link to.

It’s surprising though that SEO blogs and forums rarely deal with the creation of infographics to get links and exposure. The reason for this lack of tutorials may be the interdisciplinary approach an infographic requires.

We all love case studies. Who is we? We in the SEO industry, we in social media and online marketing, we business people. Case studies show on real life examples, real websites, projects and campaigns that something works.

Good case studies are more than proof though. They also show you how to market or optimize a site. They show an example of how it actually works.

Case studies combine both, the insight of a how to articles and the business proof of a finished campaign. They shows the results from experience.

These are some of the reasons why I’ve collected a comprehensive list of 30 SEO, social media & marketing case studies that prove the ROI of it All.

Yes, the ROI in SEO, social media and other kinds of online marketing is still too often fuzzy. We want success stories, numbers and explanations so that we can reenact the steps you need to succeed. So here they are, enjoy:

Viral marketing is without a doubt one of the most appealing ways for a company to promote a new product on the Internet – it really is a win-win situation; customers do all the dirty work for you, and it costs near to nothing to market your product in front of millions of potential customers. That said, creating a successful viral campaign can be somewhat of an art, but when mastered and implemented correctly, no amount of money spent on billboard, TV, and magazine advertisements will compete.

Image from Flickr.

Image from Flickr.

So why aren’t we all using viral marketing campaigns to skyrocket companies into the fortune 500? Unsurprisingly, most companies do try to launch viral marketing campaigns for their products, but give up due to a either a poor approach to viral marketing, or the lack of scalable ROI results.

Here is a list of my top viral marketing tips: