Shark In LAKE ONTARIO!!!  Viral marketing video causes a stir.

     A video of the Lake Ontario "shark" was posted July 10, 2014 on YouTube and had gone viral with more than 500,000 views three days later. The one thing that wasn't expected was how quickly the video went viral in Canada. The hoax video that caused real-world consternation the second week of July, demonstrates the attention-grabbing risks marketers are taking in an increasingly media-fractured universe. Six days after the Youtube video surfaced that frightened some lake users and sparked safety concerns on the lake, ultimately reached the Ontario legislature — that Discovery Canada admitted the finned creature was a life-like model.
      Discovery Canada President said the idea was to create some buzz for an upcoming TV show on Discovery called Shark Week. There was no intent to cause terror or from having people not enter the lake. Once the team realized the panic had set in, Discovery wanted to to come clean on the marketing effort they had setup with Nissan and calm everyone's fear. The shark in the video was an actual model and not a real live shark.
     What’s clear, experts say, is that Discovery’s shark campaign did reach part of advertising’s holy grail: awareness spread via social-media sharing and water-cooler chat — in this case about the possibility or improbability of sharks in the lake. So in this case the marketing grouped engineered a viral video, that ended up provoking anger and upset people, which was not the intent of the marketing group.Which led them to come clean about the video, before any more harm was done or the negativity came back and hurt the Discovery brand. Marketers and advertisers will keep pushing the limits to try to make people sit up and take notice, but in this case it took a wrong turn and Discovery had to step in.

Press Release by Bell Media out of Canada confirms video is a Hoax. Promo for Nissan and Discovery Channel Shark Week coming in August. (Press Release)

~Brandon S.

There is an app for that..

 Let us continue on with Facebook as medium for advertising, creating leads and building a business via a social networking site. You will see some people posting on their personal time line about their business.

This can be a double edged sword in terms of the outcome; some people might feel like you are spamming them and unfriend or block your posts. A more creative and less in your face way would be to post things that are helpful to the person as it pertains to your profession.

 Example if you were a computer repair business you could give a daily tip on how they could keep their computer from being slowed down by malware etc.

 Posting funny and positive quotes, captions and pictures is also a good way to build goodwill with your FB friends. Three to five posts a day is good as long as they are spread throughout the day.

Best times for posting would be in the morning when people will be getting online to check email and FB before starting their day, lunchtime again for those who do not have access during work time and again in the evening. Latest demo graphs are showing that many posts are being done and seen between 9-11pm.

This may seem like a lot of work or time consumption to post this often to be seen as often as needed to be remembered for your expertise. Well my dear fellow digital media experts have no fear as there is an app for that, several actually.

Post planner, Hoote Suite and Buffer are some of the more popular apps for this task. These apps let choose what day and time you want a post to go out. You simply load up your content and the app will automatically post it for you. You can still make other post throughout the day if you wish.

This method of creating leads should be about 20% business posts with the 80% being the other humorous, positive quotes and content.

Marty Kreslin

#cgs20269

 I have a short discussion on SoundCloud,  about why I started back into college,  and my idea of my brand called "Got Ride?" https://soundcloud.com/jason-a-kennedy/got-ride-sound-blog

 

 

 

FaceBook Fan Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Got-Ride/318296094908318?ref_type=bookmark

 

 

 

Author: Jason Kennedy

facebook for business

Undoubtedly Facebook has change the way advertising and lead generations being done today.

FB has very easy to use interface for creating ads. They have several different pathways for solutions to get you targeted customers for your demographic.

Your first decision will to be to decide what you want face book to for you. You must start by choosing if you want page post engagement, page likes, clicks to website, website conversions, app installs, app engagement, event responses, offer claims or video views. Most people want to drive traffic to a website.

 FB gives you the option of loading up six different pictures for split testing which picture converts into clicks. Your headline can be up to 25 characters long and the text can be no longer than 90 characters. Advanced options include news feed link and that can be up to 200 characters.

You are given a choice of different call to action buttons for the click through. Now this is where you can really dial in your customers. The audience section allows you to choose location by, country, state,/province, city or zip. You could just target Lynn Haven FL by using 32444.

You can choose your age group starting at 13 on up, gender can be male, female or both.  You have the option to choose which language your ads are in. Dialing down even deeper you can choose from education in terms of level, fields of study, schools undergrad years.

 In terms of jobs you can select from job titles such as Digital Media Professor, industries, office type. Financial allows you choose from income and net worth.  There are more categories you can select to refine your search such as home, ethnic affinity, generation, parents, and politics along with life events. This is just scratching the surface of how specific you can get with your audience search.

 As you build out your audience search FB has a cool widget that that shows you how defined your audience is and the number of people in that reach you have.

Next time we will be exploring more of successful Facebook advertising in the next post as we delve deeper in demographics and time parting.

 

Marty Kreslin

#cgs2069

I learned about Likeable Media (a social media marketing company) when I read and reviewed “Likeable Social Media” for class. Dave Kerpen, the author of the book, is also the co-founder (with his wife Caroline) of the company. Likeable Media is a social media and word-of-mouth marketing firm with triple digit profits for four straight years. Likeable Media was named in a list of fastest growing private companies in the United States. The company employs about sixty people and in 2013, Likeable Media was named one of the best places to work in New York City.

Their mission is to use the tools in social media and word-of-mouth to create more likeable organizations. The company’s strategy is to listen to consumers to determine where a brand stands and how to make it better. They have tried and true techniques that help engage a client’s audience and use advertising to build that audience up. They monitor consumers through social media to control potential crisis before it happens and use data driven analysis to improve presence in the digital world.

They’ve received several awards for their work over the last few years. They were named one of Facebook's top 90 preferred developer consultants, and Likeable Media is also the only company to win three awards from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Their work has been featured on CNBC's "On the Money," ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Early Show, BBC World News, and the New York Times.

 --Scott Ingle

GPS Tagged Great White Shark Appears in Northern Gulf Of Mexico Katherine tagged off Cape Cod and being released back into Atlantic Ocean. Photo courtesy of Ocearch.org.            A 14-foot, nearly 2,500 lbs, great white shark has made an appearance in the northern Gulf of Mexico, 100 miles south of Panama City, Florida and has gone viral on social media. The Great White Shark Katharine, who was tagged off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was named by Cat Products fans in honor of Katharine Lee Bates, a Cape Cod native and songwriter - best known for her poem and song "America The Beautiful". She was tagged and released last fall by a group of researchers working with Ocearch.      OCEARCH is a non-profit organization with a global reach for unprecedented research on great white sharks and other large apex predators. In a collaborative environment established by Founding Chairman and Expedition Leader Chris Fischer, OCEARCH enables leading researchers and institutions to generate previously unattainable data on the movement, biology and health of sharks to protect their future while enhancing public safety and education. The advancement of technology has allowed scientists to place long term GPS tracking devices on the dorsal fins of the sharks. Not only do the sharks get tracked, but scientist gather blood samples, check tissue and the health of the shark in the 15 minutes while the shark is out of the water. Extreme care and safety it taken when the shark is bought up out of the water onto a ramp alongside of large vessel so not to harm or kill the shark.         After being tagged in Cape Cod on August 19, 2013, the young Katharine slowly made her way south down the Eastern seaboard coming as close as 12 miles off the Northeast Florida shoreline in about 4-6 months. News reports indicated she had her eyes set on Texas, but Ocearch’s founder told ABC News he doesn't think that’s going to happen. Ocearch’s founder says that if she doesn’t return to Cape Cod this summer, it might mean she’s pregnant. It's appear from Katharine's track, she's feeding on game and reef fish around the Florida Keys and likely just off of Port St. Joe, where she's been circling for a few a days, roughly 100 miles southwest of Port St. Joe.       Chris Fischer of Ocearch has taken the shark tracking to social media, and its been a huge hit. The last week of June, the web site Ocearch.org took roughly 5 million hits a day and on Facebook, nearly 40 million in one week. Katharine is on Twitter (of course). Her handle is Shark_Katharine. On Twitter, one person noted her notoriety, saying Katharine is like the underwater Kim Kardashian.       What I found great about the twitter is the interaction between the people. The hash tag #ReplaceFearwithfacts has been a huge success and for two days around the beginning of July, was a leading item on twitter. Not sure who actually runs the twitter pages, but they are affiliated with the research group and give some clever response to people who tweet to that shark, in this case Katharine. I encourage you to head over to twitter and ask a question and see what kind of reply you can get.           Track Katharine at Ocearch.org with near real time updates on her location. Become her Facebook fan at Facebook.com/OCEARCH. Twitter interaction can be found at @Shark_Katharine (Katharine The Shark). She also has a blog, They Call Me Kat - Misunderstood girl just tryin' to get some fish.  Brandon S.

5 Tips For Improving Your Blog Traffic

Are you envious of those blogs that seem to have thousands of readers and subscribers and who are getting the attention of major sponsors? Set aside your envy and pay careful attention.

Here’s what the big blogs do to grow their blog and how you can too:

Guest blog.  Guest blogging is a great way to build awareness of you and your blog and it generates incoming links to your blog. This in turn generates traffic.  

Post consistently and post often.  The biggest blogs post every single day.  Why is this such a great strategy?  Their readers create a habit of visiting their blog every day. This is huge.  Imagine your traffic if every single new person who visited your blog came back every single day?  Even having them visit once a week would be a dramatic increase.  Not to mention the fact that you’re climbing the search engine results with every blog post.  A wealth of content means value to your readers. 

Give your readers what they want.  Do you receive the most comments and visits for your controversial posts?  What about lists?  Reviews?  What posts are the most popular?  Analyze the engagement from your readers, your traffic stats and even do a poll.  Find out, pay attention and give your readers what they want. 

Make it easy for readers to follow you.  Make sure you make it easy for others to share you on social media but don't forget about social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. 

Establish your credibility and authority. This is done by writing and providing valuable, benefit driven, and informative content.  There is no other way.  Once you become a go to expert, your blogging audience will grow both by word of mouth and by recognition. 

Keep your blogging efforts consistent and you will see an increase in your traffic. 

Adam Siler