5 Steps to Viral on Twitter

Dan Zarella is the author of The Social Media Marketing Book and a self-proclaimed "social media scientist." He's done massive amounts of research on viral marketing, and in 2009, did a major study on Twitter. His particular focus was on going viral--how do tweeters get "retweets" (repostings of their messages)? What are the secrets to a retweet-able message?

To solve that question would be to strike a marketing goldmine. Lucky for Zarella, the Twitter case had some pretty interesting results with some pretty major viral marketing implications. Although this data was taken from Twitter and the recommendations are for Twitter specifically, some principles would probably transfer to other social media. Use your best marketing judgment.

So, without further ado, here are Zarella's five steps to going viral on twitter (taken from Zarella's CopyBlogger.com article):

1) Just ask. Ask your followers to retweet! This bumps retweeting up from a measly .5% up to 5.5%. Don't forget to say please!

2) Time it right. Zarella's research shows that more retweeting occurs Monday through Wednesday than the rest of the week. In addition, peak retweeting hours seem to be 9am and 6pm. And why, yes, that is when most people are supposed to be working.

3) Link it. Nearly 70% of retweets contain embedded links. Our friend the social media scientist is pretty excited about how this fact contributes to the "viral recipe." Personally, I'm not convinced that this is really so special. Anything worth retweeting is likely worth more than 160 characters. So, after factoring in linkless retweets like inspirational quotes and TextsFromLastNight, 70% is probably about the number of retweets we'd expect to recommend further content.

4) Get lots of retweets. Think of it in the "you have to have money to make money" sense. Every time that a tweet is reposted, its odds of being retweeted further go up exponentially. This is particularly true if someone with a large following retweets the content. So, the moral of the story is... beg your friends to retweet your content. And see if someone awesome like Conan O'Brien will retweet for you too.

5) Add value. Zarella admits that "value" is a nebulous term, though he doesn't do much himself to flesh out the idea. However, it seems that the point is that, in your 160 characters of glory, you have to convince the twitterpated that your retweet has some kind of value for them (and for their followers). Zarella notes that instructional content, warnings, freebies, contests, and breaking news seem to do the best in this category.

There you have it.

Now, run along and start the next phishing scare!

1-2-3 Success!

FedEx is well-known for its comical television ads, and is now working to expand that marketing success to the World Wide Web.

In July, FedEx launched "1-2-3 Succeed," a series of mock-infomercials with comedian Fred Willard showing customers how simple and helpful (and free!) FedEx.com is. The commercials are now airing on Hulu and YouTube.

Click to watch one of the commercials here!

FedEx's target market is small business owners. Currently, businesses with less than 100 employees make up 10.2 million of FedEx's customer base (that's no small business--pun intended). Year over year, their number of small business customers increased 13%. FedEx chose to use the Internet medium because most small business commerce takes place on the Web. In the words of Steve Pacheco, FedEx Managing Director of Advertising, "Lunchtime is the new primetime." He's referring to business professionals surfing the web during lunch breaks.

FedEx understands that the best way to advertise may no longer be on television... at least, it can no longer be the only way to advertise.

Information taken from Wired.com's "TV Ad Powerhouse FedEx Woos Small Biz With Web Parodies." Read the full article here!

OK Go + State Farm = 6 million hits in six days

The Chicago-native band OK Go is fairly well-known for their whimsical, memorable music videos that storm YouTube on a regular basis. Their most recent video is the biggest hit yet, racking up 6.3 million views in the last 6 days (according to ViralVideoChart.UnrulyMedia.com). According to the same chart, it's currently the most-watched video on the Internet. This was the first OK Go video I'd ever watched from start to finish, but it is honestly one of the most fascinating music videos I've ever seen. It's like one big Rube Goldberg contraption... Just try to look away as you watch it. I dare you.

Watch it here!

Okay, so where's the viral marketing tie-in? Well, besides (obviously) being a powerful self-marketing tool for the band, this particular video was funded by State Farm Insurance. The video starts with a small toy car with the State Farm logo on the side of it, and this car is used to set the entire machine in motion. At the end of the video, the band thanks State Farm for making the project possible.

This is a pretty interesting move on State Farm's part. Popular music videos are not exactly the medium where you expect to be confronted with an insurance company. In addition, the audience watching the video is a decidedly young crew, one who probably is still on their parents' insurance plan. And, if the viewers are anything like me, they're probably cringing at the thought of having to figure out the messy insurance business out for themselves one day.

My theory? I think that State Farm is using this in order to start getting their name in the next generation's heads now, so that in 6, 7, 8 years (or whatever it is), State Farm will be the company they think of when they make their decision. And if they're really lucky, maybe viewers will even associate the State Farm name with the allure of a cool popular band, and the fascination of an ingenious multi-step machine.