Top 10 viral YouTube videos of all time
Image via CrunchBase
We all love video. So I thought it would be fitting to create a post on the 10 best viral YouTube videos of all time.
In doing research for this post, I saw many other top viral video lists varied based a number of variables and criteria. Basically, the list depends on how you slice and dice it. In other words, these types of posts are very subjective. So what really makes up a viral YouTube video for this list?
Here’s my criteria:
- The video needed to reach a large age range
- Be a part of pop culture
- You can watch it on YouTube
- Ranked by number of YouTube views
To help create this post, I referenced the YouTube Chart of all-time most viewed videos.
Here’s my list:
10. Lazy Sunday – Saturday Night Live
Views: 5 million +++ (taken down by NBC from YouTube so not sure final count)
9. Evian Babies
Views: 14 million +
8. Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Views: 30 million +
7. Will it Blend? iPad version
Views: 10 million + (note: many different versions of “Will It Blend” so I ranked this higher)
6. Numa Numa
Views: 41 million +
5. Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question
Views: 49 million +
Views: 60 million +
3. D&*K in the Box – Saturday Night Live
Views: 24 million + (owned by NBC so numbers are off – most likely tons more than listed on YouTube)
Views: 85 million +
Views: 168 million +
What video(s) would you add to this list?
7 ways to avoid common PR campaign pitfalls
Managing a PR campaign takes a lot of hard work and effort. To ensure success of your PR campaigns, you should avoid these seven common pitfalls or mistakes.
No integration. A campaign is more than a news release. Most successful campaigns know how to take advantage of a multi-channel campaign that uses online and offline PR tactics, including developing a media kit, writing a blog post, producing a video and/or podcast, organizing a Tweetup or event for key stakeholders. If all the components of the campaign don’t integrate, the campaign has a lower chance of being successful.
Lack of alignment and availability. Think about the key stakeholders in your organization and how they are going to be affected by this PR campaign. Is your key spokespeople who works in another department available to talk at moment’s notice on a blog, to traditional media, answer Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn questions?
Lack of proper positioning. There is nothing worse than not understanding how a PR campaign fits into your overall marketing strategy. Marketing positioning is very important for a product, brand or organization. What is your company’s identity and how will this campaign reinforce an image that has been branded into the minds of your target audience? How will this campaign help with Search Engine Optimization? In other words, does the PR campaign highlight all the keywords that your audience may type into a search?
Too self-centered. Make sure that you solve your customer(s) problem(s) with the PR campaign. Make sure you think about how this will help your target audience. A journalist is more likely to write about something if the PR campaign can help its audience.
No newsworthy components. As a PR pro, you need to put on your journalist hat and think like the media. Why should anybody care? Or what is in it for me? Be sure to read: What Makes a Story Newsworthy? It is very important that you read, listen and/or watch the media outlets you are pitching for the PR campaign.
Not sustainable. Often times, a PR campaign is great at creating initial buzz but is forgotten months later. You should create what is called the PR longtail on the Internet. Making sure that the content you write today can still be applicable in some way tomorrow is important for long-term success of the campaign. Also, make sure the concept of the campaign is created in a way that it can be adapted to many different audiences.
Don’t know target audience. Who is the audience for your PR campaign? Make sure that you not only know what target audience you are trying to reach with the campaign but what media outlets or online influencers would most likely be interested. Make sure you do your homework.
What would you add to this list?
Image courtsey of DoktorSpinn.
Why your organization needs a domain strategy
Creating a domain strategy should be one of the first things you do when developing an overall Internet marketing strategy for your organization.
Organizations should make sure that they purchase multiple top level domains (TLDs) so that they all point to one primary domain name.
What does this mean? If your company primary domain name has a .com TLD, they should also purchase the domain rights to .org, .net, .mobi, .biz, .jobs and .info. You should also purchase some misspellings of your original domain name to make sure that your audience gets to your website. For example, type in yahoo.org, yahoo.biz, yahoo.info into your web browser. Do they all direct you to yahoo.com? Yes. If you type in yahooo.org with the extra ‘o’ do you get directed to yahoo.com? Yes. Yahoo is a great example of a company that successfully implements a domain strategy with multiple TLDs.
Why should you care? One of the best mainstream examples of how a domain issue can affect organizations is the whitehouse.com controversy. If you are trying to go to the White House website and type in whitehouse.com, you won’t find out about President Obama’s latest press conference. You’ll need to instead go to whitehouse.gov. A web page designer purchase whitehouse.com first and made it an adult site. (It has since been changed to another site.) CNET’s Whitehouse.com goes porn article summarizes this controversy well.
So do you want your organization’s clients and prospects go to a site that is not affiliated with your organization? Worse yet, do you want to your audience (who may be young children) to encounter adult content instead of your content? A cybersquatter took advantage of the popularity of the White House to promote his content. Do you want your organization to fall victim to this too?
To learn more about the benefits of why your organization should purchase multiple TLDs and point them to one domain, I recommend you visit these two posts: advantages of multiple TLD registrations and why use multiple domain names?
10 tips to become a more successful PR pro
In today’s ultra-competitive PR world you need to find ways to stand out. Following are 10 things that continue to help me become a more successful PR pro. I hope they help you, too.
- Do your homework. A mass pitch never amasses a lot of coverage. Before you pitch a journalist or blogger, know what they cover. Research their past stories and fine tune your pitch to appeal to their audience.
- Learn something new. Take a training course. Sign up for a conference. Go back to school. Take an online certification like HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Certification. You may find out you know more than you think.
- Become a better writer. Practice being a “headline communicator” by learning how to hook your audience with your first five words. Find creative ways to flex your writing muscle. Become a contributing author to an industry publication. Start your own blog or write for your company’s blog.
- Develop deeper relationships. Remember how powerful and memorable handwritten thank you notes are in today’s online world. Look for new and creative ways to keep yourself top of mind in the eyes of your stakeholders. Don’t forget that relationships are best built face-to-face than over the phone or on a computer.
- Learn how to better manage the yes. This is a twist on managing the no. Learn how to better manage the expectations of others. Make sure that you set the scope of work and discuss desirable outcomes. Make sure you always under-promise and over-deliver.
- Prioritize. When you feel overwhelmed by multiple large projects, step back and remember what’s most important to accomplish today. Create a to-do list at the end of every day, so when you come into work the next morning you know what you need to do first.
- Be more resourceful. If you can’t reach a journalist or blogger over the phone or by email, search for them on Twitter and send them a message. Find creative ways to pitch beyond the standard press release. Seek out the stories journalists are working on by using services like HARO and NewsBasis.
- Take advantage of social media. More journalists are using social media to find story ideas and sources. Use sites like Muck Rack, MediaOnTwitter, and Journalist Tweets to find out who’s online and how to contact them.
- Network, Network, Network. Join professional PR associations like PRSA or IABC or Ragan. Become a member of your local Social Media Club. Participate in Twitter chats. You never know when a relationship may help you with your current job or finding a future one.
- Use free PR tools. Read Jeremy Porter’s 13 PR resources you may have overlooked post. There are many tools out there that can help you deliver tremendous value to your brand or client – without spending a dime.
What tips would you add to this list?
This post originally appeared on the blog Spin Sucks.
7 ways to win friends and influence others on Facebook
One of my favorite books is “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. It recently occurred to me that a lot of what he writes in the book applies to interactions on Facebook.
Facebook is having a tremendous impact on many of the top brands in the the world. For example, Starbucks is one of the top brands on Facebook because it recognizes and rewards its consumers.
Here are seven ways you can help your brand or client win friends and influence others on Facebook.
1. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Figure out what the customer really wants from your Facebook page. Why are they coming to your Facebook page and why do they ‘like’ it? Is it because of conversation? Engagement with fans of similar interests? Discounts? Special offers? To benchmark other top brands for ideas, check out the Facebook page leaderboard on the PageData section of InsideFacebook.com. According to the site, Texas Hold’em Poker is number one. It is interesting to note that since Facebook changed its language from ‘fan’ to ‘like’, the entertainment brands have seen an increase, according to ClickZ.
2. Become genuinely interested in other people.
Contribute relevant content on your wall (and if you have a discussion tab) to stimulate conversation. Make sure that each person who ‘likes’ your Facebook page knows that the brand cares about them in a genuine way. Your Facebook page should be generating conversation among your loyal fans not spamming them with marketing messages that are irrelevant to them.
3. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Update content consistently and ask a lot of questions. Asking questions is a sure way of getting them to talk about themselves. But it is important to make sure that when you ask these questions that you listen so that you can ask better questions the next time. While the number of people who ‘like’ your Facebook page is important, those who actively engage with you is even more important for your brand. To learn more about how to engage your fans, check out these two great Mashable articles: four ways to increase Facebook fan engagement and five inspiring case studies for Facebook fan pages.
4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Why do people want to become a fan of your page? Why do they like your content? Learn what interests your target audience has beyond just the interactions with your brand. Conducting research is important to really getting to know all of the interests of your brand advocates. Throughout all of your social media platforms, you can get a bigger picture of what really interests your audience.
5. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
It is important that you generate new fans and keep your current fans happy. To keep them happy, recognize the people who create or share the most information about your brand. For example, create a loyalty rewards card where your fan collect points or badges or stars. Something where you encourage your fans to keep coming back for more and more. Highlight on your Facebook page, stories that represent your “ideal fan.” Perhaps develop a “fan of the day” or “fan of the week” on your page where you continually make your fans feel like they are an important part of everything you do as a brand. For more information, check out: how to recognize and reward your brand’s top fans.
6. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
In social media, it is important that you give sincere appreciation. A simple “thank you” needs to go deeper. You need to give them something of value such as free ticket, a coupon, exclusive access, gift certificate or a momento. Something creative to show them that you really appreciate them and are thankful that they are a brand advocate.
7. Throw down a challenge.
Create a contest. Be creative. For example, you can create a user-generated content contest about why they are your biggest fan. Or you can create a contest where they take a video or photo about using your product or service. Or create a contest with a large prize such as a trip, cash or meeting your brand celebrity. Check out these posts: leveraging social media for contest promotion and five tips for creating a successful social media contest.
For more information on how to win friends and influence others on Facebook, check out these other five resources.
#FollowFriday: Justin Brunner
Justin Brunner, a corporate communications manager at Standard Parking, and I met over Twitter. So it seemed fitting to find out more about him in 140 characters or less. Justin is responsible for the construction of their intranet, creation of their publications, development of their corporate messaging and managing their social media platforms.
In honor of Twitter’s #FollowFriday, here is a quick Q&A with him on everything digital media. I encourage you to follow him on Twitter (@justinspage) and subscribe to his blog, The Justinarim. Happy Friday!
Q: Tell me about yourself.
A: Recent Chicago transplant with a 7-year communications & marketing background; Texas native; Navy vet; lover of tennis, travel and fashion.
Q: Tell me about your experience as Standard Parking as the lead communicator.
A: My primary role is to oversee the delivery of information. My goals for year one: 1) assess 2) create strategy 3) implement and 4) measure.
Q: What has been your experience between understanding social media and implementing it?
A: Understanding what works best for your specific needs is hard. Constantly creating new content is tough. Implementation is the easy part.
Q: How do you define social media?
A: A direct, 2-way conversation across an online platform, primarily utilized for information sharing and creation of ideas.
Q: Who “owns” social media at Standard Parking?
A: Corporate communication oversees the company account & monitors overall company activity. Field marketing handles location-specific accounts.
Q: What is the purpose of social media?
A: It opens a direct dialog with your stakeholders (customers, clients, potential clients or competitors) and creates corporate transparency.
Q: How do you measure success in social media?
A: Success is the $40M question! I think it depends on the goals & objectives. Ask what can you get out of it then see if you’re measuring up.
Q: What social media metrics make the most impact on the C-suite?
A: I like things like influence and retweets. Twitalyzer and HootSuite are great for this.
Q: What social media tools/sites are you most comfortable with?
A: We currently utilize Facebook and Twitter. We’re still relatively new at this on the C-level.
Q: What is the biggest mistake that people make in social media?
A: I think there are two: Placing a dollar figure (ROI, etc) on engagement and whoever has the most friends/followers wins. It’s about quality.
Q: What social media tips would you give my readers?
A: Have a plan and be consistent. If you don’t know where you’re going then why go at all. And, if you go silent, no one will hear you.
Q: What are you favorite social media blogs?
A: Brian Solis, Copyblogger, Olivier Blanchard, Online PR, Scott Meis, Seth Godin, Strategic Public Relations, Todd Defren – PR Squared
Q: Who influences you the most on Twitter?
A: People that take the time to respond to your comments or provide a solution when you need it.
Q: What would you tell a “newbie” about the value of Twitter?
A: You only get out of it what you put in. Post relevant items that you feel are valuable to your audience. Try, try, try and you’ll get there.
Q: Your Twitter profile says you are an opinionated problem solver. What problem caused you to be the most opinionated?
A: When people told me to, “Stop asking ‘why’!”
These are a few of my favorite social media things
Favorite logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the musical film The Sound of Music. The song that everyone knows from this movie is “My Favorite Things.” In tribute to this movie and song, I would like to share with you a few of my favorite social mediathings.
Video
A refresh of the original Social Media Revolution video with new and updated statistics. The facts in the video come from the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.
PowerPoint
This is a great presentation, courtesy of the Social Media Club of Greenville.
Database
A list of 126 social media policies, all in one location. Also, another must-read for developing and implementing your social media policy: 10 Must Haves for Your Social Media Policy.
Quote
Chris Brogan from his new book Social Media 101: “Social media lets you go wide, but YOU have to make it go deep.”
Want more social media quotes? Then, you should read 99 favorite social media quotes and tips.
E-Newsletter
PR Daily — a daily e-newsletter and website from Ragan Communications — that highlights the top stories from the web about social media, marketing and public relations.
What are some of your favorite social media things?
Show your constituents some love
We’ve been featuring Alumni Valentines in our GW Colonial Cable alumni e-newsletter for three years running. I typically have some trouble finding couples to profile, but this year was different.
We leveraged social networks and asked couples whose relationship began at GW to share their stories. I posted a message to our GW Alumni LinkedIn Group and on Twitter (@GWAlumni) and watched the messages rolled in.
We received 25+ stories, more than enough for our e-newsletter, and enough to spill over into a “More Alumni Valentines” story next month. The story received two to three times as many click-throughs as our traditional feature story in our e-newsletter.
On this Valentine’s Day I encourage you to show your constituents some love by engaging them across your social networks to help you tell more interesting stories.
Know Your Audience
We try to segment our social media outlets and target our messages accordingly. Here is how we focus our communications on each of the GW Alumni social networks (recognizing there is some audience overlap):
LinkedIn– Build awareness of career services, opportunities, and news, encourage peer connections, find story ideas, and open conversation through “discussions”
Twitter – Quick hits to build prestige around the university and its alumni (top news and prominent alumni), support relationships, and find story ideas
Facebook – Promote events, share regional-specific information, encourage peer connections
YouTube – Share highlights from alumni and university events, build awareness of leadership in the university and alumni association
Flickr – Repository for event photos, maintain engagement
Social media is by its nature not about simply pushing information out, but learning about your constituents needs and engaging them in dialogue. GW graduate and social media consultant Steve Goldner recommends bringing an “LCR mentality” to your social media outreach – Listen, Conversation, Relationships.
One powerful way to encourage conversations and build relationships is by soliciting advice and feedback from your audience on story ideas. In this case, the quality of our engagement through social media is just as important as the quantity.
Recognize Your Reach…and Limitations
For most organizations, social media provides another platform to reach a certain segment of your audience. Our largest GW Alumni social network – LinkedIn, with 10,430 members – only represents about 5% of our alumni population.
According to research by Forrester (see Josh Bernoff’s post on Social Technographics) 17 percent of U.S. online adults are “inactive” on social networks and the largest percentage group are simply “spectators” who read, listen and watch, but do not take an active role in a conversation.
It is important to use a variety of communication platforms in your outreach. For our Alumni Valentines feature I solicited names of couples during in-person conversations, through e-mails, and on social networks. The story was e-mailed out through our e-newsletter, featured on our website, and posted on our Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook pages. The piece included a call to action for others to share their Alumni Valentine stories, which allows us to build off the original story.
Create Winning Content Through Collaboration
Some people are more interesting in 140 characters than others. Some videos on YouTube become viral hits and others flounder. Some individuals on LinkedIn spark thought-provoking discussions, while others come off as completely self-promotional. And some stories in your e-newsletter receive more click-throughs than others.
Creating content that resonates remains crucial. Develop content with input from your constituents on a variety of social networks and share that content across several different platforms. You will engage more individuals, hear more ideas, and produce a better end product.
How have you seen success by engaging your social networks in developing content?
This post is courtesy of guest blogger Matt Lindsay (@lindsam8). Matt is the director of alumni communications at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, D.C.
10 more ways to grow your Twitter influence
Since I still had more ideas to add to my previous blog post 10 Ways to Grow Your Influence on Twitter, I have returned with 10 more ways to boost your Twitter influence.
1. Provide insight and ask questions. Commenton other blogs to promote your Twitter username and your blog Web site. Also, crowdsource. Ask others what they think about a topic, a new tool or technology or even advice on something that is on your mind.
2. Be an enthusiast. It is all about what you say and how you say it! Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example of someone you should follow on Twitter. Warning: His enthusiasm is contagious.
3. Be like Mike, as in Michael Jordan. Find people on Twitter that you admire. Whether it’s someone like Gary or Top Celebrities on Twitter. Look at their Twitter stream and see what, when and how they Tweet… and take notes.
4. Do your homework. Research other people’s Twitter streams. Find out what items they mark as a “favorite” or whom they interacted with. Also, subscribe to newsletters like SmartBriefor grow your RSS feed with blogs found on Alltop or Google Blog Search.
5. Create a contest. There are many ways you can structure a contest. But first, figure out what you want to accomplish with a contest. More followers or more Web site hits? Check out Mashable’s 5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contestfor more information.
6. Type slow, think fast. Remember the Five Ws (Who, What, Where, When and Why). “Why” is the most important question to ask yourself. Why would this tweet be important to be my followers? Remember, the more people “talking” about your tweets, the greater your influence.
7. Attend social media events. Attend events that discuss social media. Find those events in that area and live tweet on the event’s hashtag. For example, find your local Social Media Club in your area or attend a Ragan Communications social media event.
8. Find your niche. What topics do you usually tweet about? Is it leadership, marketing, PR, news of the day? Identify 5 to 10 topics you like to talk about most and stay within those lines. Your followers need to understand what you are passionate about and what topics to expect when they look at your tweets.
9. Help others. Are you a Meformer or Informer? 80 percent of Twitter Users talk about themselves. Be that 20 percent of Informers and help others. Pay it forward. It will come back to you.
10. Know your limit. Remember not to over-tweet. I know I look at the history of a Tweeter before I follow him or her because I don’t want to get spammed with irrelevant information on my Twitter stream.
What do you think? Do you have other tips?
Finally, if you’re wondering how to measure all this “influence” there’s a great site called Klout, which recently unveiled its Top 10 Lists for 2009. You can check out Brian Solis’ blog post with his thoughts on the lists.
10 ways to grow your Twitter influence
How do you grow your influence and measure it on Twitter?
That is the question that many companies, organizations and individuals are trying to answer, now more than ever.
Edelman has created a popular tool that measures an individual’s importance on Twitter called TweetLevel. This tool can help you understand and quantify the importance levels of Tweeters and their usage of Twitter. However, judging a person’s true level of ‘influence’ is tough to define, even though many people have provided a great start.
While doing research for this blog post, I came across several great articles, blog posts and resources to share. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, wrote a great piece about 10 ways to increase your Twitter followers. Social media expert Brian Solis has a post about Make tweet love – Top tips for building Twitter relationships and prevential.com has an excellent resource titles How to attract and influence people on Twitter.
With all this information on this topic, I brainstormed my own list of tips for my readers to share ways to boost your ranking on this social media platform. Below you’ll find my top 10 ways to grow your Twitter influence.
1. Think like a reporter or a copy editor. With only 140 characters, every word, space and punctuation counts. Make sure each tweet is so compelling that your followers will stop to read what you have to say in the crowded and noisy Twitter universe. Today, it is all about telling a story and telling it well.
2. Content is King. Make sure you have content that is worth posting and that engages your followers and prospective followers. TheInternet Activity Index released by the Online Publishers Association provides a unique way of looking at consumer engagement online.
3. Be generous. Engage with other tweeters by re-tweeting content that you find interesting. Think of your tweets as your online journal that you can reference on your public timeline. It is easy to RT tweets that you like of others — and the added bonus is that you’ll have those tweets in your stream for future reference. Not only are you helping yourself, you are spreading the word for others. People you RT will be more likely to follow you back and spread the word about you.
4. Be a resource for others. Add value with each tweet or retweet. Make sure that when you are tweeting, you treat each one like an email. Sending too many emails decreases your credibility. Make sure that when you have something to say, your followers think it’s worthwhile.
5. Take Twitter offline. Arrange for a phone call or coffee meeting with interesting tweeps that you follow. Or attend or create a Tweet-up in your area. Check out Twtvite, an event manager tool that helps you create and learn about TweetUps.
6. Listen. Try to read of your followers Tweets and follow the most popular hashtags like #SocialMedia and #FollowFriday and industry hashtags that affect your job or interests like #PR or #Marketing. I would also suggest checking out the #hashtags Web site that tracks the most popular hashtags on Twitter and provides details about those hashtags.
7. Be relevant. Try as much as possible to link to articles or post something that is new and newsworthy. For example, I recently tweeted an article from TMZ that claimed the Tiger Woods injuries in the car accident were caused by his wife, not his collision. It was one of my most popular tweets.
8. Quality over quantity. There is a big temptation to get as many followers as possible. The key is to have a quality following over a large quantity of followers. As Twitter becomes more popular, more and more spammers (and the porn industry) will want to become your friend. Check out How to get more followers: Some methods that work for some more information.
9. Patience is a virtue. A large following doesn’t occur overnight. It takes a while to build a loyal following. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your following. Be persistent and continue to invest time in growing your network on Twitter.
10. Treat others as THEY want to be treated. It is a twist on the golden rule. Find out how your followers like to interact with others and engage with them in a similar fashion.
What do you think? What are some others ways you can grow your influence on Twitter?
