Viral Marketing / Social Media Blog

Found an interesting blog today on Twitter (thanks @CandisAshley). The site called IWearYourShirt sells t-shirt ad space on Jason, the site blog author. It looks like many of the spaces have already sold. Great job Jason! What I think is really smart about this blog is the tie in of a social media contest to win a Nintendo Wii. I'm guessing as this concept takes off, there will be some great SEO value as well.

Apple's Brilliant 99 Cent Marketing Strategy

As most of you know, Apple sells songs for the cost of 99 cents per song through iTunes. Apple also sells iTunes gift cards in multiples of say 15, 25, 50. Why does this matter? When you purchase a song through iTunes, you are left with an odd number of credit remaining in your account.

This is brilliant marketing on two fronts, in my opinion. Not only does this strategy play on the psychological effect of 99 cents being cheaper than one dollar, it leaves your account with an odd number of credits. This creates a viscous cycle of purchasing credits for the sake of using the current credits. Its clear that the iPod has been a success, but this strategy has to have played a big part.

Blog or Twitter?

To Blog or Tweet? This is something that I have struggled with lately when it comes to blogging. I have some interesting thoughts that I would like to blog, but end up posting on twitter, mainly due to time. I really like the convenience of twitter, but also like having the option to post my thoughts on the blog. There are a few tools out there that can help you do both:

• Twitterfeed - sends blog posts to Twitter
• Twitter Tools - WordPress plug in
• TwitBin - FireFox extension
  

Flash Interactive Map for Royal Caribbean Goes Live

The "More Places" interactive flash map went live this week. Check it out and let me know what you think!


read more | digg story

Viddler Enhances Video

Found an interesting site called Viddler. This site allows you to customize your videos to enhance the overall user experience. Some very interesting stuff. Not only can you comment on a specific frame during the video playback, but you can vote on tagged comments.

Record directly from your webcam?! Wow! this site has some really nice features for the web video enthusiast and novice. It already appears as though many web surfers have caught on to this technology and making use of it's many features.

This tool is a great step forward for making video more interactive and engaging with as little headaches as possible.

"Word of Click" and Social Networking

Back in April of 2006, I used the term Word of Click to describe aspects of viral marketing / social networking performed by Skype to promote their products. This term helped describe the action taken by users to click, rather than speak, to share information over the web. Actions like:

• On site "Forward to a friend"
• Bookmarking
• Tagging
• etc...

Evidently, this has caught on in the web community since that posting about a year ago. I'm trying now to determine the roots of the phrase to see if it had originated on this blog. Wish me luck!

Measuring Viral Marketing Campaigns

Found a few interesting viral marketing links from around the web that I thought would come in handy while researching the effectiveness of viral marketing.

• Branding and Viral for Web Video
• Viral Resources
• About.com

Enjoy!

Web Site Re-designs

I'm hoping to have a new design of interactive cleveland in the next few months. I'm thinking that Lavadasites should have an entirely new purpose as well as a new look and feel. Some ideas around the purpose of the site are still in the works. My philosophy on Lavadasites has always been to create a central location where early adopters can share sites with unique products and a great user experience. Built into the site will be viral marketing and word of mouth tools. I hope to have a more defined concept around these ideas soon.