Fake, Viral Stories: are they worth the traffic?

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In the recent Digg article “Anatomy Of A Fake, Viral Story“, we see a perfect example of a hard-to-believe story going viral and driving massive traffic to websites around the world. Few stories that hit this legendary status are broken down in such a way that you can see exactly how it happened, which is what makes this story fascinating to myself and marketers everywhere.

Most people want their piece to go viral for one or both of two reasons – money and/or fame. Will fake viral stories accomplish this? Is such a story worth the traffic it generates? Let’s explore that.

Money – Is viral traffic interested enough in your fake story to contribute to your bottom line? The majority of viral story seekers are looking for quick entertainment. They are rarely interested in little else the hosting website has to offer them. Sure, they might sign up for updates, but a look at the statistics of whether they actually open and read the emails sent to them reveals the truth; often the emails are deleted and after the third or fourth email, they hit the “unsubscribe” button, or worse, flag it as spam and get your company in trouble with your internet service provider.

Fame – No one likes being lied to and a fake viral story’s job is to look credible to the reader long enough to get them to click. How would someone view your website if they found out that you were peddling fake sensationalism? Would they trust you in the future? Would they trust your products, your customer service or warranties on anything they purchased if you are a retail business? Would they trust your word on anything in the future? Doubtful. We all have experienced how hard it can be to convince someone to buy from us and not our competitors. Starting off with a lie to draw them in is the worst possible strategy imaginable, unless, of course, you are the National Enquirer or Onion.

In the final analysis, it is pretty cut and dried that fake viral stories are responsible for traffic that hits hard and fast, but rarely sticks around. They are off as soon as the next sensational piece hits their radar and won’t even remember you the next day. Hardly the type of loyal customer that anyone in business could benefit from.

Credits: Anatomy of a Fake Viral Story written by Craig Silverman. Read his research project report, “Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content” for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Civic Site Design deals only in reliable information from verified sources. If you have a need for such on your website or in your social networking circles, please feel free to contact us at info at civicsitedesign.com (replace the “at” with an @ sign).

 

Money over Customer Satisfaction Means No One Wins

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In a LinkedIn article today entitled, “Best Advice: Stop Researching Your Customers — and Do Something“, the age-old issue of companies wanting more customers but being unwilling to invest in them is brought to task in the unusual and candid outburst of a research company’s presenter to their client. Why is Big Company spending money year after year on research that tells them the exact same thing year after year and doing nothing with it? Is it because big companies are expected to do research? Probably.

What I liked about this article is how the presenter’s body language screamed, “I don’t want to be here!” and “This is a waste of time!” and someone picked up on that and it led to an answer the writer could not ignore for the sake of her company’s future.

Companies don’t want to hear that a change for the good starts with spending money. After some failed attempts at trying to get their company to act of the research company’s advice, it was clear a process of evolution was needed in delivery of the message. It demonstrates that it really is not in what you say, but how you say it that gets the results.

But it also made me think of something else the writer had not even intended as a message. It is not only detrimental to the customer and their view of the offending company when change for the better is halted by dollar signs, but it is demoralizing to that company’s employees who have to put up with the unhappy customers. And it works both ways. I see this with the company my husband works for. They used to have little perks like birthdays cakes for each employee’s birthday, then it went down to one cake a month and finally there were none. All for sake of saving money. The low morale this engenders in them is picked up by everyone outside the company they get near – the vendors, the customers and the potential customers. No one wins in a scenario like this. Putting money ahead of your clients OR employees needs in every single thing hurts everyone in the end.

Yelp’s online reviews help NYC clean up nasty restaurants

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I’ve never been a fan of Yelp, the online mega guide to service and quality among businesses, and for the purposes of this article, restaurants, but now they may finally have a use for the greater good, as opposed to just themselves.

As linked to on MSN.com’s news feed today, an article from the website Fastcompany.com cites, “Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report detailed how Yelp reviews are being used by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to find health code violations in New York City”. Software built by Columbia University made short work of sifting through 300,000 review to find leads to repeat offenders by cross-checking multiple reports of diarrhea or vomiting after a meal. Food poisoning bad enough to make one that sick will have a quick turnaround as far as from the time of ingestion to the manifestation of symptoms, so it’s a good bet if 10 people get sick after eating at “Chow’s Kosherama and Squid Shack”, the CDC has ample justification to go in and check out their nasty digs.

As an ongoing experiment, it offers hope to resource-strapped city agencies by leveraging social media to crunch the numbers and get to these rancid restaurants before they cripple their customers with gastrointestinal upset. Let’s hope the experiment goes viral and spreads as fast as word among friends of a cockroach in a kitchen at your local diner.

Facebook – How do I block game requests?

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Ever have this question? So did we.  After doing some digging, we found the answer not in their help section – where you would expect the answer to be – but in their community:

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1. Click the “Setting” button in the drop down menu in the far right top corner of the page.

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2. In the left side column, look for the “Blocking” button and click it.

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3. In the “Block apps” section, type the name of the App you want to be blocked so no one could send you a game request for that particular game.

4. If a particular friend is sending you these apps. all the time and you want to stop them from doing so, in the “Block apps invites” section above “Block apps”, type the name of the friend, then hit enter and Facebook will prevent that person sending you any more games request.

Yes, it’s a pain having to do this with each new game, but doing it as soon as you get the first request will help in the long run.

Did this answer all your questions about blocking apps? If you have more questions, drop us a line in the comments below.

Source – Facebook Help Center Community here.

 

HubSpot’s Free Webinar: The Secrets to Success on Social Media

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webinar gurus

In an awesome HubSpot webinar Wednesday, experts from Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn Marketing Departments shared their strategies on how to get more followers, engagement, & revenue.

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With a mention of at least 11,000 listeners 29 minutes into the call, it was a significant enough event that HubSpot had the Guinness Book of World Records standing by to see if they broke the record for World’s Biggest Webinar!

 

 

Webinar host HubSpot promised we would learn:

  • How to get more followers for free
  • What content you should post to get more organic engagement
  • How to get people to share your content on their profiles
  • How to target the right audience and get the most relevant traffic back to your website
  • How to avoid wasting money on ads
  • And so much more!

So, did the Webinar deliver the answers? Let’s see.

“How to get more followers for free”

Well, free as far as paying with money. If we don’t pay with money we pay with time. That’s just the way it is in life – even off the Internet. There was no one way mentioned on how to get followers for free (as probably many people were hoping for) and really half of the entire webinar tied in to this goal of building your followers, fans and networking contacts.

Those of us in the business already know there is no quick way to get lots of followers for free. It takes time, and as the old saying says, “Time is Money”. Time to tweet, post and write on Facebook & LinkedIn walls. The promise of how to get more followers for free is probably why 30,000 people signed in to the call and it went down to 11,000 half way through.

1-make-presence-awesomeSo how do I get followers for free, then???

What people got out of listening to the entire webinar was if you follow “Best Practices” – a phrase mentioned many times by all four webinar leaders, you will get more followers for free. So, what are these “best practices”? They were covered under the following bullet points on their flyer:

“What content you should post to get more organic engagement”

All three execs mentioned photos. And that they should –

  • visually complement your business – your logo, latest products/services, anything that really complements the look and feel of your business.
  • draw people. We interpreted this being as clear, cropped well, interesting, new and/or unusual, but always relevant to your business/industry.
  • represent your brand and your business. Customers want to see that you are legitimate.

“Tweets that include photos get double the engagement.” according to Russ Laraway, Senior SMB Director of Twitter. He said this at least three times during the webinar.

“How to get people to share your content on their profiles”

Another vital topic, another one not directly answered because it is behind the principal of Best Practices that we find the answer.

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Scott Engelman, Head of Online Marketing at LinkedIn said, “Professional content works best on LinkedIn. Users look for content on how to be great at what they do, find opportunities and grow their careers. Professionally relevant content works best – again best practices, industry trends and tips that are relevant to your industry.”

“You should always be experimenting to see what type of content drives the greatest engagement with your audience. Be sure to attach rich media such as images, video and slideshare to see what resonates best with your followers. Provide the most valuable content to your followers regardless of whether it is from your company or not.”

In a Nutshell

This webinar confirmed many of my own philosophies, one of which is to work consistently and be persistent in your marketing campaigns. The new thing I took away from this is to always be experimenting. When I asked the attendees on Twitter what they felt was a good timeframe to experiment in, @TodaysBride suggested a month, which again, I agree on.

In the field of getting followers and getting them to share your content, go for what complements the look and feel of your business; rich media such as images, video and slideshare and relevant content will get you both followers and shares and retweets.  Adding in for Linkedin, that people want professional content that shows them “how to be great at what they do, find opportunities and grow their career”.  

Also add in the webinar leader’s acknowledgement of the 80/20 rule (80% content that offers value to your audience, is informative, helpful, that their followers can benefit from. Tips, best practices, industry content, photos, etc., then 20% on your own products and/or services).

The last two points on “How to target the Right Audience and get the most relevant Traffic back to your website” and “How to avoid wasting money on ads” were geared more towards those advertising with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter or those who are considering advertising, but I will say the one phrase that stuck with so many on Twitter who listened it – “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed”. If you are serious about making your business grow you need to track your campaigns and especially the results of those campaigns!  For the audience who pays for social network ads, this was a great section of advice on how to utilize FB, TW & LI’s tools to the fullest, not just throw money at the Big Three and let them do all the work, because doing that you will be wasting your money. The advice there alone is enough to warrant a future post of its own.

So…

Did the Webinar deliver? There were mixed feelings all over their Twitter hashtag #WLW14 as one would expect from an event so hugely attended. Beginners, seasoned social networkers & companies can be hard to please when all in a virtual room together.

Personally I agree they went over much material experts already known, but there were also quite a few take-aways that I will be sharing with my social networking clients and applying myself in my own business. I found many, many points that were important enough to write down the during the flurry of slides and breakneck speed at which the hashtag was literally blowing up my TweetDeck application.

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The other great thing is, if you got nothing out of the webinar at all in what was said, you now have a common topic of interest with those on the #WLW14 hashtag to share to create a Know, Like and Trust relationship with new potential customers on the social networks.

One Last Thought

I feel sorry for those that bailed so quickly and didn’t stay to the end of the webinar. The examples of successful businesses the Big Three gave were important because the real value came in the explanation of how and why their example’s content worked for that particular business. That alone is what made this webinar so outstanding! How often do you get to hear the heads of marketing for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter not only explain the machine that drives it and how to use it, but why it works for some and not everyone in the first place!

If you understand this, you can take what they were trying to teach us to the bank with any business, no matter what type it is! If you missed this part of the seminar, do your business, your clients and your audience a favor – find a company to explain it to you. We here at Civic Site Design would be happy to cover it during a one-on-one consultation, just drop us a comment at the end of this post with your contact information to let us know you’re interested!

Referrals and Recommendations – Robert Sperling

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Robert Sperling - Wedbush Morgan Securities

One of the most pleasant members of our group to work with is Robert Sperling of Wedbush Securities.

While one might have the impression that financial consultants are dour, down-to-business people with no sense of humor, nothing could be further from the truth with Bob. He has what I call, “a face you can trust” and a personality to match it. Easy going, but very knowledgable, I have watched him work while in his office teaching him social networking. He manages his NASDAC software like a pro would TweetDeck. A quick scan of the numbers and he can tell you where things have been going in the stock market, where it is going as far as trends and the best way to go with one’s investments. While he is juggling that with one hand, he puts people at ease with a manner I find in very few networkers, but is invaluable in getting people to instantly like him. I have know him for roughly six years and know that as soon as I have money to shake loose from bills, I will go straight to him as a vital part of our investment future.

Bob can be contacted at:

p. 818.243-2141
e. robert.sperling@wedbush.com
LinkedIn

Please let him know Kristine of Civic Site Design sent you!