1. Effective branding combines Web and off-line elements. It is much more than a customer’s reaction to your name or logo. It’s the customer’s total experience with you, your product or service.
2. Think what you sell can’t be branded? Think again. Almost anything can be branded, including you, personally.
3. The Web is the only interactive mass medium, so take advantage of it. Use interactive features whenever possible. The future belongs to the up-and-coming businesses that do the best job of building their brands on the Internet.

Business.com’s “What Works for Business” blog is a great way to keep up with the latest brand-building solutions, trends and strategies for small and medium business.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done:

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• The best brands tend to tap emotions and appeal to a person’s natural need for involvement.
• Strive for simplicity. Too much information confuses your brand message.
• Be original in identifying your brand identity – the thing that sets you apart. Hint: Not quality or service. Everybody does that!
• Be consistent with your brand’s look, feel and message whenever and wherever they appear.
• Avoid trying to be overly “cool” or in-the-moment. Too hard to sustain. The brand must be relevant, but long term.
• Base your brand on your customers’ needs. Don’t know them? Ask your customers.

I’ve heard some respected people in the industry quote stats like “only 2% of YouTube videos ever go viral.”  Granted, it’s a bit absurd to try and quantify what percentage of videos go viral when the very definition of something having “gone viral” is open to wide interpretation and debate.  How many views make a video viral… is it 100,000? A million? How fast do those views have to come to count as viral? You can see how difficult it gets to quantify. But I think we can all agree that very few videos go viral as hoped.

I think it might help to examine some viral video successes and attempt to break them down, check out what makes them different, and define what it was that made them work.

1. The Accident  - AKA: Oops, You’re Famous

Summary: Probably the most common type of viral video is the accidental viral video. These are shot by non professionals, usually just a single user, and are uploaded without the faintest hope or inkling of mega popularity. These are often uploaded for friends and family, but unexpectedly take on a life of their own.

Examples: Chocolate Rain, or the JK Wedding Dance.

Chance of Success: Virtually nonexistent. Since viewers are the ones who cause Accident Viral Videos to exist, they are impossible to predict.  Creators of these Accident videos are often quite surprised to see their little creation hit a million views or to get invites to a national talk show. By definition, you can’t plan for this to happen.

2. The Imitation - AKA: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Worse

Summary: What happens when Big Business takes notice of an Accident viral video (or any other viral video success for that matter)? They try to recreate it, naturally. You can also call this “The Hollywood”, since major film studios have been riding film trends with countless rip-offs for years—after coming out of the Disaster Movie era a few years back, we are now firmly entrenched in the Snarky Animation era (thank you Shrek) and the Torture Horror era (thank you Saw). It works like this: See something successful, then recreate it as closely as possible, removing only the most obvious copy-cat elements. Like making photocopies of photocopies… the enjoyment and interest in the video wanes exponentially with each passing generation of rip-offs.

Examples: Dr. Pepper hiring the Chocolate Rain guy to sing about Cherry Chocolate Rain, or the JK Divorce Dance video.

Chances of Success: Moderate. Ripoff, Spoof, and Copycat videos are never as popular as their inspiration. They benefit initially by piggy-backing off the fame and popularity of the original, but that soon wanes. A huge section of the video-watching population sees them for what they are… rip-offs… copies of an original that is much more… well, original.

3. The Embarrassment - AKA: Kill Me Now

Summary: Something embarrassing happens to someone, and said embarrassment is caught on film. Uh oh.  This is one of the most popular kinds of videos… it’s the “you’ll never believe what this idiot just did” phenomenon.  It’s very difficult for major brands to have success with this kind of viral video, as most brands aren’t interested in embarrassing themselves.  Yet you have the recent Jim Brewer Goes Off On Film Crew video that, to me, has to be fake and manufactured.  And in that example, it’s the hired actor “embarrassing” himself, not the brand.

Examples: Star Wars Kid, Boom Goes the Dynamite, Miss South Carolina

Chances of Success: Higher than normal if real, far less likely if staged.

4. The Special Effects - AKA: Is That Real?

Summary: A popular trend in viral video is the subtle use of special effects to make an unbelievable event slightly more believable. Because the quality of video on YouTube is generally lower than what you get at your local movie theater (and because the screen size is so much smaller), special effects are slightly harder to gauge for the average viewer. With just the right touch of CGI, you can make something fantastic appear real.

Examples: Kobe Jumping Over A Car, Microsoft’s MegaWOOSH, NFL.com’s Fantasy Football Series

Chances of Success: High, particularly if you can score a celebrity like Kobe to star in your video (keep in mind… “high probability” on this scale is still a long-shot). All that’s required is enough believability to cause a portion of the audience to wonder if it’s real. Once you have a few of them believing it, they’ll start the viral process for you, sending out links to the video to all their friends. Even something so obviously fake as the Microsoft Slide video still convinced enough people to go viral—even prompting Microsoft to eventually admit it was faked.

5. The WTF - AKA: What Did I Just Watch?!

Summary: Sometimes a video goes viral simply because viewers aren’t sure what they’re looking at. Sometimes unexplained imagery captivates an audience in a way that standard videos cannot.

Examples: Cadbury’s Gorilla, Sony Bravia Bouncing Balls

Chances of Success: Low. Hitting on a “what the heck is that?” video is an extremely inexact science. If you’d have told me two years ago that Cadbury’s was about to release a viral video of a gorilla playing drums along to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” and that it would get millions of views, I’d have told you that you were insane. Predicting what people will like is hard enough when you’re staying comfortably in the box. Stray outside that box into the strange and bizarre, and your odds go down even further.  The payoff, though, can be huge.

6. The Shill - AKA: Obviously Corporate Advertising

Summary: You might think I’m about to bash or slam these videos.  But I’m not.  If a company can find a way to highlight a product or service in a manner that is still entertaining to viewers, you have what we call a “win/win” scenario.  What might initially look like a television commercial can—with the right dash of humor and personality—become a web sensation.  Users want to be entertained, first and foremost.  If it happens to be an advertisement, so be it… as long as it makes us laugh (or smile, or cry, or whatever).

Examples: Will It Blend, Awareness Test

Chances of Success: Among the highest on this list. People have inherent trust in certain brands, and at the end of the day, most of the viewing public just wants to be entertained. If you can do that while being completely transparent in your attempts to advertise, then you can save time and money on the front end and have maximum impact on the back end.

Look at Subservient Chicken (no, not a video, but a good example nonetheless). Most of the folks I knew who were forwarding that around in 2001 or whenever it was were not the least bit concerned that it was a clear and obvious Burger King commercial. All they cared about was that you could control what the chicken does! In the end, Burger King’s stock went up a few notches in the eyes of the users because they provided something fun and entertaining.

7. The Blair Witch - AKA: Those  Faking Fakers

Summary: Not to be confused with The Special Effects (though they are similar), The Blair Witch viral video is one where everything is staged.  Big companies are so desperate for their own slice of viral video history that they’re often willing to try faking it.  Hire some actors, give them a script, and then pay them to pretend they aren’t actors.  It’s a lot harder to do right than you might think.  Forget for a second that the average YouTube viewer is already trained to cry “fake” at the first sign of something out of the ordinary. It’s actually incredibly hard to artificially manufacture authenticity.

Examples: LonelyGirl15, the Disneyland “Spontaneous” Wedding Proposal from earlier this summer (that is so obviously and totally fake).

Chances of Success: Pretty slim. Lonely Girl kind of killed it for the rest of us. The YouTube series turned us all into cynical skeptics.

So, which variety of viral video should businesses shoot for? Well, most businesses aren’t out to embarrass themselves, so we can scratch that one.  The Accident videos are, by definition, not something you can intentionally create, so that’s out too.  The Imitation is a short term solution, destined to have a ceiling for success, but I still have clients that choose that option.

The Special Effects videos almost always require a bit of budget, particularly if you’re going to use a recognizable figure.  To fake an amazing feat, even if you eschew CGI, there are tons of hidden costs in planning, setup, and execution.

The WTF is probably the riskiest venture, because you spend money on producing an ad that has no assurance of even being understood, let alone enjoyed.   I’m sure there was more than one raised eyebrow in the room when Sony was pitched on the Bouncing Ball concept. Most of my clients are not interested in being video concept trailblazers, at least not in this economy.

And the Blair Witch is nearly as risky as the WTF. First, it’s tough to find actors who are good enough to pull off the fake but are also not recognizable enough for people to instantly remember them from some White Castle commercial. But it’s also risky because of the possibility of getting caught in the fakery. Once viewers know something is fake, you may still get views… but your branding efforts are completely undone.

If you’re just dipping your toe in the water of viral videos for the first time, or if you are a small business… the best approach is to simply find a creative, lighthearted way to highlight who you are and what you do.

Mission post with thanks from the geniuses at www.reelseo.com

In fact, blogging is so easy to do that anyone can have a go – my wife has just started her own video blog at LoveScene Magazine.  Keep it up Sam!

Anyway, have a look at the blogs below and see how much their owners make.  Worth having a go.

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning.  In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google (without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising), the website has to have a large number of backlinks.  Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website.   The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position.  If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

So how does a webmaster go about getting high quality backlinks to his or her website?  There are many ways this can be done – there are ‘right’ ways to achieve this, and likewise there are ‘wrong’ ways to do it.  Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs with a link attached to the text, that points to your website.  Others talk about submitting their website to various Internet directories.  One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the ‘Open Directory’.  This directory is probably the most respected directory online today and the largest compilation of succesful sites.  The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no automation to this directory unlike others.   The only drawback that’s been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.  It can take weeks if not months, but once successful, your website will have a boost in ranking, making it easier for people to stumble upon your site.

Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A Social Bookmark  is a website that usually has a very popular ‘community’ aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves.  They then can save bookmarks of favorite websites which can be itemized by ‘tags’, which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that’s private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.

With the advent of what is known as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an interactive quality to them nowadays.  Readers can often sign in and create profiles.  They then are often allowed to post comments on the stories or articles on the website or blog.  In many cases, the website or blog owner responds to these comments; thus making this section of the website or blog a conversation.

Backlinking strategies can be easy and fun and the website owner who is working on getting more backlinks for his website can learn new things, meet new people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was once a chore: building backlinks.

To all my readership, I have taken the opportunity to use a tool to check how many backlinks are currently pointing to your website.  This tool is great, and I use it with every one of my web design clients:

Powered by iWEBTOOL

Press Releases are a crucial way to distinguish or differentiate your website or company in the public’s view.  Startups can use this effective platform to spread the message of the launch of your site, and equally useful; most companies already understand this strategy and in one way or another they have used press releases to make special announcements or let everyone know about special offers or landmark events they have got involved with.

Today, with the online press release, it can be used in a multitude of ways that will help in your effective seo efforts.

So how the hell can it be done?  I mean, how do you compliment your new SEO campaign with a press releas?  The PR campaign online is very different than your standard PR through traditional print media sources, such as a newpaper or magazine. For example, if I launched a site in Manchester -  I would probably distribute the PR to all of the local papers of course (MEN, Metro, Stockport Express etc) and then issue a second ‘wave’ of press releases to my local publications and neighborhood publications like the Didsbury magazine, the Offerton Newsletter etc.   But none of these are really going to assist with my seo on my website in Manchester, (although by making mention of my website inside the press release I would probably receive  a few visitors to my site from it.   The only downside, is that the direct traffic would be very short-lived and wouldn’t give me a permanent back link into my website.  It may give me a few hits on my site that day, but the next day, it would probably be forgotten forever.

So what can we do online that is similar but with better chances of longer-lasting effects and visits online?  In this case, I would distribute my press releases online to services on the web that enable me to link the content in the press release directly to my website.  By adding one or two useful links (full  http://  working links!) within the article, it would direct ‘clickable’ traffic to my website or any URL’s within my website, and it will be assisting the Google PageRank and overall linking strategy which will directly help on search result page listings on Google.

Using such online distribution services is important because these special sources of news usually already have a high page rank and have a high regard by the search engines as they have a lot of content and traffic already.  So when they release the press release by you, usually the article will start to show in the top of the search engines for the keyword that you targeted throughout the article – almost immediately.  So for example, if we released a press release on ‘UK Healthcare’ and we submitted the release with these keywords to the major online PR services, our article might likely show up for this search term through the PR sites.  If someone searches for this term online and finds the article before they find our site, it is likely that they will click on the article, read the info, then click to our site within the article or perhaps one of the hyperlinked key phrases inside the article.  The nicest part of this press release is that it does not get tossed in the bin like a newspaper, it remains online pointing at our site for as long as the press release service keeps it up!.  Not bad eh?

Now, these online PR sites do charge for their services (suprised?) and can cost anything from £1 up to £315.00.  They all seem to offer different programs as well, so have a look through what each offers and make your decision.  What I mean is that some are enhanced for SEO purposes, while some of the better performing services like prweb.com and prnewswire.com are a little more traditional with their approach.  They also have a more famous reputation and are normally the first line most people will approach.  Remember to follow Google’s guidelines when creating your press release, after all, you still want to establish a release that has useful content and is not just stuffed with keywords that confuse the article.

It is also worth mentioning, that physical magazines and newspapers scan these sites for stories they can actually print if relevant.  Especially in recession, when there appears to be a lack of content, so take full advantage of this now.

Some examples of releases that might work for your business would be maybe the announcement of a new location or premesis, a new service or product that your company is introducing or perhaps you are speaking at a conference or industry event.  Anyhow, when you’re launching a new website, it’s the perfect opportunity (and one of the most effective), so I highly recommend looking into this avenue and making the necessary allowances to your launch budget.  I certainly will when my new site (Project X) is fully up and running.

Search engine giants Google have become the world’s first $100billion brand.

They are valued at almost 25 per cent more than their nearest rivals Microsoft.

Coca-Cola are in third place.

Google went up 16 per cent in brand value in the past year to the equivalent of £68.5billion.

Vodafone became the first UK firm to make it into the top 10 of the Brand Z Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.

Britain’s other brands in the list of 100 include Tesco and banks Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

Industries which have seen their value grow in the past year are “stay-at-home” brands, according to consultants Millward Brown.

Coffee brand Nescafe benefited from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in coffee shops.

Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands grew as more people stayed at home.

Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and financial institutions suffered most.

Joanna Seddon, of Millward Brown, said: “In the current environment, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times.

“People do not blame the brands for everything that has gone wrong.

“They blame the corporations and the people who run them.”

Yesterday, Google put their success down to customers trusting them.

Apr 30 2009 By Mark McGivern ]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/brand/google-is-number-1/feed/ 0