I got asked this one from a local playground equipment company here in Arizona (that specializes in vinyl playgrounds) way before we even started viral marketing idea Friday here at 97th Floor. I shared my thoughts with the owner, and gave some pretty good ideas (I don’t know if they ever ran with), but I felt it was worth sharing because these guys were local, and I feel there is plenty of love to go around in this industry!

The exact question was - “How do I create a viral campaign for local playground company?”

First of all I was impressed that a local playground company was even doing enough research to figure out they needed to create something to go viral with! I love these style of playground systems (see picture) for the kids, and the one I have is amazing, but how do you attract someone to a viral content post (or page) about a kids playground if they have no kids, are in college, or anything related? As I have said before, you have to make it funny, or super informative (which in turn makes it more sharable no matter who the person reading it is). Here is a picture of the playground I own from this local company:

Going viral - I don’t know how many of you have seen the TV show called “Mythbusters“, but its on Discovery Channel, and they did a show a while ago that was dedicated to seeing if you can really swing someone in a swing for a full 360 that wraps around. It was pretty funny to see all of the different attempts and how many ways they failed - and what they had to do to succeed. It got me thinking to see if there were other people, and by “other people” I mean users of You Tube, who were crazy enough to take videos of themselves doing this very thing. To say the least I found some pretty funny stuff.

This is just one example of some pretty cool footage I found. Some were silly, some stupid, a few were amazing, but the point here is all of them made me laugh, and I feel could make anyone laugh. In my opinion, anyway you use these videos they could help you go viral with the right title and content (and of course - a dash of link bait).

I would suggest coming up with a title that can grab anyone no matter who you are, like - “10 of the Craziest Things You Have Ever Seen Done On A Swingset” or “10 Things That Should Never Be Done On A Swingset” or (my favorite title) “Can You Really Do A 360 In A Swing Set?” [Video Included]. These are more of the funny ways to take this viral campaign, but you could also take a serious approach (if this is your real business) and provide something like - “12 Safety Tips Every Parent Should Read Before Buying A Swingset” or “10 Safety Videos Parents Need To Watch Before Purchasing A Playground” and then provide a series of tips, or videos outlining safe playgrounds for dangerous ones. You can always make a note on your site somewhere that your playgrounds always comply to all safety regulations, and anything else that could help you look like you are providing a service to the community with this info.

These are just a few ways that I feel would go viral, and do great with a playground/swing set company. I think this will give you some ideas to run with if you are looking inside this industry for help. As always feel free to submit any questions you have related to VMIF in the form of comments, or by emailing Chris or myself!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

I have to admit - todays post about viral marketing for a Pottery business is the first one I got asked in a long time that has actually made me think. I enjoyed it, and had fun and hope to share some good ideas with Josh Garner (the one who asked the question) last week.

The thing with a boring industry like Pottery (at least for those of us not into it) is you have to figure out a way to make it fun, and fun for everyone. Even if you try to bring in the edge like “10 Beautiful Pieces of Potter” or “10 Pieces Of Pottery You Won’t Believe” I still don’t think that is going to be enough to engage the likes of those who make posts go popular on Digg. Cool looking pottery to a pottery buff may be enough, but you have to understand the type of people you are bringing this industry to - are most likely not “pottery buffs”!

So here is the problem - Finding something that relates to the pottery industry that would make people (in the social type communities) laugh and want to share with everyone they know (in their communities), even if they don’t even know what a pottery kiln is.

Here are some of my ideas, and I think these ones are probably the best out of everything I though of, so thats all I will share. First of all look at this video:

It is always fun, and funny to watch people doing stupid things right? Now I am not saying this girl spinning on a pottery spinner is funny enough to make it, but I hope it gets you thinking where I am going with this. I would spend as much time as it took to find 10 videos of people doing stupid, or funny things with potter spinners. I would then title the post “10 Things You Should Not Do With A Pottery Spinner” or “10 Of The Stupidest Ways People Have Ever Used A Pottery Spinner” I could even take this angle (if I did not find enough videos, but found at least one that was funny enough) “In This Corner - One Stupid Person, In The Other Corner - A Pottery Spinner - Find Out Who Wins”

Any of those (link baited) titles would make me want to investigate more and check out the post and watch the video. It just sounds to funny to pass up, and that is what you are trying to accomplish. Of course, you have to have some really good link bait with an industry like “pottery”, but I think I did a decent job of sharing some examples of what I feel would do very well!

I had some other ideas that were pretty funny with pottery and they involved smashing pottery, dropping pottery, pottery accidents, strange uses of pottery (may not be safe for work - LOL) etc. All of which I found some pretty funny footage online thanks to You Tube and Google Video. I know if this were an industry I was marketing for, and if I took the time to research it out, I could come up with some pretty funny videos and a post that I am sure would do well for the site.

Again, I hope this gives Josh some ideas to run with, and as always please feel free to ask your industry question in the comments on any VMIF post, or by sending Chris or myself and email!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

I try to pay attention or note common questions that get sent to us regarding SEO and what have you. By far the number one repeated question we get is in the Reputation Management space, “I have created a page at all the social sites and we are still not able to push out the negative results?” I have had my share of posts talking about filing out social media/news sites in order to protect the top then, but I have always tried to emphasize that you can’t just fill them with fluff or watered down content if you wish for them to really make an impact on your search results. I am going to focus on just that in this post and hopefully shed some light and add to Mat’s recent post of how hard core and long term your reputation management strategy needs to be.

Understand Your foes
Do you really understand why the negative sites rank for your term? Every single Reputation Management issue I have looked at is different and needs different things. If you go about Reputation Management with a systematic approach with no room for adjustment or ramping up, then you will get stuck more often than not. It can be literally hundreds of reasons, and most likely a combination of multiple reasons. The most common reasons we have combated are:
Domain Trust (Wikipedia and Rip Off Report)
User Generated Content (a lot of comments using the term on a blog post is certain death)
Keyword Repetition and Stuffing (especially Title tag)
In Bound Links
Internal Linking Using Anchor Text

Usually it is a combination of both, the two that I am the most afraid of are Domain Trust and UGC. You need to know exactly what factors are helping that page rank, you should break them down into what you feel are the most important factors as well. If there are no inbound links, and very little content you can probably bet on Domain Trust being the major factor. If it is a new domain but has a lot of content and is linked to from the main navigation you can note that extra juice. Make a list of all the factors you think are making that negative page rank and try to note which might be more influential, then create a strategy to mimic it as much as possible. I know that we can’t know exactly why it ranks as we are not Google but if you have been around the block long enough and you really dive into it you can get it figured out enough to make that page lose it’s spot.

Copy Cat
Now that you have your map as to why your page is ranking, you need to try your best to follow it. Lets say you have 2 negative results ranking in your top ten results. One is a newer blog that got a handful of inbound links (10 and under) along with about 25 comments to which half of them mention your brand name. The second is a super old pre 2000 domain with no inbound links from external sites but 3 from high PR trusted internal pages. It has your name in the title tag, but the copy isn’t that long or strong.

Lets make it simple to get the point across, for the first site go find a blog that is at least 3 years old, has a good saturation in Google’s index especially no duplicate content or shallow indexing problems. You want to make sure your post gets indexed right away. If you don’t own a site you may have to due some shopping. Talk to friends, hit up forums like Digital Point or others, look at paid posts from places like pay per post or review me (although I haven’t had to use them). You want to be very selective, one of the reasons I haven’t used mainstream paid blog services is you are paying for a review and you may not get good comments and you won’t have a lot of control over your page. If you troll some forums to look for a blog to use you need to be very selective as there is so much junk out there. Pay a lot of attention to index saturation, index rates, and search Google using terms in other post titles to see if those pages are in the top 15-20 results.

Once you have your site, you need to look back on your notes, and pay attention to the on page seo factors. All the stuff from seo 101. How many times the term is used in the Title, Body, Anchor Text both internal and external, all that stuff. Then you want to mimic it with the content in a positive light. If we take our first example of the newer blog post, you would be noting, Title Tag, Body, Comments and then look at the link count both internal and external etc. Once your post is done, go and comment, and start a conversation. If you are not putting time into your comments and just trying to use an excuse to mention your Brand Name it will show and it won’t do anything to help you. Once your search results start to show this new post, the negative post will not be gone at the same time they will exist simultaneously for a while. Make sure these pages have great content because the best way to look shady is to fill the search results with a bunch of fluff.

It is the same thing for the old domain example try to find an older trusted domain to push your content, preferably not a social site as you can lose control of the page.

Why Spamming Squidoo Isn’t Enough
Back to the original message, filling out a lens on Squidoo, Claim ID Hub or any of the like is not enough to combat a well thought out attack against your company. You need to link to these pages and make sure the content is totally unique and not rehashed over and over. Link to RSS Feeds, other pages on your site and turn it into a page that is useful. Think how would I use this page if Reputation Management wasn’t an issue.

MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO NOT CREATE A LINKING BREAD CRUMB
Most likely the people that email me saying they have filled out profiles on 200 plus social sites and 4 of them rank in the top 20 and they can’t figure out why their negative page is still dominating all have the same problem. They link to all their hubs from each page. They create a reciprocal link circle that would make 1999 jealous. They leave a trail straight to Google’s office saying, “all of these pages are optimized for this company and they are all trying to rank for these terms, please spank them.”

Again think about how Google works and why that page is ranking against you. Google wants original content cited from trusted sources that isn’t the same as the other results. They want people to find what they are looking for as quick as possible so they are going to fill their results with diverse pages in order to offer as many options as possible. If there are 100 pages that are using very similar content and the only links they have are from each other that negative page will never go away in fact it may rank better as it is one of the only original page in the whole bunch.

Do not interlink any of your pages at all, and make sure their content is totally unique and different. Get links to all of them but from 100% different sources, and when you build links try and create co-citation with trusted articles and even competitors as that will also help you look more organic and natural and more like the negative page that is ranking.

The Secret Weapon
Social sites can be your secret weapon if used correctly and just like anything with seo if you use some elbow grease and originality you can create silver bullet pages that will always rank and that will build a virtually impenetrable wall blocking out any future negative pages. I see so many spammy Digg submissions or fake profiles trying to leverage the sites trust in order to out rank negative results and it never works. What you need to do instead of spending time filling out 200 profiles across every social site on the planet is pick a core group of 10 or more and turn your profiles into good accounts.

If you made a Digg account that was your company name and it made the homepage once or twice that thing will be top 3 over night. Create a Stumble Upon profile with your company name as the sub domain and go and rate some pages, have someone stumble your profile page after you have shared a good amount of useful content and before you know it that will rank like mad. A Mashable profile that comments a lot is going to rank, Del.icio.us profile that tags a lot of content and is the first to tag some pages that make the Popular status will rank over night as well. These are all legit methods and they work better than most anything as far as long term results that always rank. SEOMoz marketplace ranks really good as well.

I hope this has helped a lot of you that have been emailing, you are half way there just try to have a little more tact in your execution and work on some social accounts and next thing you know your negative listings will be long gone.

I am speaking on Reputation Management next week at SMX West if you are going stop by and say hi, I am going to give out some nuggets as well.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Sorry its a bit late, but viral marketing idea Friday is here! This is a pretty funny one this week, that I think someone who is creative enough of a marketer can take industry hundreds of different ways. I want to share what I feel is the funniest!

I have a neighbor who is a web developer as well as a Soccer coach (young kids) and he has been a big fan of the VMIF’s so far, and asked if I could give him some viral ideas for a soccer training (video tutorials) website he is working on. I thought this would make a perfect discussion for todays post.

First of all check this video out (if you are a man - I am sorry this is gonna be painful to watch)

I think most of you probably are getting the idea of where you can go with this one. What most people fail to realize is that the viral campaign does not have to match 100% to the exact products you are selling. In this case its soccer related and thats it. We have a video of a soccer player getting nailed in the jewels, and as painful as it is - we like to watch it. What other reason can you explain the TV producers showing so much of us guys getting nailed down there on Americas funniest home videos every Sunday night?

This kind of stuff is funny, and you can have fun with the titles of this viral campaign for sure. Some that come to my mind are - “The 10 Most Painful Ways To Ensure You Will Never Have Kids” or “10 Of The Most Painful Soccer Videos You Have Ever Watched” and then show 10 videos you found (or may have) of people getting nailed down there while playing soccer.

Again, I realize that there may be a lot of people reading this post who could have figured this industry out without much help, but we need to remember that not everyone thinks like us Internet marketers. Once I talked to my neighbor about this strategy he starting thinking about things in a whole new light. All it takes is a few good ideas to really have fun with viral marketing.

Another reminder and shameless VMIF plug - if you have any boring industries you want help with viral ideas, please let us know in the form of comments right here on this post, or any other VMIF post, also you can let us know by emailing Chris or myself.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

**UPDATE** A few who are reading this are missing the point (so let me make it right now) and that is - If you are going to make any headway with Craigslist (or anything ie eBay, Amazon etc), you must stand out. This is true with anything marketing related opportunities with your business. You have to figure out something that is going to set you apart, and help you sell your items. I am just sharing what worked for me, nothing more!

I have given other tips in the past on how to sell products on Craigslist, and the feedback has been very positive from our readers here at 97th Floor. I have often been asked to share more of my “Craigslist selling tips”, even more specifically (and recently) I was asked about tips I have for selling a vehicle on Craigslist. Because I am not selling cars everyday, it was hard to give the examples (and case studies - ie screen shots) I knew I could share (that would help others) until I was ready to get rid of an old Nissan Maxima of mine.

This week was the week I finally was ready to get rid of the car, but I also wanted to use selling it as a teaching experience for all the readers here who have been asking for more tips. It has been a good car, and I have owned it for the last 8 years, but it was just time for it to go. I recently purchased a new car, and hate dealing with sales people at dealerships, and trade-ins when I know I can get so much more for my car selling it out-right. That is where Craigslist comes into play.

I know that Nissan Maximas are hot cars, and there are even websites dedicated to them so you might think it is going to be easy to sell my car no matter what, but what I found out was not the case at all. I did two different case studies with my Craigslist postings this week, and one sold my car in an hour, and one didn’t get me a single call. Besides, when I did a search for “1995 Maxima” in my “local” area, there came back 29 results, and there are tons more people out there selling Maximas that did not include 1995 in the title so they did not even come back as results. The point here? There is lots of competition and you need to make yourself stand out, and that is exactly what my two case studies will show you.

Those of you who may have heard of Craigslist, but are wondering how on earth you can make such an ugly site work for you, and make you money need to pay attention. These tips are not earth shattering, and may not help you sell a memory foam mattress (so easily as I sold my car) but with so many people posting on Craigslist, I can see that people clearly do not know what they are doing.

Here is the first case study (see picture below) but this is my listing, which as you can see is very boring and does not stand out. I did not receive one phone call all day, or one email the entire day with this posting:

Here is a screen shot of the second case study. I am sorry I do not have a screen shot of what it looks like compared to all the others but you can imagine by looking at my title of the actual post. I was not able to take a screen shot because I had to pull the listing off so quickly because we were getting so many calls of people wanting to buy my car. Since we sold it so quickly I had no more need to be taking the calls!

Do you see the difference? In order for success on Craigslist, you have to make yourself stand out. You must use “call to action words” like I did - *******TODAY ONLY****ONE DAY OFFER**** using symbols as well to make it stand out. My wording is in all caps. If there are 29 other Nissan Maximas that people are going to be potentially looking at, I need an edge to make people come to my listing.

This info right here that I am giving you is not amazing or “incredible” but it is what separates the good users from bad users on Craigslist. Those that understand the importance of standing out with all the other classified ads, and those that speak to your customers, and the kind of people who are using Craigslist. They want to feel they are getting the best deal possible. They want to see what we are “offering” them or using to “entice” them. They feel that I am going to be willing to work with them to get rid of my product, and give them the best deal. That right there is going to get them to click on your ad, and call you. That my friends - is really how I was able to get 30 phone calls, and how I was able to sell my car in one hour today!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Thanks to Paul for submitting this last Friday in the form of a comment. This one I have so many ways to run with, that I actually had a hard time narrowing it down. I think I will give more examples of what a Financial Planning Company/Industry can do with viral marketing in later posts as well, because there are just so many. For now, I will stick with one of (what I feel) is the funniest stories I have ever heard that can be twisted to fit a Financial Planning or money management Industry and Viral Marketing.

Here is a couple of pictures that were sent to me by Plastic Rewards (another company fishing for viral marketing ideas), a cash back credit card comparison website. Whether its true, or not, it makes me laugh and I know would make a ton of other people laugh. Being in the tech industry, and knowing a lot of computer techs, I have actually had a few of them tell me this stuff really did happen, and that they had to fish the credit cards out of the old “A” drives! (see pictures)

Like I said, I don’t know how true this is, and if people are really stupid enough to put credit cards in the “A” drive when on a website and asked for a credit card, but this is pretty funny if it is!

Since you can relate credit cards to finances, you can use this for a viral marketing campaign with a funny twist. Here would be my ideas of some of the funniest headlines for these pictures. “Ten Places You Should Never Stick Your Credit Card” (yes you could have fun with that one, and I did a simple Google search and found some pretty interesting stuff) or “The Way Stupid People Use Credit Cards [SEE PIC]” or “Please Insert Credit Card - No Wait, Not There!”

You see I could go on and on with the headlines of pictures that give me so much fuel like these ones do. I have several other funny financial related stories, and even more sent to me by Plastic Rewards (thank you - by the way) including pictures that I will use for other VMIF days.

I think you see how these could go pretty viral, and be some of the funniest stories you read for the day. It just takes a little imagination and how you can twist your industry into a viral campaign. Please, continue to send your industry requests in!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

As busy as we are here at 97th, I managed to pull off another one of these posts to keep our VMIF (Viral Marketing Idea Friday) going strong 2 weeks in a row! I think we might just be able to keep this series going strong because of all the feedback and support I got from last week. I appreciate those who left comments, and those who emailed me with their ideas. Like I said in the other post, if you do not see your industry answered on todays post, then keep checking back, because I will eventually get to it.

I got a good viral marketing idea industry question in the form of a comment last week from a good friend of mine - Janet Meiners who also happens to blog at one of the few other marketing blogs I read - Marketing Pilgrim (which I do suggest to all our readers here at 97th Floor) Here is her viral marketing question about this Internet Fax company:

Ok, here’s my boring business that I’m working to promote - efax service. electronic faxes. Any ideas?
Thanks
Janet

Ok, this one is going to be fun. I can see where one might think its pretty a pretty boring industry, and not have any viral marketing ideas, However; the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this question was the scene from Office Space when the three guys take the printer and give it a beat down - gangster style. You know what I am talking about “Damn it feels good to be a gangster” I don’t know where you have been the last several years if you don’t know what I am talking about, but here is a clip for the 1% that may not have seen this movie, and it will also be fun for all those who have seen the movie a million times like me. (enjoy) (song playing in the background might not be safe for work - so turn the speakers off or down if you must)

Even though I used this example (a printer getting the beat down) the headline that I would use for this kind of a viral campaign would be “10 Things You Just Shouldn’t Do To A Fax Machine“, “Can You Believe What Some People Do To Fax Machines?” or “10 Of The Great Fax Moments In TV History” Again, I used the You Tube video of the printer, but I did a quick search and found hundreds of funny pictures and videos of crazy things people were doing to their fax machines. I could have spent hours on it because it was so funny.

This tells me this would be a pretty hot campaign. Trust me, if you do any searches on this you will find some pretty freaking funny (and sick) stuff. A post showing the 10 crazy pictures, and videos (either or too) and a little write up with your take on them (maybe add some humor) would be enough because the videos and/or pictures would be enough for this piece to go viral.

So again, thinking outside the box gives us a pretty good viral marketing idea to run with, even for a boring industry like a efax service one. This is one of several ideas that “popped” in my head. Another one that I thought was pretty funny was, “10 faxes people wish they didn’t send” or “Top 10 Funniest Things Ever Seen Sent by Fax“.

I think you get the idea, so just have fun and use the resources that are our there like Google Images and You Tube, and make it fun. This is why I love viral marketing and social media because this generation supplies us with enough material for two lifetimes!!

This was a great question Janet (so thanks for asking), and again I encourage you to leave your questions in the comments, or email myself or Chris and your viral marketing question could be answered on the next VMIF!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!