Thanks to Ben for asking this weeks viral marketing idea question:

I read your site every now and then because I want to shape my mind to of a top level social marketer.

I especially like you insights marketing ideas for boring industries.

Here is the question though. I have been cracking up head to come up with some interesting and viral campaigns for the “stock photo” industry but I can’t seem to think of anything!

Stock photos are always so generic and their quality is controlled. Very seldom can you find anything remotely funny or stupid of the pictures to be viral.

Do you think you can help me figure this out?

Ben

Ben, this is a great question and an even better industry with unlimited potential. I say unlimited potential because, have you seen how many photos make the front page of Digg? Photos have always done really well on sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit and more recently Plurk, but are some of the best opportunities for exposure for any kind of a viral marketer.

You have to think about the industry as a whole and that you are in the photography business. You may be racking your brain trying to come up with something that is specifically related to “stock” photos, but does not have to be that complicated. If you can start to come up with ideas that are around the photography industry then you are really unlimited to what you can do.

For example - you can take the funny picture approach, the disgusting picture approach, the “oops” picture approach, the amazing picture approach and of course the “you will not believe this unless you see it approach”. These are just a few of the angles you can use when thinking of ideas and titles that would work well for helping something go viral, but understand there are so many more (but I don’t feel like writing till my fingers fall off).

Some titles (and ideas) would be (taking advantage of current news) “Ten Unbelievable Pictures Of Michael Phelps In Beijing” or “The Funniest Faces Made By Olympians Caught On Film” or “There Can Be No Explanation For This Picture” (thats going to make people want to click and check it out with the title alone) “Ten Things Your Cat Does While Your At Work” (then find 10 pictures of Cats doing funny things) or “Ten People Who Wish The Camera Was Never Invented” (then share pictures of people in funny or very compromising situations) A simple Google search would help you find any of these kind of photos, but if you own a Stock photo business, or a photography business in general you should already have a pretty good database of photos to pick from. Even giving you a specific example in your industry that I think would be fun to look at would be “The Top 10 Most Lame Stock Photos Ever Taken” - I mean you yourself said that a lot of the photos were generic, so do your best to find the most generic ones. You could even give it the title “Can You Believe People Use These Photos To Promote Their Business?” I think that one would be funny and do really well! Here is a last minute one (just thought of) that I will give an example of - “10 Online Profile Pictures That Beg The Question: What Were They Thinking?” then show a list of funny profiles pictures like the one below:

It seems I am always preaching this, but if you can think outside the box when doing viral marketing, you will always find something that is a good fit and will do well. its important to remember that you are doing this to drive traffic and get exposure to your website, so no matter if they find you for content or a funny picture - they are finding you and that is the point!

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

I usually don’t go on rants here, but this one has been brewing in my mind for a long time. A recent trip to the Apple store made it that much worse for me too. I was one of the suckers that got the iPhone way back in the day, and own the old school, non 3G one. The one thats a piece of crap now … right?

I hear the commercials about how the new iPhone 3G is half the price, and twice as fast and the only thing I can think of is how I got 100% screwed by Apple. I go into the stores and hear from the Apple “specialists” that I can sell my old iPhone for good money on eBay or Craigslist (average of 400 on eBay) and I even heard of a service that will make it even easier to swap your iPhone (just today).

I have a problem with all this, and wonder why more people don’t. I have to worry about going through all the trouble of getting all my stuff off the old iPhone, make sure its clean and clear, go to drop off spots, figure out the shipping, worry about getting screwed or scammed on eBay or Craigslist (WAY MORE HASSLE THEN I WANT TO DEAL WITH)… especially when I feel I should just be able to go into an Apple store and exchange it right there, and have them take care of the customers that were loyal to them from the beginning.

Besides the iPhone, I own an iPod shuffle, two Mac books, a powerbook, and am about to buy an iMac so I am starting to feel like Apples little bitch with things like this going on with the iPhone. I feel like they should take care of me, let me bring in my iPhone … clear it out for me, get all the files moved over and upgrade me for free - and NOT have to pay 10 bucks more for the unlimited data plan. I mean … COME ON!!!

I just keep thinking about how I paid twice as much for an iPhone that is twice as slow as the new 3G ones and Apple just keeps laughing at suckkers like me (all the way to the bank) that keep doing it and making them even more money. Ok this was a rant, and there is nothing I can do about it, and will probably go and upgrade because the old iPhone is incredibly slow and horrible, but I do feel better now!

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

Just go to MSN home page anytime you want a good idea for a “link bait” driven article written related to money, as they always seem to have some kind of an article that sparks my interest. I have been reading a lot lately about a new online money management social community that offers tips, advice, and all kinds of tools for you to manage your money online as well as connecting with others. That is the inspiration for todays viral post.

I got to thinking about the way we Americans are spending our money lately with high gas prices, high food prices, high health care and just about “high” everything else. I have been super interested in some money trends and what people are still spending their money on, and who is still spending money etc. and things of that nature. I saw a headline the other day that read “Top 10 States where Household Spending has Decreased most during the Economic Downturn” and it got me thinking.

I would be very interested to know Things like “The Number Of Total SUV Sales Today Compared To 3 Years Ago” or “A Timeline - What You Paid For An Average Gallon Of Gasoline over the last 10 years” “The Top 10 Things Consumers Have Stop Spending Money On” or “Ten Things People Still Buy In An Economic Downturn”

This kind of data and information can be gathered from polls, or people actually using the online services of these Internet money management companies. That would make this information pretty amazing as it would be pretty much 100% accurate if the data was taken right from the database of users actually putting this info in. It would just be very interesting to see spending trends and things we waste our money on like “The Average American Spends ($ amount here) On Fast Food Every Month” and so on.

I think videos talking to people on the streets about these topics would do well too and just having fun. Whatever you may decide to do there are many opportunities in this industry that you could have fun with. Just make sure to have fun with the information and come up with something that could appeal to all groups.

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

What does fuzzy handcuffs and the travel industry have to do with viral marketing idea Friday? Read on …

Chris and I have worked with a ton of travel industry professionals over the years and helping them with their online marketing needs. We have even spoke at travel industry conferences on SEO and Social Media. I feel I have a pretty grasp on the whole travel industry online scene and wanted to share a viral marketing idea that I was thinking about (because of my recent travels) that would probably go huge and make front page on every top social site out there. Also, because I have so many contacts, friends and people I know in the travel industry this is for you guys!

A week ago (about) I was at the Grand Canyon (south rim) and was staying in a Hotel suite in Flagstaff (about an hour away from the south rim (for those that don’t know). As the vacation was winding down, and we were getting ready to go home I did my usual walk through to make sure no items were left behind. Once I feel comfortable that nothing was left then we check out. I do this every time I stay at a Hotel and am kind of anal about it. During my latest trip to Tucson Arizona for a family reunion (for the first time ever) something was left at the Hotel. It was the power cord to my Daughters Nintendo DS.

It got me thinking.

Then this morning I hear on the radio something crazy that someone had left behind from a recent trip and the light went off. With the proper research you could do one of the funniest posts ever about “The 10 Weirdest Things Maids Found In A Hotel Room” or the “Funniest Things Ever Left By Accident In A Hotel Room” The reason I think this would do so well is because this morning when I was listening to some of the stuff it made me want to wet my pants it was so funny. The only thing I could think of that would make it better would be pictures of the items, or (even better) videos. Here was a list of some of the items left behind - a wooden leg, fake chest hair, fuzzy pretend hand cuffs (hmmm-wonder what that was for). This is what I want to know, how drunk do you have to be to leave your Hotel without your wooden leg? Don’t you think you would know you might be missing that???

All it would take is for you to talk to a maid for 5 minutes, and you would probably have some of the funniest viral opportunities on your hands ever!! They may even have some of the items on hand, and with a little bribing, may let you even snap some pictures.

If I were doing marketing for a travel industry website that was either affiliate, actual booking, reviews, or even one of the big dog travel websites, having a blog and running this kind of story would do so good in the social scene. It is also perfect because it relates to the industry perfectly. The key is to finding the stories and ideas that relate and grow them from there. Again, I can’t even take a vacation without thinking about viral marketing, but thats what I do and love! Enjoy!

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

I am sorry its been a few weeks since a viral marketing idea Friday post, but things have been super busy around here as you know! I personally have been on vacation for a couple of weeks, and just hitting the projects hard. I am hoping to be done with all the excitement for a while so I can get back into (every Friday) providing examples, and answering your questions about specific industries and how to go viral. Thanks for being patient! Also a reminder to make sure and send me any of your viral questions, or just comment in the post and I may feature your question!

I have done quite a bit of digging (no pun intended) around on sites like Digg, Yahoo Buzz and Propeller and have found some amazing stories that are related to the credit industry. I got asked the question if a site offering cash back credit cards (for example) would do well on one of these types of platforms. It is important to take a step back and realize the information you have on your site - vs - the information related to your site that could in fact, do well.

If you are trying to take the “specs” of a specific credit card you offer, and make it hit the front page of Digg it will never happen, but if you look at creative ways of finding credit related information you could probably do better. For example, some of the stories that have done well have been related to credit card security or theft. A pretty good credit card related article I read the other day gave the title of “I’ll have a Number One With Extra Cheese and a side order of credit card theft!” This title gives you more reason to click, and gives some good link bait in making you wonder what the article is about.

Some other titles (or ideas I researched out) that could do well for credit card related industries would be “People You Freely Give Your Credit Card Information, But Shouldn’t” or “Ten Ways For Parents To Protect Their Kids Credit” or “101 Ways A College Student Can Build A Healthy Credit Score” or my favorite - “10 Secrets The Credit Card Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know”

The point here is to remember the type information that you provide is the most important ingredient when it comes to social media marketing, and not everything on your site is “viral” or “buzz” worthy. If you take some time to create content that is good (think of the above examples), and that would appeal to the masses, you can’t go wrong!

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

I have been working along with my brother Patrick (who is an insane web designer) and a kick butt programmer named Charles Berube for the past seven months on an analytics tool. I am happy to say that it is finally ready for anyone and everyone to test out. We have had it in private beta for about two months and it is stable enough now that we want you to give it a try.

It is called BLVD Status it is a killer tool with a lot of features that no other analytics tool offers, it is also extremely easy to set up and get running. To put it simply it is has the live stats like you are used to with products like Have a Mint, but with conversions and in depth info. There is a dashboard that has live instant stat info somewhat similar to Mint but with a conversion section that shows you the latest conversions. It also has a killer Keyword section showing the latest hits from keywords as well as what search engine and what your rank is for that term both live and on average.

Here is a Screen Shot of the the Top Row of the Dashboard:

Features
RSS Conversions:

You heard me right, we have it set up to track your referrals to subscribing to your RSS feed. Until now you had to set up complex Google outbound click reporting, or set up your own special java script or guess as to whether StumbleUpon, Digg or a blog link brought you the new subscribers.

Digg This Conversions:
If you love social media like I do you have to have live stats as you don’t want to wait til the next day to find out you are on digg with only an hour left of voting time. You want to know the second you are on Digg, so you can send that url around or watch your comments etc.This way you can best welcome and utilize that influx of traffic. But we took it a step further, in the dasboard you can set up Digg This buttons that have our analytics tied to it so you can treat it like a conversion and see which referrals bring you the most Diggs. If you are on Reddit, Stumble, Sphinn and Digg at once which one of the other communities brings you extra votes. If you see that Reddit will bring you more Diggs and help you reach the front page easier you should start tweaking your strategy accordingly. Right now this is only available for Digg but soon it will be most if not all Social Buttons. We have done a lot of studies in this area and will be releasing some sweet data on the BLVD Status blog talking about conversion rates to the Digg This button.

Live Keyword Tracking:

This is a favorite amongst most people that have tested it, there is a dashboard in side BLVD Status dedicated to Keyword referrals. It will show you the most recent referrals, all time referrals, what engine they came from and what your live or current rank is. It also has a filter so you can just view Google Referrals, Google Blogsearch, Live, Yahoo and pretty much all the main engines. It uses Googles API when getting the ranking so for now it will only let you go to number 32. So anything that ranks further back than 32 will show up as >32.

We will be adding a ranking reporting tool that will let you see what your rankings are, how many hits, conversions etc. you got for that term as well.

Traffic Allotments for Beta:
Right now we have now limits as to your levels we want to get as many people using it as possible and not limit your stats. As we grow if our servers start to take a beating at it could effect the reliability of the product we will announce a new traffic level structure.

Feedback:
We want your feedback we want to make this the analytics product that offers all the tricks and trinkets you could ever want. When we look at feedback and decide whether or not to do anything about it we will always lean towards the side of the feature helping someone better understand and ultimately improve their web site.

For now please send any and all feedback to - chris@blvdstatus.com or leave comments at the BLVD Status blog it will be live this week.

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

Quick update: Social Media for Firefox 3 is ready. You can download it here.

Right now it is just the update with Del.icio.us working better. We will be releasing an update soon that will be adding Mixx and have some new options with StumbleUpon. Then after that we will be working on another Kick A version that will have all kinds of crazy stuff it is going to be rad.

When we release the next version I will be uploading a video on how to use it at all the different sites and how you really can use it to build top profiles. Last year I used it to build a good Digg profile, one of my friends is in the top 15 Stumblers and he used it to do that, and I have had literally hundreds of people say they have used it to help them build more powerful profiles.

Nearly 100k downloads of the old version can be bad right?

Stay tuned, make sure you subscribe to our feed for updates. Also stay tuned I have a really cool beta analytics product for blogs that is about a week or two away from release. If anyone wants to help beta post in the comments or email me.

Thanks to Marios for lighting some fire.

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

We are getting close on have a Firefox 3 compatible version of Social Media for Firefox. We are sorry it wasn’t ready with the FF 3 launch but it is coming and it is going to be sick. We have taken the opportunity to add some upgrades. Here are some quick features we are working on if you happen to have any additions you think would make it be an even better tool we are all about it and please add in the comments.

We are looking into
> Showing Thumb Up, Down and Review Counts for StumbleUpon and let you choose which combo to display
> Adding Mixx and Sphinn
> Letting You Choose Which Sites to Have Displayed in the Bar
> Adding some really cool social news hubs to be able to scan the content but I don’t want to release the sites yet as we are testing and I don’t want to get people hopes up.
> We are thinking about Taking out Del.icio.us they have made some upgrades so we are testing but if we release right away it will be out as it never works and their API is not supported very well. We can always add back in.

Again any other ideas please send them over the tool has had near 100,000 downloads and we plan on making it even better.

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

In my opinion this is a pretty easy industry to get creative with, as far as viral marketing is concerned, but I still got asked the question about the viral marketing ideas (I would have) by a lady who runs a website/blogsite giving information about sleeping disorders.

As in a few of my other more popular viral posts, I am going to again use my son because he was the true inspiration for this post. My son does not have any sleeping disorders (that I know of) but he sure can fall asleep in the funniest of positions, and in the strangest of places that you have to wonder how its comfortable enough to even fall asleep at in the first place!

Check out this picture, and you will probably see where I am going with this post:

I was thinking an absolutely adorable post would be a photo (or video I guess would be ok) compilation of 10 or 15 of the funniest positions, and places you have ever found your kids asleep at. A great title could be “15 Of The Funniest Places Kids Fall Asleep At” or “15 Of The Funniest Positions You Have Ever Seen Kids Asleep In”

This kind of a post would also work if you were in the mattress industry, because I have seen people in this industry turn out some pretty funny posts about strange sleep disorders. Don’t take any of this as making fun or light of a problem, but it may be a good avenue to help make people aware of the seriousness of these disorders that would normally not know.

Of course you are going to have to make people laugh in order to make a viral campaign like this go anywhere, but again its a good way to help make more people aware. You can poke fun of an industry, and not make the industry mad at you, even if just a little tact is used. By doing so you are spreading the word to someone who may need to hear it, and you have accomplished your goal in creating something that could go viral!

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

Recently I was interviewed about keyword research, and why doing proper keyword research is important (or if it still is). I appreciate Nate for wanting me to answer these questions. You can find the full edited keyword research audio interview if you click on that link, or read the text highlights on his marketing blog teaching other people how to start an online business.

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