Last month, the WSJ published an article on how book publishers are using viral videos to promote new books. “Book Trailers” is the name that authors and publishers have given to these videos aimed at YouTube audiences and they are quickly becoming a normal part of the marketing cycle of a new book. Instead of making an expensive and time consuming book tour through various cities, why not grab a camcorder, sketch a few scenes on a storyboard and create a few minutes of film related to the plot or theme of your book? It is, in fact, something that every book publisher today is doing.
One of the world’s biggest publishing houses, HarperCollins, went even further and built a book trailer studio in their offices that will have the capacity to create 500 book trailers a year. This is a sign that established players in such an old-fashioned and non-technical industry like book publishing are recognizing and unleashing the potential of viral videos.
Perhaps one of the best examples out there for a successful book trailer is the short movie
that came out of this idea for the book “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. When she finished writing this book about the “secret and dark history of capitalism” and how governments have used the aftermath of every major crisis in history to induce radical political measures, she sent the book to Alfonso Cuarón, the Mexican award-winning director of Children of Men. Teaming up with him and his brother Jonás Cuarón, they created the short film/book trailer “The Shock Doctrine” that even landed a couple of film festival award nominations in Venice and Toronto. The book’s website ShockDoctrine.com is rich in social media elements and leverages the success of the book trailer, making it a central part of the online presence of the book and the author.The short movie itself is not an ad for the book, it’s more a short documentary that explains the central thesis of the book. Representing a good recipe for a viral video, “The Shock Doctrine” engages the viewer in the think process of the author and leaves him begging for more.
In this case, the attributes of an excellent filmmaker combined with an interesting thought proposition, resulted in a successful viral video effort that has more than 600,000 views in YouTube and contributed to drive sales for a traditional-media product: a book.
1 Comment- Jun 08
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How to Wiki: Wikis as Marketing Tool?
- Posted by Bernardo Sosa
- Published in Advice and Tips, Social Media Marketing
The Wikipedia definition of Wikipedia reads: “Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and nearly all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Having steadily risen in popularity since its inception, it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited web sites worldwide.
In fact, Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world, according to Alexa, with 52% of its page views coming from the English version of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the worlds biggest and most successful wiki, but there are thousands of niche wikis out there and due to their collaborative and social nature, they should be part of any social media marketing strategy.
Marketing on Wikis
- Many wikis let you make updates anonymously. Ideally, you should log-in and create an identity. Be honest and be yourself.
- Don’t use wikis for self-promotion. It is not intended for that and your entry will end up being deleted or at least edited.
- While you want your business or brand to be added, it is better to build out complementary and appropriate information as part of adding your business. For example, if you are a professional social media marketing consultant, you’ll want to add content to the definition of social media or the definition of marketing.
- It is OK to correct mistakes, it is not OK to remove competitors.
- When you add a new page, make sure you start with the template that is appropriate. If you make mistakes, other people will fix them, and if you spam with inappropriate content, other people will remove you.
It is important to have a clear picture of what wants to be achieved with wikis. The main professional aim on Wikipedia or other important wikis should be tracking and managing what is said about you, your brand or your company. At least in the case of Wikipedia, their links are far too influential for anybody to ignore its content, especially given the public’s misunderstanding of its liberal editorial policies. It is also a very good way to contribute your knowledge of your market or the focus of your business to the community. Wikis should not be looked at as a tool to generate links or to increase a website’s page ranking. In fact, all links on Wikipedia are “nofollow”, meaning that they are not counted as a link by Google or the other search engines, which use links as part of their ranking algorithm.
Wiki Etiquette
There is a set of unwritten rules that will ensure a successful use of wikis as marketing tool.The bottom line is that any significant wiki community will be very vigilant and strictly opposed to biased information. Any effort to enhance a Wikipedia listing should make sure that it aware of and follows the established guidelines. That said, here’s a guide to creating a new page in Wikipedia.
Niche Wikis
This is a short list of niche wikis, which can be relevant to specific businesses or brands:
- WikiTravel: the wikipedia of travel.
- Dealipedia: a business wiki for mergers, acquisitions, venture investments, IPO and other deals.
- LyricWiki: all the lyrics you can handle.
- WikiMapia: collaborative mapping.
- Wikia: community supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. Currently, they support over 6000 communities in more than 70 languages.
While wikis allow very little deviation from the established rules and customs, if you pay attention and follow the rules, wikis offer an extremely powerful forum for enriching the community and associating your online brand with intelligent and useful content.
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As I’m writing my first post on PandemicBlog, Steve Jobs is speaking to the crowd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and is announcing the next generation of Apple’s mobile operating system and its mobile phone device. The secrecy and buzz that is built around these keynote speeches have always given a boost in the traditional media to the announcements that Jobs makes that day and therefore boost sales the day that products finally reach the shelves. The online real-time following of the event takes place through blogs, Twitter and Twitter tools like Summize, generating an enormous amount of Apple-related content and opinions before, during and after the event. During a Steve Jobs’ keynote, Twitter traffic is 10 times greater than usual. Within an hour of the end of the keynote, the majority of the Twitter community is aware that on July 11th the new iPhone will be available at stores with a price of $199. This is how Apple will benefit from the Twitter/keynote combined madness and is also an example of the potential of Twitter for viral marketing efforts.
140 Characters to promote your brand
Several brands are using Twitter as part of their online marketing strategy. Moreover, they are engaging users by being in a position where they can penetrate their “circle of trust”, which in Twitter is the circle of the people they follow. Here is a list of companies (and their number of followers) that are using Twitter to inform “fans” of upcoming products, events, promotions, announcements, etc. In the case of Amazon, their Twitter profile works as a Book Finder; if you send them a message with a book title or ISBN, they answer back with the book’s price.
- Carnival Cruise Lines (249 followers)
- Apple Inc (2,467 followers)
- Intel Software Network (160 followers)
- PodTech Network (1,163 followers)
- Barack Obama (37,544 followers)
- Zappos (6,352 followers, Zappo’s CEO is twitting)
- H&R Block (482 followers)
- Amazon’s Book Finder (328 followers)
The mechanics of influence
The Twitter community is made up of highly engaged, pro-technology early adopters that look to enrich their Twitter activity by following important, interesting and influential members, as well as friends, relatives and colleagues. Being an “influencer” community, it is likely to shape the direction, preferences and opinions of others. The more followers a Twitter members has, the more influential he or she is and the more impact his thoughts, recommendations, complaints, reviews and comments will have. Like any other online tool that has reached a critical mass, there has to be an overall strategy in place in order to include it in a social media marketing campaign.
The Twitter pulse
The instant and constant nature of Twitter posts, and their ability to be generated from everywhere (thanks to Twitter integration with mobile phone devices via texting) opens the door for a parallel universe of user-generated content. Tools like Summize or Twist let the user search for a specific word in the “public timeline” and Twist also allows the search for trends of a specific search term against another. Twitter can be an excellent tool to see what is being said in real-time about your brand and manage your online reputation. Moreover, it let’s you socialize the way you manage your digital footprint. It is important to know that the Twitter pulse is representative of a certain segment of consumers and that this segment is highly influential and highly opinionated.
Bernardo Sosa is a new member of the Pandemic Labs team and he will be blogging here regularly.
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