• What’s in it for me (the customer)?
• Why should I care?
• Why should I believe you?

3 Questions Your Customers Want You To Answer is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

My quick thoughts on why this is a good thing;

• Once the user takes an action, the advertiser doesn’t have to pay to retarget you with new ads.
• The advertiser gets more bang for their buck.  The word of mouth marketing is worth a lot more than a visit to a lame website with only nutrition facts available.  Your entire network now knows you’re a fan.
• If you google ‘Vitamin Water 10′ the only page (besides paid placements) that is related with Glaceau is in position 5 and falls below the fold. This probably has to do with the entire site being in flash, lacking detailed product page titles and basic SEO, but I guess if you can’t own your brand name, then you change the rules.
• Facebook allows you to create almost an exclusive club for the product, providing a stream of new content and interactions with the brand on a regular basis.
• Directing users to your social site allows you to talk to them in the space they spend a lot of  their time without the waste of the usual banner ads.

What do you think?  As a consumer, would you rather interact with a brand on Facebook? If you’re an advertiser, have you tried this approach? If so, how did it work?

Trend: Advertisers Driving Traffic to Facebook Instead of Their Usual Homepage is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Social Media Metrics Plugin for Google Analytics is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

1. Prezi – move beyond the standard linear presentation and give your next deck a stunning zooming effect.  Create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs and drawings. Prezi is still in private beta, but they have a test tool you can kick the tires with.
2. Fliggo – is a platform solution for creating your own video website. Whether it’s a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family, Fliggo can be as much or as little as you’d like.
3. FeedWeaver - combine multiple RSS feeds into one. Feedweaver allows you to create, filter and mashup personalized RSS feeds similar to Yahoo Pipes, but without the learning curve.
4. Qipit - copy and share notes using your mobile phone.  Capture whiteboards or handwritten notes with your camera and they are converted into a PDF form.
5. Pixlr – online image editor built in flash similar to Photoshop Elements.
6. Drop.io – easily share images, video, audio, documents and other digital content using a simple and private interface.

What is your favorite new webapp?  Login to the comments with your Facebook account below and let me know.

6 Kickass WebApps is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Search Engine Marketing Basics – How the Google Ad Auction Works is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.

Martin Luther King Jr. on Making Tough Decisons is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

10 Web Applications for FriendFeed

Social Media Breakfast #6 Memphis and an update from Sharing at Work

Will it Matter in 5 Years?

On Demand WordPress Theme and a nice Thesis Update

The Most Brilliant Outdoor Campaign Ever

How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business and 40 Creative Design Layouts from Smashing Magazine

I also ordered two books: The Leader of the Future 2 and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What I’m Reading this Week is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Legendary (and fictional) record producer Tommy Silk helps you rock out your R.O.I and synthesize your sales by making a free commercial song with jingle lyrics written for your own type of business. Jingle lyrics are customized based on the business name and information you provide.  Commercials are based on Your Love, originally performed by The Outfield.  Jingle Maker is provided by Intuit, the makers of tax software QuickBooks.  I like how they’ve created a very creative and innovative campaign for a product that isn’t traditionally sexy.  In addition to the Jingle Maker microsite, they also have footprints on YouTube and Facebook

Mikes Hard Lemonade Victim Video

Need a day off, but you have to have an alibi?  Let Mike’s Hard Lemonade put together a personalized news clip that you can use to cover your tracks.  Upload a picture, give them some basic information and you’ve got yourself a custom video detailing your hard luck.  You can get sucked up in a street sweeper, stuck on a carnival ride or have your cat perform CPR on you.  To top it all off, they put the video in a customized web page that resembles a news website.  The videos are hard from believable, but worth many laughs.

Little Gordon Ramsay

Caterer.com has created 2 amazingly funny ads featuring a young Gordon Ramsay to promote their hospitality site. For my money (and attention), there’s nothing better than a kid with an English accent dropping f-bombs.  You have to see the videos to believe it. Video 1, Video 2.

Office Max – Power to the Penny

To promote their 1¢ back-to-school specials, Office Max put a hidden camera on an actor who went around to various establishments such as a deli, a used car lot and a jewelry store trying to pay with pennies.  As you can imagine, he wasn’t greeted with welcome arms after presenting a bag full (or truck load) of pennies on the counter. Office Max ends the spots with ‘We’ll take your pennies’.

The only down fall I found with this promotion is that the videos aren’t able to be viewed without going directly to the Office Max microsite, which is a major bummer to the viral aspect of this campaign.

Häagen-Dazs Help the Honey Bees

Maker of all things delicious, Häagen-Dazs, has created a public service announcement around the disappearance of the honey bee.  The ice cream gods go on to ask customers to plant a seed and support bee-keepers so the bees can continue to pollinate the delicious fruits that go into their ice cream.  Häagen-Dazs has also used more traditional forms of media to bring their cause to the forefront, including promoting their Bee-Boy dance crew that has been lighting up YouTube and the blogosphere.

I love the social aspect that Häagen-Dazs has employed with this campaign; its nice to see a company spend some of their own money to support and bring attention to causes they believe in.  I feel this only builds a stronger brand and increases the stickiness of their customer.  Check out the Bee-Boy dance crew video on this page in the feature video section.

Your Thoughts?

So, what have you learned from these?  What insight or tips have you taken away from these brilliant campaigns?  I’ve detailed my thoughts and tips below for making a creative and viral online marketing campaign below, but I want to hear what you think.  Leave your feedback in the comments or drop me a link to a campaign you find creative and witty.

Tips for making a creative and viral online marketing campaign.

• Make sure there is something in it for the user
• Make it easy and rewarding
• Think instant gratification
• Be sure the campaign doesn’t overshadow the product
• Insure users will connect the campaign to the product
• Make it desirable to pass on

Creative Online Marketing Campaigns is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

A successful Facebook application should:

• Complement and build on features already based in the site – SuperPoke, FunWall and the like do a great job of filling in the gaps and adding features to facebook’s existing functionality.
• Solve a problem – It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but successful applications do a good job of solving small problems.  Good examples of this are BigPhoto, Birthday Calendar and Social Profiles (TagK).
  
• Simple/Low learning curve – Users should have a sense of what the application does without much thought.
• Allow users to create, build and shape the content to fit their desired environment – Animoto Videos does an excellent job of this.  They simply give the user the tools to create and build off of the content the user already has.
• Requires a second person to be successful – Facebook already does a good job of this in general, but applications like Scrabulous that almost require a 2nd person to play can really help to exponentially grow an application.
• Competitive element - Bragging rights are what its all about.  Users want their achievements blasted across their network.  They want to be the best and be recognized for it. See Bowling Buddies.
  
• Provides value to user – Work to answer what’s in it for them?

What do you think a successful facebook application should have?  What are the applications that you think do a good job of it?  Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Creating a Successful Facebook Application is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Summer Music Playlist is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!