Simply Zesty» Kickass – The Movie Of The Year – SimplyZesty

Kickass – The Movie Of The Year

Niall Harbison — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:28:35 +0000

Full disclosure (Universal Ireland Are A Client Of Ours)
We don’t often blog about clients as we just like to keep the blog about social media tips and news from the online world but a combination of a busy couple of days and the burning desire to tell you about something really cool led to this blog post. Now you would probably think that as a client of ours we are of course going to say that this is an incredible movie but it’s not our nature to plug just any old stuff here on the blog and this is actually something that we are blown away to be working on especially as the plot has some strong social media elements.

We were lucky enough to see the movie recently (research) and it was one of those movies where you walked out the door and just said wow! I am not a huge super hero or cartoon fan and was actually thinking it would be just another super hero movie when I went to see it but the mixture of fast paced action and the real novelty of the script left me feeling as if Kick Ass would be a huge cult movie for many years to come. I Think Quentin Tarantino mixed with some superheroes, great script and a few kids thrown in to perpetrate the violence and you are only scratching the surface of this flick. Trust me you are going to love seeing this one and watch out for all the fun stuff lined up around town in the build up to the launch.

Why 2010 Will Be The Remembered As The Year Mobile Social Media Came Of Age

What Is The ROI On Social Media – Video

Niall Harbison — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:47:00 +0000

I first spotted this video over on Christian Huges blog a couple of months ago and have been meaning to share it for some time. You may recognize the theme as it is yet another from Erik Qualman the author of Socialnomics (who we interviewed here about social search) and producer of great videos. I get kind of sick of watching these videos myself purely because I see them so many times at conferences and in presentations but they are well worth a watch the first time as the information they contain brings home some good points. ROI (return on investment) is something that is crucial to the whole social media industry and a side of the business that if we are all honest about is still evolving so at the very least if these videos get some discussion going then it can only be a good thing. The one thing that bugs me about people being so focused on the ROI (which they should be of course) is that nobody asks about the ROI of the Irish Times or of advertising against soaps on TV, do they still provide good ROI? Not so sure. Anyway finish your week with a few minutes of easy viewing with some nice headline figures and some catchy music…

5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage

Niall Harbison — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:59:56 +0000

When you think of social media you are mostly tempted to think of services like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr but most of us seem to disregard Video. We just accept that it is there but many of us don’t see it as inherently social. I wanted to pick 5 campaigns that I have seen over the last year that have all had massive success and that nearly every single reader of this blog will have heard of and where 90% of their success has come about by the people behind them relying on video. When you think of video you think of YouTube and you are probably right to do so as it is indeed the platform that matters and even though video has seen small declines last year it is services like YouTube that you should focus your attention on. These campaigns all had very specific goals and most used other social media channels to piggyback on and spread the word but it was the video that appealed to the masses and without it they would not have been anywhere near as successful a social media campaign.

Island Reef Job

In terms of money spent to coverage ratio this had to be one of the top campaigns of the last 12 months. We all know that “The Best Job In The World” was to look after an island in Australia for six months while doing pretty much nothing but surfing, swimming and writing the odd blog post while getting paid a bucket full of money. Applicants were asked to send in videos and the video below gave us a real picture of what the job would be like and proved to be the call to action that 1000s needed to get applying. The video was also picked up by news organisations all over the world and ensured more coverage than the Queensland tourist board could ever have wished for. The used their tiny budget to generate worldwide coverage thanks to social media and video in particular.

Socialnomics

There is no doubt that you will have seen this video, nearly everybody in the industry has. It was commissioned by Erik Qualman (read our post with him on SEO and social search here) along with these other popular videos that you will no doubt recognize to help promote his Socialnomics book. The videos are not complicated and simply took some freely available data and statistics that we have all heard and turned them into a sexy video format with funky music that made the perfect tool for social media companies and brands to play all over the world and to be used at conferences. The videos tapped in to a movement of people to social media over the last year and helped promote the book in a way that would normally have costs millions of dollars in advertising budget at a fraction of the cost online.

IKEA

Many of you will have seen this campaign from IKEA a couple of months ago and it showed their very smart use of tagging photos on Facebook to spread a message virally. The reason this campaign got so much coverage however was that the smart team behind the campaign turned it in to a short video explaining how it worked. There is no way this would have been picked up by the blogs all over the world if it had just been a simple press release as the message would have been lost. This is the perfect example of how video should be used to supplement an existing social media campaign.

U2 Live On YouTube

U2 didn’t become the biggest band in the world by accident and they are surrounded by some of the smartest marketing people in the world who started embracing social media recently. Bono often gives out about dwindling royalty earnings and the rise of piracy but this move would have gone a long way to supplementing their already massive worldwide tour earnings. You’ll notice that along the bottom of all videos on YouTube is a link to directly buy the song and other marketing efforts were in place to turn users from viewers streaming on YouTube for free in to paying customers of the band. Add to that the massive amount of media coverage the stunt received all over the world and you had a very profitable day at the office for U2.

Twitter In Plain English

For the first 2 years that Twitter was running they featured this video on their homepage to explain what their service did. It wasn’t produced internally but instead a company called CommonCraft who specialize in creating this sort of video and offered it in return for a link on their homepage and over 10 million video views. Commoncraft tapped in to a valuable platform and have made similar videos around services like RSS, Wikis and other social platforms that has in turn seen them hired for numerous custom videos for companies like Google and Linkedin. This shows the power of piggybacking on other social media tools and providing valuable information and in return a small video production company now enjoys worldwide brand appeal.

Pat Phelan Talking Future Of Mobile

Niall Harbison — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:01:02 +0000

Carrying on in our series of videos from winter camp today we have Pat Phelan talking about the mobile industry and showing off mobile phones of all shapes and sizes during his presentation. One thing that become apparent listening to all the speakers on the day is that mobile is going to be playing a more and more important role in our lives going forward and we are going to be consuming more content in a wider range of ways due to increased network speeds. Pat Phelan is the founder and President of Cubic Telecom, a well known disruptor in telephony circles and one of the leading voices of Voice 2.0. Pat has developed a number of unique products for the USA, UK and Irish markets including MAXroam, and is a board member of Global Roaming, a NASDAQ listed company. Sit back and enjoy a unique insight into the mobile industry from on of it’s leading lights…

Denny iPhone App – The Future Of Advertising?

Niall Harbison — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:36:39 +0000

We all know that advertising is increasingly getting ignored by consumers as they get smarter and tune out from all the messages than companies try to bombard them with on a daily basis. There has also been a move by agencies to create iPhone apps recently and for the most part I have been sceptical as most companies have blown huge budgets on creating apps that largely get ignored by the public. At the weekend I came across an app that changed all of my perceptions about how brands could and perhaps should be using the app store. The iFry Denny iPhone app is very simple but once it was recommended by a friend I simply had to download it. Once installed on your phone you have the ability to add sausages (Denny of course) to your virtual frying pan shaking to ensure they don’t overcook and adding or removing as they are done.

The game is incredibly simple yet highly addictive and you will be engrossed for a good 5 minutes as you aim to cook a pan full of perfect sausages. This really is taking user engagement with a brand to a whole new level and the developers of the app and Dennys themselves should be applauded for this innovative form of advertising.

I have no idea how much the app cost (I’d guess between 20k and 30k) but it is far more effective than any traditional campaign in my opinion. These days we flick channel when the ads are on TV, tune out on the radio and never click on banner ads. Here are some of the reasons why I think this ad from Denny is far more effective…

Why The Denny App Is Great Advertising

Brand Ambassadors

I will now be walking around for the next year with an advert for Denny in my pocket. I will take that advert out at parties, show friends and tell other people to get the free app. I have become an ambassador for Denny. Would I ever do that with a billboard ad?

User engagement

I may not play the game every single day but Denny got me to engage with their advert for over 5 minutes. I was staring at their logo and trying to fry one of their products perfectly while concentrating on their sausages for 5 minutes of my life. That blows looking at a 30 second clip of sausages frying on TV out of the water.

Press for being innovative

Would I ever write about a radio advert? How many people are going to pick this up online and write about it and create links back to Denny’s website. Using cutting edge innovative technology like this doesn’t just get your customers to engage with you through the app but also gets you noticed online and people talking about you through different channels. This post that will be read by over 1000 people and appear on the web for eternity is testament to that.

Brainwashing

I have spent 5 minutes trying to cook “The perfect Denny Sausage”. That sausage looks amazing on my little screen and I really really want one now. What do you think is going to happen next time I go in to the supermarket and am presented with a huge choice of sausages? I am going to reach out and grab the sausages that “I know” are perfect.

All Star Panel – Talking Future Of Social Media

Niall Harbison — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:31:16 +0000

When you go to conferences I often find that the best discussions arise during the panel discussions as all sorts of questions get asked and the speakers get involved in discussions between themselves and challenge each others ideas. This was certainly true at our winter camp last week when Pat Phelan (Maxroam), John Kennedy (Editor Silicon Republic and technology editor Irish Independent), Gail Power (Facebook) and Don O’Leary(Google) sat down to talk about the future of social media and field questions from the audience. Some really good ideas were put forward and some good discussion had by all with some great insights into where all the technology is heading…

Damian Ryan – The Future Of Social Media

Lauren Fisher — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:56:38 +0000

Following on from videos earlier in the week from Facebook and James Whatley we have video from our winter camp during the week of Damian Ryan setting the scene for the conference. He tells us a little bit about the market, where it is heading, global trends and how social media fits in to it all. Damian is a veteran of the digital world who currently works for for Results International Group, the world’s leading specialist M&A firm for the marketing, communications and digital media sectors. He established the Golden Spider internet awards and is c-author of Understanding Digital Marketing and spends his time split between Dublin and London.

Adding Video To Your Linkedin Profile

Niall Harbison — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:33:49 +0000

Linkedin is a fantastic tool but for all it’s networking potential and the huge resource it is for employers and candidates alike the one fault that it has in my opinion is that it doesn’t allow you to add very much rich content like video. Adding video to Linkedin might not be relevant to everybody but for companies with video content like ourselves it can really be the difference in having your profile noticed or not. The uses for this trick are only limited by your imagination and I can see people using it to pitch for busines, applying for jobs or even doing video demos to show off their knowledge. The video could even be of a product you sell or simply a demonstration of the website or services you offer. For bigger companies it is a great way of showing off some of your own branding and having a video presence on your linkedin profile…

Adding Video To Your Linkedin Profile

10 Video Tips For Making Better Facebook Fan Pages

Niall Harbison — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:19:12 +0000

Facebook fan page videos

One of the things clients and readers of this blog ask us about are Facebook fan pages and how to create them. Only yesterday Lauren was complaining about just how hard they are to manage so we wanted to create a guide that would answer some of the most common questions we get asked and show you with a short video so as there is no doubt whatsoever. We can’t guarantee that Facebook themselves won’t change these page settings around again but for the moment these are the questions on facebook fan pages that you ask most often…

How To Set Up Your Own Facebook Fan Page

You are probably wondering why this even makes it to the list but if we had a penny for every time somebody asked us how to build a Facebook fan page we would be very rich indeed. It is a simple enough task but as you will see from the video the information is buried and can be hard to find.

Adding Extra Admins To Your Page

You may run the Facebook page between a couple of you in the company or indeed your page may be getting so large that you need several people to manage it and this video will show you how to add extra admins to your Facebook fan page.

Adding FBML Boxes To Your Page

The code behind Facebook fan pages is FBML which can be very annoying to work with but it is what it is and you will have to use this video to get the basics and start working around the different ways of updating your pages.

Targeting Your Updates By Country And Language

The beauty of Facebook is the targeted nature of what you can do and sending out updates and status updates can be targeted at whatever language or country you want so as you are hitting your target market and not annoying fans with irrelevant updates.

Updating Your Fans Directly

You may want to send an update directly to your fans and the good news is you can either send text, links or even a video to your fans directly. It will appear in their updates section on their profile and it is an effective way of sending out more important messages.

Turning FBML Boxes Into Tabs Or Applications

Once you have created your FBML tabs or boxes the next step is to turn then into applications or have them as tabs at the top of the fan page so as people can browse them at ease. Simple to do when you know how and this video teaches you how.

Growing Your Initial Fan Base

Every Facebook fan page needs some fans to start it off and one simple and effective way of doing that is to suggest the fan page to your own friends that you have on your personal profile. You will be able to give the page an initial push by using this simple technique.

Choosing Your Landing Page

Most people leave the wall as their default landing page (the first page that people see when they arrive and are not fans of the page) but you can change which page visitors land on and create great “calls to action” to engage your fans immediately and turn them into longer term fans.

Importing Your Blog Via RSS

This option might not work for everybody (we don’t use it as it just sends out links to our blog and we would rather people stay here to read it) but if used correctly it is an easy way to push content to your wall. You can add your blog’s RSS feed or even import videos, presentations etc to make your wall fell as if it has something happening on it.

Adding A facebook Fan Box To Your Website Or Blog

Another simple way of getting some fans is to add a Facebook fan box to your own site. It is simple to do, will attract more fans and it also creates some dynamic content on your own website or blog that users can interact with.

Linked In to what?

Lauren Fisher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:47:11 +0000

Just stumbled across a great clip from Current TV on LinkedIn. There’s a few familiar scenarios in there and we thought it was good enough to warrant its own post! You can find more clips from Super News on their Current channel (they’re the people that brought us the Twitter video).

Have a look at the video below – it actually brings up a very valid point about the purpose of social networking and just doing something for the sake of it. A quick rule of thumb is that if you can’t explain the purpose of a site to someone in just one or two sentences, you may need to reassess what you’re actually using it for and what you’re getting out of it…

Adding Video To Your Linkedin Profile

Using Social Media To Grow Your Blog – Diagram

Niall Harbison — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:28:11 +0000

One of the most common misconceptions on the web is that if you create good content people will come to your website. Wrong. You have to help spread the content a little yourself at the start and get it out to people who appreciate it the most. I wanted to show you the ways in which we market our blog and illustrate just how much emphasis we put on this blog as the central component of everything we do. We spend lots of time working on the different elements that feed back in to the blog but we still focus 70% of our energy writing good content. Without top quality content this model pretty much falls apart and you still have an uphill struggle. The chart illustrates everything we do quite well but to get the full effect of how we execute this please watch the video below as you read the chart.

How To Start A YouTube Video Diary

Niall Harbison — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:20:53 +0000

Create Your Own Video Blog On Youtube

You should start a YouTube diary. It’s great for branding. It doesn’t need any fancy equipment and all you need is a web cam which are built in to nearly every computer these days and a little imagination. It will add a whole new element to your online marketing mix and show a new personal side to your business. It would be one of the first things I would recommend to people trying to get ahead in social media and their business could be anything from an undertaker to a sky diver, everybody has a story to tell.

We just started our own daily video diary and it took us about 20 minutes to set it all up and takes exactly 2 minutes out of myself and Lauren’s days. It is a tiny amount of time and effort to do something that will differentiate you massively from your competitors and make you stand out from the crowd. If you want to go ahead and take the plunge here are our tips for setting up your very own YouTube video diary…

Get A Youtube Account

You have probably browsed countless Youtube videos without actually creating an account but you will have to sign up and create an account if you want to upload videos and engage with the community. Choose a name that suits your brand or if that is not available something as close as possible. You will also be able to log in with your Google account if you have one.

Make Channel Design Unique

Youtube recently rolled out new channel designs and the beauty is that you will be able to brand your channel very easily to make it look unique. I don’t have any design experience myself but by simply uploading an image I had and changing the background colours to our own style I was able to create a unique looking channel. You will also get a simple URL like youtube.com/yourcompany which will be great for your branding.

Record Your Video Direct Through YouTube

Rather than messing around with fancy cameras that will costs you a lot of money and time extracting the footage from the camera and processing simply click the upload button on YouTube and once you have done so you will see a “record from web cam” option. Once you click that button your web cam should kick in to life and you are ready to record instantly. Once you have recorded your video simply hit publish and after you have added the title, description and tags your video will be live for the world to see.

Find Your Niche

Most people worry that they would be too camera shy and wouldn’t have the personality to be able to do video but just about anybody will be able to once they have done a few videos. Don’t expect your first video to be amazing. It takes time to get good at it but that is not a problem as hardly anybody will be watching you at the start anyway. Make your video diary about a subject which you are passionate about. It doesn’t matter how niche it is, there are people out there who are mad about pig farming so if that is where your knowledge is at then go with it.

Promote And Embed The Hell Our Of Your Content

Getting video views on Youtube from a standing start is tough. You are going to have to get very proactive with getting your content out to the masses. You should start by telling all your friends that you have started a video diary and the easiest way to do this is by linking to your videos on social sites like Facebook. If your content is good people will share it with others and your views will increase. If your videos are relevant you can add them to your blog or website and embed them in to relevant groups on sites like Ning and forums where you think they may be relevant. Don’t spam. You can also add links to things like your email signature like “watch my video diary“. Basically your job is now to promote the video diary and get the message out there.

This is all the simple and practical advice that you need to get out there and build yourself a YouTube video diary but from my experience the biggest stumbling block is people’s confidence and actually getting off the couch and doing it day after day. It really isn’t as hard as it looks and if anybody knows all about your chosen subject it is you! Do it today!

5 Ways To Own Your Business Search Results On Google

Niall Harbison — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:18:38 +0000

We all know just how important it is for businesses to protect their identity online and one of the most effective ways of doing that is controlling what people find when they search for your company or even for you as a person. You may not always be able to control it 100% and there are some companies who return very negative results but there are some good practices that you can put in place so as people get a good first impression when they search for you on Google. Here are our 5 tips for controlling your image online…

1.Link to a friendly post

Chances are that somebody has written about you or your business in a favourable way at some stage so you want to make sure that people find this credible review of your business when people search for you. Build links to this page and promote it as you would one of your own. Link to it from your media section and your own blog to help it’s authority as a page that will help it to climb the search engines. This is much better than tooting your own horn and will make people think that you are even bigger than you actually are. If you are lucky enough to have multiple articles about your company repeat the process accordingly.

2.Buy your own name with Google Adwords

This may seem like a waste of time as the logic is that if people are searching for your name or business they will find it but you have to remember that most people click on one of the first couple of results on Google. The paid for search term will stand out and mean they don’t see any of the other negative stuff further down the search page.

3.Get a blog

Blogs rank incredibly well for SEO as they are updated daily and are search engine friendly. Write an authoritative blog on your area of expertise and it will almost certainly attain the first or second ranking on Google. Make sure to keep the content fresh and relevant though as there is nothing worse than somebody finding your company blog only to see that you haven’t updated it in a year.

4.Get a Facebook page

Facebook ranks really well with Google and you will usually see a businesses page in the first handful of results if it has been updated on a regular basis. A Facebook page allows you to add a fun, friendly and warm side to your business although you should keep it professional with all the relevant contact details so as your potential customers don’t have to go any further in search of your contact details.

5.Use YouTube video

You’ll often see Youtube video indexing very well with Google and the good news is that they are putting a huge amount of resources in to making their ability to search even better. You don’t need to have a massively produced corporate video if you don’t have the budget as all you will need is a simple interview with your founder or CEO talking about the company and tag and describe it correctly on Google.. This could be just the engagement that your potential customer needs to form a connection with you that could lead to a sale or partnership further down the line.

Twitter Board Room Meeting Video

Niall Harbison and Lauren Fisher — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:53:41 +0000

The video above is a parody and does not feature anything that really happens at Twitter but what we wanted to get across is whether or not people would pay for using the increasingly popular service. Do you find it useful enough to pay a small fee? Would you stop using it if you had to pay a small subscription fee?

What Is Google Wave? (Video)

Niall Harbison — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:03:54 +0000

So a whole bunch of lucky folk got invites for Google Wave this week which is being hailed as a new form of communication that will replace email by some and a big noisy mess by others. Rather than trying to delve into it and explain all the functionality we thought this simple little video would do a much better job of explaining it all to you. The real fun will start when all your friends and more importantly your work colleagues get on the service and all that collaboration Google have planned for us starts to kick off!

Simply Zesty» Kickass – The Movie Of The Year – SimplyZesty

Kickass – The Movie Of The Year

What Is The ROI On Social Media – Video

Related posts:5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide CoverageWhat Is Social Media Video

5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage

Island Reef Job

Socialnomics

IKEA

U2 Live On YouTube

Twitter In Plain English

Related posts:What Is The ROI On Social Media – VideoAwesome Video About Convergence And Social Media

Pat Phelan Talking Future Of Mobile

Related posts:All Star Panel – Talking Future Of Social MediaWhy 2010 Will Be The Remembered As The Year Mobile Social Media Came Of Age

Denny iPhone App – The Future Of Advertising?

Why The Denny App Is Great Advertising

Brand Ambassadors

User engagement

Press for being innovative

Brainwashing

All Star Panel – Talking Future Of Social Media

Damian Ryan – The Future Of Social Media

Adding Video To Your Linkedin Profile

Adding Video To Your Linkedin Profile

Related posts:Why you and your company should video blog5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage

10 Video Tips For Making Better Facebook Fan Pages

How To Set Up Your Own Facebook Fan Page

Adding Extra Admins To Your Page

Adding FBML Boxes To Your Page

Targeting Your Updates By Country And Language

Updating Your Fans Directly

Turning FBML Boxes Into Tabs Or Applications

Growing Your Initial Fan Base

Choosing Your Landing Page

Importing Your Blog Via RSS

Adding A facebook Fan Box To Your Website Or Blog

Linked In to what?

Using Social Media To Grow Your Blog – Diagram

How To Start A YouTube Video Diary

Get A Youtube Account

Make Channel Design Unique

Record Your Video Direct Through YouTube

Find Your Niche

Promote And Embed The Hell Our Of Your Content

5 Ways To Own Your Business Search Results On Google

1.Link to a friendly post

2.Buy your own name with Google Adwords

3.Get a blog

4.Get a Facebook page

5.Use YouTube video

Twitter Board Room Meeting Video

What Is Google Wave? (Video)

Related posts:
5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage
What Is Social Media Video

Related posts:
What Is The ROI On Social Media – Video
Awesome Video About Convergence And Social Media

Related posts:
All Star Panel – Talking Future Of Social Media
Why 2010 Will Be The Remembered As The Year Mobile Social Media Came Of Age

Related posts:
Why you and your company should video blog
5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage