Sweetmantra: Internet Marketing Advice

TigerDirect's Brilliantly Obvious Video Idea

Sometimes the best ideas are so obvious that you can miss them altogether.

There I am, surfing the Website of Tiger Direct, one of my favourite computer and gadget retailers, when I spot something I've never seen before on a retailer's Website: an embedded video link from something called "TigerTV."

I had been looking at the product detail page for a GPS unit, and this page had all the usual things one would hope to see, including detailed specs, lots of product photos, plus candid customer reviews.

But there, smack-dab in the middle of the page, was a link to a YouTube-hosted video about the GPS unit.

What the heck, I figured, I'll click on the video link and watch a bit of it.

Seven minutes later(!) I realized I'd just watched what was essentially an infomercial for the GPS unit. And you know what? I actually found it helpful. Even though the video was produced on a shoestring and the host was a little over-the-top (OK, a lot over-the-top), I still learned more about the features and benefits of the GPS unit in those seven minutes than I did spending twenty or more minutes reading the written content on the product page.

Why doesn't every online retailer do this? Or at least do this for those 'complicated' products that require that little extra merchandising effort.

Don't say it's "expensive" because you can churn out infomercial-quality videos like the TigerTV one for very little budget. And since Tiger Direct is using YouTube to host and stream the videos, there are no additional storage and bandwidth charges.

Such a smart idea ... and so obvious in hindsight. Yet I'd never seen a retailer do this before. Have you?

My Facebook Coach House Experiment

With all the hype about Facebook in the media these days, some people may be inclined to dismiss it as the flavour of the month. That would be a mistake.

I think we, as marketers and consumers, have barely scratched the surface of what Facebook is capable of. Here's just one example of another Facebook marketing experiment I conducted a few weeks ago.

My friend Jane was trying to rent her beautiful coach house in Toronto's Cabbagetown district. She placed an ad on Craigslist and sent around an email message to her friends, but she didn't get too many nibbles.

So I offered to help. Using Facebook's status line feature (which tells your friends what you are up to), I told my network of Facebook friends, "Bill is looking for someone to rent a friend's Cabbagetown coach house." I did this for about a week, and I updated the status line several times during the course of the week.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive five different inquiries from friends who were interested in the coach house. That may not sound like a big number, but when you consider the fact I 'only' had about 250 Facebook friends at the time, that's a 2 percent response rate. How many Internet marketing campaigns these days do you know that get a 2 percent response rate? Not to mention the fact the cost was zero.

Now I'm not for one second suggesting you run out and start pitching products and services using your Facebook status line. In fact, I am discouraging that.

What I am suggesting is that you think about the fact that thanks to Facebook, my little experiment found five additional potential coach house renters for my friend that she otherwise would never have known about. In less than a week. For free.

And that, dear reader, is why Facebook's potential is huge.

Update: July 23, 2007

The coach house has now been rented.

Crossing 10,329 Miles with Communication Consultant Lee Hopkins

Last week I had the honour and pleasure of being interviewed by Australia's Lee Hopkins for his provocative Better Communication Results podcast. Despite the fact my Skype connection kept disconnecting us every 6 minutes or so, Lee and I had a lively 30-minute discussion about search engine optimization, business blogs, and social media.

One of the questions Lee asked me triggered me to tell the story of a friend who recently launched an online store and was looking for help with the search engine optimization.

Because my friend's store was created using a database-driven e-commerce solution that was not designed with search engines in mind and would therefore be impossible to properly optimize for search engines, I recommend that my friend focus his efforts instead on creating a blog related to the product he was selling.

I told my friend that this would be a far more effective way to generate targeted traffic than trying to optimize the existing site. Not only would it be good for the search engines, it would also be good for prospective customers. This is not the first time I've made this recommendation to someone, nor will it likely be the last. That's right, yet another great reason to consider launching a blog.

You can download an MP3 file of the full interview (14 MB) or, better yet, subscribe to Lee's podcast feed so you can receive this and future episodes of his Better Communication Results podcast.

How I Ended Up Doing Social Media Marketing for ABC TV's Traveler - Part 2

Who is Will Traveler?

I don't know, and apparently Facebook (or someone) doesn't want you to know either.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about how I found myself briefly running the social media marketing campaign for ABC TV's new show, Traveler.

As you may recall, after watching the first episode of the series, I realized that ABC and the producers of the show had completely missed the social media boat. I logged in to Facebook to search for "Will Traveler," the missing character at the core of the show, and found nothing. Not even a basic Facebook profile. Talk about a lost opportunity.

So I did what should have been done in the first place. On May 31, 2007, I created a Facebook profile for Will Traveler.

I tried to make the profile as realistic and as 'in character' as possible, based on the facts I was able to gather from the show. I identified the school he apparently attended. I listed his interests (electronics, politics) and favourite movies (The Manchurian Candidate, The Conversation). I even cited a quote from Jack Kerouac, one of the character's favourite authors, and had Will join a Jack Kerouac Facebook group.

I was particularly proud of the photo I chose for Will; I thought it was suitably ambiguous and mysterious:

In other words, I created a Facebook profile for Will Traveler that fans of the show would instantly identify as his.

The next day, June 1, I began finding friends for Will. I started with me (Bill Sweetman) and my colleague Collin Douma (of Radical Trust fame). I had let Collin in on my little experiment, and he was all in favour of it.

Since there were already a half-dozen or so 'unofficial' Facebook groups devoted to the TV show (created by fans of the show), I had Will add the creators of those groups as his Facebook friends.

By June 4th, Will Traveler had a growing collection of Facebook friends and was starting to get unsolicited Friend requests and messages from fans of the TV show.

Clearly I was on to something. And fans of the show were having fun.

Then, on June 5, I attempted to log in to the Will Traveler Facebook account and got this message instead:

"Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact disabled@facebook.com for more information."

I immediately sent an email to Facebook, asking for clarification.

On June 5, I receive this response from "Justin" at Facebook:

"Fake accounts are a violation of our Terms of Use. Facebook requires users to provide their real names. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited. We will not be able to reactivate this account for any reason.  This decision is final."

Now, I totally respect Facebook's desire to enforce its Terms of Use, however I think they need to be consistently enforced. After all, thousands of cats have Facebook profiles. Last I heard, cats can't type. And there are at least 49 fake "Wentworth Miller" Facebook profiles. None of them have been disabled.

Puzzled and somewhat miffed by Facebook's seemingly arbitrary decision, I decide to try to find some answers

On June 6, I email Justin from Facebook and ask him how they ended up being 'alerted' to my Will Traveler account in the first place? Did someone (ABC perhaps?) lodge a complaint about it?

We will never know, since I never got an answer from Justin, and my Will Traveler profile remains disabled. In fact, as I write this, there is not a single Will Traveler profile on Facebook, although there are now 17+ Facebook groups (none created by ABC or the producers of the show) devoted to the Traveler TV show, including "Addicted to Traveler" (570 members) and "fans of ABC's Traveler" (227 members).

So who is Will Traveler? And why was his Facebook profile really deleted?

Your guess is as good as mine.

One thing I do know: ABC TV and the producers of the show missed a golden opportunity to use Facebook to promote Traveler.