YouTube channels are nothing new. They’ve existed in some form for years, but it is only recently that they have become a major force for launching new brands and products. Thanks to things like increased exposure via Playstation and Apple TV along with mobile and tablet video on the rise. The YouTube channel has grown as a great place to launch a brand.

Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry Company launched on YouTube and Google Hangouts on April 1st and has already built up a huge following thanks to a big launch on YouTube. Felecia started out producing short films and games but ballooned into a small viral media empire. Geek and Sundry represents a huge leap as she launches various different products including internet publishing all funneled through her YouTube Channel. Day was able to take a little bit of buzz she built up thanks to her own site and build it into something huge using a YouTube Channel. And she did it all without spending much of anything on advertising.

One thing she did was do a large amount of cross promotion and build up her launch date in a big way. She found other websites and channels that had similar audiences such as Hardwick’s and cross promoted with them using giveaways on Twitter. Day used every form of social media including the brand new Google Hangouts to promote the launch of the YouTube Channel in a big way and it paid off with some great viral buzz that she fed continuously until her much publicized launch date.

Speaking of the launch date, Felicia Day held a massive launch day promotion that included a 12 hour streaming marathon on the brand new Google Plus Hangouts (Aside to YouTube and Facebook; make this more accessible. Streaming video is one thing you guys are lacking on and it’s going to make Google Plus look great in comparison.) This gave her some great buzz and even some trending topics on Twitter on her very first day of launch. She showed off her brand and made some great content for her YouTube channel while getting some great buzz all in one day and all without spending much. She made the launch of her new brand into an event and promoted it as such. She did it in a way any small business with a dedicated niche market can do. Remember, your niche audience is looking for things to talk about. All you have to do is find a way to get the ball rolling.

As I said, the new YouTube Channels are a good way to launch your brand and are great for SEO, but as just like the issues with streaming video, they still have some ways to go. As much as YouTube Channels are a great way to get your brand across there are still some drawbacks to putting your advertising dollars and your time into them as a launch pad for your brand. “They need to find an easier way for people to see them.” Hardwick said, noting the leaps they’ve already made as far as digital streaming to television goes. “YouTube needs to make your channel ‘one click away’ just like any other TV network. When that does all come together, Day, Hardwick, and anyone else along for the ride that develops a base there could be in for a major windfall.

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My point is there is always an excuse for a marketing failure. When I heard the news about Borders folding they blamed it on digital readers and people buying off sites like Amazon. But the truth is, if they were really paying attention and marketing themselves well using the same media they claim did them in they’d be as solid as companies like Barnes and Noble and Books a Million.

The first sign that lead to their demise happened nearly a decade ago when they farmed their website out to Amazon.com. People forget that it hasn’t been that long since Amazon started posting record profits. In the early 2000s they were only just starting to really explode and so were sites like MySpace. Where other companies so digital shopping as a competitor Borders saw it as a way to be lazy. They farmed their online store out to Amazon and gave them a huge leap in web traffic that drove people to exclusively online shop and killed any chance they had of taking advantage of Social Media and SEO.

One of the things that surprised me a lot is that Borders never really took advantage of social media in the last few years. They had a readymade audience on Facebook and Twitter. It would have been easy for them to build a Twitter of over a million followers and a Facebook page with lots of action. They already had a niche audience with tons of disposal able income and they basically handed it to Amazon in a gift wrapped package. What they should have done was promoted their Social Media pages to get people talking about what was going on in store. Promote the store as a place to meet like minded people. Give them what they can’t get sitting on their computers, a genuine social experience.

They missed their chance to do this with MySpace in the early 2000s but when Facebook and Twitter sprang up with their audience full of teenagers and tweens they squandered that too. They should have set up local Facebook pages for each store. (Usually I’m against this because it weakens your SEO but it would have worked well here.) They should have started running online exclusive events and online an Q and As with authors or other people interested in a particular book (It’s not like that age group isn’t reading these days.) Then after a while they just shift things from online to in store. You’d be surprised how much a big event can spread word of mouth, especially among that particular audience.

Pictures also go a long way in making your place look like it’s fun to go to. With all these midnight release parties for those Twilight or Harry Potter books they never really put much of it online. They should been all over those things with live blogging, pictures and even streaming video. The best way to establish yourself as a fun place to spend a night and a place with happening events is to show people what they missed by not being there.
Ultimately for Borders to not take advantage of social media was a huge mistake considering their audience was already on it and looking for the next big thing. Even with Amazon undercutting them if they could establish that there social media sites are the place to go to get the next Twilight or Hunger Games people would buy come inside and buy there. Instead they sat there and barely lifted a finger in the social media scene that could have kept them alive a little longer.

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The question is, how do you avoid having your fan count and comments plateau and how do you keep those fans interested a few months down the line? One thing you could do is try more engagement messages. People tend to lose interest if all you do is use social media for a bull horn. If all you do is shout about sales and your upcoming in-house promotions people aren’t going to feel like they joined a community. They’re going to think they joined a mailing list instead of a social media site. That could create some backlash that could show up on your page in a negative way. One thing a lot of companies do that makes it seem like they’re shouting too much is they repeat the name of the page in their Facebook ads. I’ve noticed that many marketing departments who don’t know how to use social media do this. It’s how they were taught to write advertising in print and other forms of media but it comes across as patronizing in social media.
You don’t need to tell people who you are. They already know you. That’s why they’re your fan.

An engagement message is essentially a post designed to get people talking without making them feel like they’re being spammed with messages. You can ask a question that’s on topic or something that’s just for fun. Your Facebook page is, above all, a place for like minded people to communicate under your banner and you never know what could get them started. It could be a movie, a funny news item, or just asking people to tell a story. You won’t be short of material asking people to talk about themselves. I had great success with a social media page by posting links to The Onion.

Another reason people start to plateau as far as fan count goes is that they forget to do promotions specific to social media. Ultimately even if you have the best ad campaign and the best social media site with all the bells and whistles eventually you have to stop telling people about the great deals they get and show them something. It doesn’t have to be a huge something but it definitely has to be something. Even if you just give them a coupon or a some little free trinkets for coming in if you don’t do something to stimulate growth every month a half –two months or so you are going to start losing peoples interest and that will cost you some fans.
Ultimately you just need to pay attention and give your social media site some attention.

Eventually, after your fans get comfortable and your fan count grows big enough, the conversation will be self sustaining and you’ll have more posters then you know what to do with but till that time comes you’re going to have to show it some attention including some little giveaways and above all don’t shout at people. The great thing about social media is that your message gets put on the same level as the customer. They click on you because they already have some sense of brand loyalty. You can either shout at them and maybe move a few more units or you can harness that loyalty and build it into something bigger.

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The first few weeks after you launch, your social media should be great. Once you send out that email blast it’s all compliments (well, mostly compliments) and truck-loads of new fans every day. The fact is, however, that eventually you will plateau and if you don’t do something big, your presence will diminish. I brought this idea to a client once and the “something big” they came to me with was to post a coupon for a mug. It was on the right track. Sometimes just getting them to give something can be a struggle so at the very least they were in the mindset of giving something away on social media without ever really seeing a traceable guaranteed return. The problem was that it was just too small. How many people are going to come print a coupon and make a trip somewhere for a mug?

They had the right idea it was just the execution was a little weak. That wasn’t something that was going to drive people into the place or get them talking. The problem is that, on the internet, you are competing with a slightly more media savvy audience who know when they’re being pandered to. If you are going to phone it in, they can tell and they’ll let you know. Over 15,000 things are uploaded to the internet every second and a good portion of them are free offers and some offers that aren’t as free as they seem. If you don’t do something to get people’s attention you are just going to blend in with all that.

We decided to focus on something that would bring people from the page into the store. (That seems to be the chief concern for most people starting out on social media. They want to know they can monetize it as soon as possible.) We made sure it was something people had to print out to use. We also tied it into the welcome page so that they had to be a fan of the page to get to it. They were set in stone on doing a coupon that drew people in otherwise. I would have waited till we had developed more online content and maybe done another giveaway in between.

The more content you have up the more likely people are to stick around. My fear was we would have a lot of people un-friend us once they looked around and printed the coupon. But we went ahead and set up a custom made bar code that they had to come in and scan to find their prize. We made it some good cash prizes and even through in some White Sox tickets which went over well.

Ultimately this promotion would have been more successful had we waited a while. It did bring in people from the site to the business but it really would have benefited from having a larger fan base to spread word of mouth. We got some positive comments but I like to think we would have gotten even more mileage out of it if we waited. As I said a few articles back, a great first social media promotion makes recruiting fans into a game. It should incorporate badges and be a fun viral thing that can spread on its own via a small group of fans.

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Engage Customers With Social Media

If anything Warner’s attempt to buy Flixster shows that there is still a big push to release creative content via social media. Releasing movies, music, or webisopdes is something none of the major social network sites like Facebook, or Twitter have gotten into. Even streaming sites like Justin.TV and YouTube have stayed out away from creating their own content and continue to promote themselves as a place for fan generated content. If Warners starts releasing original content via Flixster and it catches on big it could mean that even the top social media sites might revisit the idea of using original content. This could be a big boom for viral marketing and make it so even small business can take advantage of new digital streaming technologies to boost their social media campaigns. If original content on social media is widely accepted it means you can do it all the cheaper.

At first glance Blockbuster might seem like an odd purchase for any company, let alone one that’s actively trying to get people to stay in and watch their content. But Dish Network believes there is still life in the Blockbuster brand. And they’re using it to bolster their “on demand” content. In the past Comcast (now Xfinity) has made a huge point of advertising just how great their On Demand content is compared to their competition. If Dish Network and Blockbuster can blow that lead open you’ll see the cable companies scramble for an advantage. With social media and internet streaming hitting your TV in the next few years, a feud between the cable providers could push that envelope even further and bring web content to your TV and change the way you advertise on television and the internet even quicker.

Personally, I like U-Verse but they don’t get the press that the others do. Maybe they would have benefited from bringing in an established brand to help them out. As it stands, with they are poised at a distant third, maybe fourth if Direct TV’s gamble pays off. That shows you just how detrimental a bad ad campaign can be.

The big deal hitting the news just this week that has theater owners a bit upset is that Direct TV is going to provide movies for home viewing 8 weeks after their theatrical release. This is a huge gamble on Direct TV’s part if it doesn’t hit it off the studios will kill it quickly and put even more support behind things like Redbox and Netflix (Hollywood is nothing if not reactionary) if it goes well this could completely legitimize streaming video and put another nail in the coffin of physical media. Either way it’s going to make the theater companies re-think their business model and it could lead to some major changes in the way they do business.

One thing about social media, and most fledgling forms of media, is that every change can affect all different aspects. Being ahead of the curve on social media means keeping up with all the latest new bells and whistles, including television and streaming video. You never know when something big will hit and change things but if you are up on what’s going on you can act quickly and retool your social media advertising in the right direction. Since the movie industry in some form or another puts so much money into social media and new digital technology they’re a good place to keep an eye on.

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Dish Network plans to close hundreds of Blockbuster Video stores

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There are some drawbacks to using your social media along with your print media. Well, not so much drawbacks as just losing some of the advantages that come with social media. For starters, you have to plan things out a little more. You can’t change things about your social media strategy on a whim if you are putting it on your print media later. You are also leaving yourself at the mercy of whatever happens with your social media site. Sometimes things happen that are out of your control. I know of a company that put Tweets in their newspaper ads for the weekend and realized Monday morning they were flooded with complaints on an unrelated issue all weekend. That isn’t a good start to a potentially good cross media marketing campaign. But really that shouldn’t stop you from trying something that could mean huge returns for your business. I’m simply pointing out some things to be aware of.

Kraft Foods just announced a huge initiative that will have them put Facebook and Twitter reviews on their product boxes. Kraft is taking a big step in turning social media into a legitimate advertising form – as opposed to the current landscape where companies are just learning how to take advantage of it. If Kraft’s campaign is successful it could mean that other big companies will see social media as a tool to augment their print media as well. You could soon see a lot more companies will billboards and posters telling you to tweet them for deals.

That brings me to something else I’ve touched on briefly at times. One way a lot of companies go from being local to regional or regional to national is to be one of the first to do something big via digital media. 5 Guys went from a local chain in New York to being a worldwide trending topic on Twitter this week without spending much at all in the way of advertising. They took advantage of things on Twitter before other people did and it paid off huge. This could be a first step toward that kind of thing – if you take advantage of it.

One thing you can do is make a game out of becoming one of your social media fans. Put out an ad saying that if you recruit a certain amount of fans you get some good deals. A company I worked for did something similar where we gave away a party for a fan and the group of friends he brings in. This is a great way to get people talking and build your social media. Another way you can integrate your print and your digital marketing is to do a contest for fan generated content. Do a poster or radio spot submitted by one of your fans. There are definitely a lot of legal issues but it could really get you some positive press.

Ultimately if you can find a way to get your social media audience involved in your print media, and vice versa, it can increase awareness and consideration for your brand. It can even bring you some good free press. It could potentially put you in the front of the line as far as a new advertising strategies go. Most of all it can get people talking about you. The great thing about social media is that, the more people talk about you the better your standing gets.

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Brand Consistency Across Social Media

That’s not to say that don’t need to spend a little on social media advertising. It’s just that why would you spend the money when you don’t need to? Whenever I do presentations on social media I stress the low cost aspect of it while still making sure people know that spending advertising money is a possibility and if things don’t take off it might be necessary. You should go into social media advertising with that mentality. After all you are competing with everything on the internet including 1500 things added and uploaded to the public every second. Sometimes things just don’t catch on even if you do everything right and some bad campaigns catch fire for no good reason. But before you resort to doing paid advertising on social media there are a few things you can do.

First thing you can do is make sure you have a reasonable goal in mind for followers. Reasonably you can expect about a third of your audience on social media, sometimes a little more if you have a business that skews young and maybe a little less if it goes the other way but if you don’t see those kind of numbers in a few months maybe it’s time to think about trying a paid ad.

You should also realize that even if you have a good amount of fans at the start things could plateau quickly. You should always be doing things to get new fans, even if it’s just giving them new information. Remember to always give them something new. You could also try and build a promotion based on your Facebook or Twitter page that involves people in your storefront. Hold a promotion for people who get a friend on Facebook. That kind of thing can snowball in a big way. Try and get your fans involved and turn building your Facebook or Twitter page into a game. Above all the biggest thing you need to do is get people to post on your page. The more people post the more people will view and tag your page. Would you go into an empty restaurant? Well most people wouldn’t and the same is true for social media. People don’t want to hang around in empty pages.

If you’ve done everything right and still don’t think you’ve gotten as far in social media as you could (again, it’s possibility you should be aware of before starting something this rewarding, yet incredibly time consuming)then maybe it’s time to consider paying for advertising. Twitter offers promotional links that put you on the trending topics section on a regional level. That can be overkill if you’re a local business looking to drum up interest in your store or restaurant in Chicago so if you are going to pay for an ad, start on Facebook. There banner ads are inexpensive and focused on specific groups of people in specific areas. Social Media feeds on itself anyway so if you re gaining fans on Facebook you really should be gaining fans on Twitter and YouTube and on your message board too.

Ultimately spending money on social media advertising is a risky venture. You still really don’t know what is going to happen either way. The best thing you can do is try everything. Changing your social media strategy doesn’t cost a thing and what works for some people doesn’t necessarily work for others. Play with things for a while at different times and if all else fails then start to think about a paid advertisement.

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Just like with email marketing and social media, direct mail isn’t just about how many people come across your link or your flier, it’s about how many people click on it or open it. When I work with someone on a social media page, I make sure they know I’m not just looking at the number of fans but I’m looking at the number of page views we get. The same is true with direct mail. It isn’t about market saturation, it’s about definite interest.

It’s harder to measure definite interest with direct mail because you can’t track just how many people open your envelope. Well, you can now by using your Facebook to bolster your campaign. Put your link in your direct mail piece and tell them to post on your Facebook for discounts or free stuff. I did work for a restaurant recently and we did a promotion where they had to write, “I got free stuff for opening my mail,” on our page and it was a great success. It just takes that little bit to have for yourself the beginnings of a great cross-media campaign.

One of the major challenges of direct mail is the same problem that plagues email marketing. In digital marketing you have to be careful to make sure you don’t find your message in a spam filter or past over like a pop up add. The major problem with direct mail is that there is a stigma on it. The tag “junk mail,” is one of reasons a lot of advertisers are losing faith in direct mail as a viable medium. This is another way you can use your social media to help out your direct mail. One problem is that people try to cram as much of their message in their mailers as they can this makes our piece looking cluttered and it’s akin to shouting at people with a megaphone on the streets.

In short, it’s kind of a turn off. Now all you have to do is give them a taste and tell them where to go to find out more. Hopefully, your Facebook is already filled with great user reviews of whatever you’re selling. If you get them to go there, they can do all your work for you. Some of the mailers I’ve done for major restaurants were just pictures of food and a few web addresses, sometimes that’s all you need.

Giving your followers free stuff is a great way to get them talking but there’s another interesting way to get them talking, sometimes even begging for more. You can give free stuff to other people. Send out a few random mailers with coupons and offers and talk about it on your Facebook page. Don’t just say it outright, be subtle. Say, “Jack got this great offer in the mail and now he’s enjoying his set of golf clubs he got for 50% off.” Do something like that just a few times and you could get people asking how they can get in on that. Pretty soon you’ve got people wanting you to send them your mailers and you get some of the random people added to your Facebook list.

One thing direct mailers are great for is finding out just how much of an audience you have in a given area. They’re great because people share that kind of thing with neighbors and friends. You could even walk into a few apartment buildings and leave them in the lobby to see just what kind of audience you get. Just like with social media you never really know what kind of an audience you have until you try a little of everything. That’s the point of having a cross-media promotional campaign. You can rest easy knowing you’ve cast the widest possible net.

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Don’t be Social without a Plan

Marvel Comics is a company that has had more than a few big events in the last 2 years with varying degrees of results. (Some have caught on and are still huge sellers on Amazon and Borders; some have already faded away to make room for newer books.) They’ve come out swinging with their most recent event announcement. With the event, called “Fear Itself” they’ve already created some fantastic buzz. They’re nearly at the level of their most successful event book and promotion “Civil War,” which had cross promotions with everything from movie theaters to Facebook and even a plug from the Colbert Report, whose set still sports Captain America’s shield from the event.

“Fear Itself” has already gotten strong national attention from newspapers, magazines, and huge entertainment websites like MTV and Entertainment Weekly. On top of that it was a trending topic on Twitter for a few days and even resurfaced this week, a full two weeks after it was announced. That’s the type of press people pay for and Marvel got it without even needing a sponsored link. In Social Media, when a news cycle is only as long as the next funny video, two weeks might as well be two months. If they can keep up this momentum by keeping people talking, they could have one of their biggest hits yet.

Marvel has shown that they know the key to cross medium niche marketing – Always give them something to talk about and keep doing it as long and as often as you can. You just need to look at the failed niche market campaign of Scott Pilgrim to see what happens when all you do is rely on word of mouth amongst your fans to build your niche product. Of course that is a part of it, but it isn’t the only part. Scott Pilgrim’s marketing team did a major marketing push for comic con and then did a series of screenings in hopes that buzz would build. But the buzz failed to move past the Twitter trending topics board. That’s an area that was already going to see it anyway.

They should have taken a lesson from Marvel’s “Civil War,” promotion and made an aggressive push to not just play to their core audience but to move beyond that. A strong niche following is great but you can’t rely on them to do your work for you. The best way to use them is to point to them openly and publicly as an example of just how much people love your stuff. Use the audience to advertise the fact that you aren’t just buying their book, but you’re buying a ticket to another world and entirely new group of friends. One thing they could do is include a series of promotional codes that lead to free giveaways via their Facebook page. Push them to see where your entire buzz is instead of crossing your fingers and hoping they find it themselves.

As I said before, having strong word of mouth is great but if you don’t push people to find it and show them where to go then it’s just a waste of server space. There are hundreds of things uploaded on the internet every second and a good portion of them are comics, movies, and other niche properties. No matter how great your stuff is, there aren’t a lot of people who are going to navigate that mine field to find it.

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USA Today’s Fear Itself coverage

There are a lot of thanks to go around for this project, but we’d especially like to thank Omnia who largely took up the role of architect and developer throughout the process. We also want to acknowledge Steve, Ryan, Tyler, Bryant and Ted for their amazing work in all things creative.

We had a lot of fun making this game app and we hope that families traveling on highways and byways all over the U.S. will enjoy it too.