Chatroulette Last Exorcism viral chart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSaurw6E_Q

What is interesting from a marketing standpoint is that just a few days ago on YouTube, this video had 1100 videos. Now it has over 1 million views. For internet marketers, I suggest that the study of internet memes is crucial. To quote Lorrie Thomas, M.A., “It is an art AND a science.” One must have a creative AND an analytical mind, OR at least a team with both/and present.

WHAT IS A MEME?

A meme is a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word μιμητισμός (/mɪmetɪsmos/) for “something imitated”.) Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.

Francis Heylighen, of Free University of Brussels, writes that successful memes follow three characterstics, which include:

1) copying-fidelity: the more faithful the copy, the more will remain of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying. If a painting is reproduced by making photocopies from photocopies, the underlying pattern will quickly become unrecognizable. 2) fecundity: the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator will spread. An industrial printing press can churn out many more copies of a text than an office copying machine. 3) longevity: the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies can be made of it. A drawing made by etching lines in the sand is likely to be erased before anybody could have photographed or otherwise reproduced it.

SUCCESSFUL INTERNET MEMES INCLUDE:

Successful internet memes have been seen by anyone who has email or spends even a little time on the internet. Some of the most famous include: (1) Double Rainbow (2) Nigahiga’s YouTube channel (3) David After Dentist (4) Diet Coke and Mentos (5) the phenomenon of Rickrolling (where user is tricked into clicking a link to a music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. (6) Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance (7) Justin Bieber’s Baby.

A Comprehensive List of Internet Phenomena may be found here.

MEMETICS RESEARCH and ACTION:

1. GEEKY RESEARCH: Read about Cluster Analysis (just to see how deep and complicated the science really gets). Study Meme-Tracking. Check out Group Formation in Large Social Networks.

2. KNOW YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC: Pay attention to the MAJOR archetypes within your chosen demographic AND their needs. Lots of market research has been done already by major research groups like Forrester, Nielsen, JD Power, and MRI into the buying habits, content preferences and behaviors of your audience.

3. USE LISTENING TOOLS TO SPOT SENTIMENT TRENDS: Listen to trends in the social fabric of the internet AND press-releases using Recorded Future, Radian6, Monitter and some of the new Facebook listening tools like Booshaka, Facepinch, OpenBook, It’s Trending and Kurrently. These tools could jumpstart your creative process. Any social campaign worth its salt has included some degree of listening to the customer PRIOR to launch.

4. BRAINSTORM using BIG pieces of paper and LOTS of flexibility WITH ALL IDEAS that emerge. Get INSPIRED in the Behance community, a fabulous place for meeting peers in the creative space AND to learn fabulous CREATIVE PROCESS TECHNIQUES.

5. A, B, C test your top ideas using landing pages, images, tweets, FB status updates, and blogposts. Notice AND measure response to these communications using Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Alexa.

Great content contains effective memes, or word-creatures, the weavers of this living tissue that we call the social fabric of the internet. Viral videos like the one above, inspirational quotes, one-liners and personal news in the form of tweets and status updates are examples of word-creatures that move through individual and communal minds/hearts to what end none of us may ever know. These thought-animals consume the attention of a community, grow larger, and move deeper into the texture of the community.

One could identify the JOURNEY of BOTH the individual AND the community in social networks WITH Psyche’s journey toward Eros in the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. For the Greeks, the essence of Eros is the unfoldment of human thought, and in Greek philosophy, he is described as a liberating agent who releases and activates the creative process of the mind. Eros inspires and opens the channel of intuition to the higher and abstract understanding and communion with beauty and truth. The myth of Eros and Psyche describes in detail the inner process of transformation.

To begin, here is a shortened version of the tale:

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a king with three daughters. They were all beautiful, but by far the most beautiful was the youngest, Psyche. She was so beautiful that people began to neglect the worship of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Venus was very jealous, and asked her son Cupid (the boy with the arrows) to make Psyche fall in love with a horrible monster. When he saw how beautiful she was, Cupid dropped the arrow meant for her and pricked himself, and fell in love with her.

Despite her great beauty no-one wanted to marry Psyche. Her parents consulted an oracle, and were told that she was destined to marry a monster, and they were to take her to the top of a mountain and leave her there. The west wind took her and wafted her away to a palace, where she was waited on by invisible servants. When night came her new husband visited her, and told her that he would always visit her by night and she must never try to see him.

Although her invisible husband was kind and gentle with her, and the invisible servants attended to her every desire, Psyche grew homesick. She persuaded her husband to allow her sisters to visit her. When they saw how she lived they became very jealous and talked Psyche into peeking at her husband, saying that he was a monster who was fattening her up to be eaten and that her only chance of safety was to kill him. Psyche took a lamp and a knife, but when she saw her beautiful husband, Cupid, she was so surprised she dripped some hot wax onto his shoulder, waking him. He took in the situation at a glance and immediately left Psyche and the magnificent palace she had been living in disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Psyche roamed about looking for her husband, and eventually in desperation approached his mother, Venus. Still angry, the goddess set various tasks for Psyche, all of which she passed, with a bit of help from ants and river gods. At last Cupid found out what was going on, and he persuaded Jupiter to order Venus to stop her persecution of Psyche. Then they were married and lived happily ever after – and it really was ever after since Psyche was made a goddess.

According to JEAN SHINODA-BOLEN, “In the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, Psyche’s story is about the growth of the soul that began with her decision to face the truth, and led her to being on her own, challenged to complete tasks that were initially beyond her ability to perform. In the myth, her unseen bridegroom would come to her in the dark of the night and be gone by morning. Metaphorically, she was in an unconscious relationship. Fearing that he could be a monster, Psyche followed her sister’s advice, hid a lamp and a knife, and waited until he had fallen asleep. She needed the lamp to see him, and the knife to cut off his head if indeed her were a monster.”

“These two symbols, the lamp and the knife, are both necessary for a psyche–for a soul–to act decisively when we know the truth. The ‘lamp’ is a symbol of illumination, of consciousness, the means of seeing a situation clearly. The knife, like the sword, is a symbol of decisive action, of the capacity to cut through confusion. The lamp without the knife is not adequate; it is insight into the situation with the capacity to act upon this perception.”

“Myths and symbols are in the language of the soul. A myth helps us to take a situation to heart and know what we must do: if it is to see the truth and act upon it, then the image of Psyche with her sword provides a magic perspective. A symbolic object can then be a talisman that helps us to do what we need to do. Like passing a literal torch, these are rituals that empower us by infusing an act with a deeper meaning. To think and act this way is magical, metaphoric thinking that can call forth the qualities we need from within ourselves and may also tap into sources of help that lie beyond us.”

I submit that the social fabric of the internet IS the fabric of humanity’s collective soul. I also suggest that the tale of Psyche and Eros is a template for one’s journey into the complex eco-systems of social networks. In keeping with this metaphor, one has a real working metaphor that may act as a template, NOT ONLY for the INDIVIDUAL but also for the BRAND andCORPORATION. Brian Solis’ Behaviorgraphics images the action of one who gets how to access the heart of this collective digital environment. Pair Behaviorgraphics WITH his Conversation Prism and you have a philosophy of engaging not only a customer, a competitor and a market BUT also one’s own unique gift and contribution to the world at large.

I submit that Psyche’s journey and the tasks she undertook to reach Eros IS a model for successful engagement by a BRAND of its target audience.

What were her tasks and HOW does this look from a marketing standpoint?

a)  SORTING OF THE SEEDS: Intelligence gathering and listening. Psyche’s first task is to sort all the seeds that are heaped up in a room. This is a wonderful metaphor for all of the possibilities before a brand. Sorting the seed is really taking stock. What are all of the seeds of possibility in the psyche of your brand? What belongs where? WhichFacebook Groups, Key Influencers in blogs, Twitter, YouTube channels and in forums are worth engaging with? (read more on the importance of listening to the social fabric of the internet)

b)  THE GOLDEN FLEECE: Timing and correct audience for an offering. The second task of Psyche is to get some golden fleece from the violent rams of the sun, gather a small amount of it, and bring it to Aphrodite. This takes strategy. Some of the best examples of effective strategists come from the extremely competitive environments of sports and warfare. Military strategy in particular provides a template for marketers as they move out into the social fabric of the internet and command a particular market space. Here is a simple outline of HOW to move into the social space of the internet for enterprise-level businesses. And here is THE template for SCENARIO PLANNING straight from center of military strategy 101.

c)  CRYSTAL GOBLET OF WATER: Developing content that has depth and purchase with an audience. In the myth, Psyche has to deliver something of great value that is actually from the shadow realm – water from the River Styx: an image of being quenched by “hidden” wisdom and all the value such a quenching entails. This is the basis effective and engaging content theory: original, living/breathing messaging that comes from a place of depth.

Great content contains effective memes, or word-creatures, the weavers of this living tissue that we call the social fabric of the internet. Quotes, one-liners and personal news in the form of tweets and status updates are examples of word-creatures that move through individual and communal minds/hearts to what end none of us may ever know. These thought-animals consume the attention of a community, grow larger, and move deeper into the texture of the community.

Eros IS a powerful archetypal force in the action of these thought-animals. Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this. Great content is informed by the greek god Eros. It is lyrical and attracts.

d)  PERSEPHONE’S BEAUTY: In her fourth task, Psyche descends into Hades to retrieve some of Persephone’s beauty for Aphrodite. Psyche is given a box to carry the beauty in. To do this task requires incredible focus and compliance with a list of complicated instructions – things to do and NOT to do.

Again, with this task, we return to the psyche’s connection with what is real for an audience: image vs. reality, the cover of a book vs. the full text, and an engagement + lifetime relationship with the customer developed. In the fourth task, it could be said that Psyche undergoes a kind of ego-death in order to serve love. This love of the demographic we are marketing to really captures the identity of today’s most effective marketers. Immersion in the “underworld”, in the shadows AND beauty of the target customer within that demographic gives a marketer insight and a kind of hypnotic power over the audience. To know a demographics shadow, both in negative and positive potential, yields a FULL knowing of the OTHER. The value of understanding what is “hidden” within a demographic’s collective psyche is priceless. A fabulous example of such an exploration may found in books like Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs: Meet the 9 Consumer Types Shaping Today’s Marketplace. In this book, the author has delved deeply into the internal complexity of his market’s psychic complexion and the result is a fantastic study of that demographic. Read it!

To continue, Psyche goes all the way with this fourth task and is brought back to life through Eros’ kiss in the end. The image here is of giving oneself IN SERVICE and doing EVERY single action required to reach the center of the customer’s heart.

A fabulous condensation of HOW social business pros REACH THE CENTER OF THE CUSTOMER’S HEART, with REAL case studies, has been assembled by ANN MACK (Director of Trendspotting at JWT Intelligence) in her June 2010 Social Media Checklist. Ann has identified 18 global experts in social business integration and outlined the  powerful process of ENGAGEMENT, the heart of social business practice! Another recommended read!

Could it be that complaining about transparency in social networks IS REALLY FEAR OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION? I submit to participants within social networks that your very participation in the social fabric of the internet IS a transformative act.

“Social-networking sites, blogs, online discussion forums and online journals represent modern arenas for individuals to write themselves into being,” writes Theresa Sauter. “A lot of people see social networking as a new way for people to interact but I’m interested in examining it as a way to form an identity and understand ourselves,” she added.

The potential of an increasingly transparent eco-system in social networks is an OPENING OF THE HEART. This opening is a kind of humanizing of all that was once mechanical and commercial. And, as a result, phenomena like brands, corporations and products take on a living nature as brand ambassadors, community managers and Chief Customer Officers interact with customers in a dialogue format. Communication between the “storied heights” of corporations and the humans that buy from these corporations has NEVER had such an opportunity for intimacy.

How does this work? We now have numerous examples of major international brands who have realized the necessity of humanization.Pepsi’s Refresh Everything project, Nokia’s Shot By Fans project AND Zappos, Best Buy and Jet Blue Twitter-customer-service portals are ALL great examples of brands relating on a one-to-one basis with their customers in helpful and generous ways. DTC’s “Drop Everything For Love” campaign is one of my favorites, where people logged in with stories about how they had “dropped everything for love”. The best stories were awarded with the opportunity to do just that.

So here’s a direct challenge and invitation to the CEO’s, GM’s and MM’s of the world: Would you drop everything for love? Consider the benefit of falling in love with your customer and steering your brand(s) in a direction that ATTRACT and enroll him/her/them in the process of brand vitality through intuitively designed reward-driven campaigns. We must hunt for dollars as the leaders of corporations with a responsibility to our shareholders AND we must also create a brand culture that fosters generosity, reward and a community/environment of friendliness. In a world where “friending” and “following” have catapulted customer equity beyond brand equity AND elevated customer lifetime value over current sales, IT BECOMES THE RESPONSIBILITY OF BUSINESS LEADERS TO CREATE HOSPITABLE BRANDS. The identity of corporate culture AND brand presence has never had a more favorable environment for transforming identity and re-making the world.

Virginia Satir, the fabulous author of The New Peoplemaking, writes, “I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.” Brands that design/implement product, communication and sales strategy BASED upon listening to their customer WILL win. Listening IS the action that opens every petal of the human community and gives individuals AND brands passage to the heart of vitality and re-productivity.

(a) pre-product dev intelligence gathering/listening,
(b) demographic-savvy content/product design RELATED TO what is discovered/analyzed from conversations in the social fabric of the internet,
(c) Relationship Architecting with related Social Strategy to identify ideal Key Influencers (and their content), thus paving the way for seamless and swift introduction of said content into the fabric of communities hungry for it,
(d) on-going listening that creates a virtuous cycle of this process.

The future leaders of transmedia will use the process above as just one of their approaches in expanding possibility for those who interact with media, advertisers, media/content producers AND communications entities. Transmedia and the associated processes that will bring this fabulous new way of interactive relationship to programming IS the future of CONTENT IDENTIFICATION AND PRODUCTION.

Colin Donald of FUTURESCAPE.TV says it best in the following comment on an article entitled Struggling for control: The humble channel-zapper is evolving in ways that will shape television’s futurein a recent edition of The Economist magazine:

“Internet-connected TVs lead to massively increased choice and require next-generation EPGs to help viewers navigate the wealth of content.

One solution backed by many in the industry, like Rovi, is to develop social EPGs that let friends recommend TV shows and videos to each other, via social networks or via systems which use data from social networks.

However, the implications are even more radical than your article suggests.

When Futurescape.TV recently researched this nascent social TV sector, we concluded that Facebook and Twitter are already battling for key roles in the TV industry as Internet-connected televisions transform TV into a social medium.

The two social networks have an actual or potential commercial role across the entire TV value chain.

For instance:
Global pay-TV, estimated at $250bn in 2014, needs social recommendation and discovery services because these encourage viewers to subscribe to more expensive packages and buy more video-on-demand – Facebook and Twitter are both major providers of social data.

Facebook in particular has a highly developed social graph of people’s relationship with entertainment content, from the ubiquitous Like button, integrated into many broadcasters’ Web sites. Both it and Twitter own considerable, detailed data about people’s behaviour, such as discussing TV shows and sharing links to videos.

As your article described, set-top box middleware and EPG providers similarly need social network data for recommendation and discovery – the European EPG market alone will be worth $555m by 2014.

TV manufacturers’ strategy to provide video-on-demand direct to viewers also requires social recommendation, while their connected TV apps enable viewers to interact with Facebook and Twitter on home TV sets. Facebook aims to tap the $180bn worldwide TV ad market, competing with broadcasters for brand advertising – Google TV and similar Web-on-TV systems will put Facebook and Twitter targeted ads on TV screens.

Facebook and Twitter buzz affects TV ratings, while broadcasters that use the social networks for viewer engagement are effectively sharing their audiences with them.

The social networks know in real time how people react to TV programming – this is an essential supplement to Nielsen-type viewing data.

Integrating social networks with EPGs is only one manifestation of a profound and permanent change in the television industry, a change through which Facebook and Twitter are positioning themselves as major industry players.”

The teams working on Oprah’s new cable channel and on eBook sales strategy at Bertelsmann’s Random House are contending with issues related to the new possibilities in transmedia and how to make content delivery platforms lucrative for their shareholders WHILE giving users the most flexibility in interacting with their portfolios of content. Those media publishers who acknowledge the value in being customer-centric vs. product-centric in their offering AND develop platforms that allow maximum interactivity WILL win!

To quote Ali Valdez, a senior Microsoft sales leader, “Their customers will be their marketers. Their customers’ social network friends will be their new customers. Full transparency, good and bad, will drive innovation and competitive pricing. The consumer will win. Those brands that enable consumer victory will share in the bounty.”

TO SUM UP: Combining research from tools like Recorded Future, the world’s first temporal analytics engine (a video intro to Recorded Future here), and Radian6, a leading social media/network monitoring solution, media companies now have the opportunity to LISTEN to audiences that have OPTED OUT of traditional marketing channels and are OPTING INTO new, socially chosen/recommended channels. They then are able to match valuable information from conversations in the social fabric of the internet WITH market trends and probable future events to create product/service/content offerings with previously un-paralleled precision. Existing portfolios of content may be re-purposed into countless monetizable and USER-GENERATED interactive communities.

Understanding the future requires observation and listening and it is a Chief Customer Officer who will teach this to marketing staff, brand managers and community managers.

A. Great question and thanks for asking it.  You are not alone in wondering what to do with all the social media options!  I am detecting a little bit of social media overwhelm, but that healthy skepticsm is very healthy actually.  It means that you are more likely to think first before you execute!  Amy Dunn, WMT’s Web 2.0 Fear Specialist did a blog post that has great social media marketing tips and my advice on how to use social media to maximize your efforts to best boost business is simple:

1. Go back to marketing 101. Ask yourself who is your target market, what does your audience need and how can you help them (translation, “help” does not mean push a bunch of sales propaganda in their face – ask what VALUE you can bring to the table.  Get clear on the value you can share then look at the various social tools like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and see how that can help you accomplish relationship building.  You have to THINK FIRST BEFORE YOU DRINK THE SOCIAL MEDIA KOOL-AID.  Ask youself if a particular social media outlet will help you reach your current and prospective customers so you can connect and serve them better, focus your efforts on what can do that and start there.

2. I think of a blog as a social media nucleus. It is where valuable content can be typed out, links to Facebook, Twitter, Linked, Flickr can be shown and video can be embedded into posts.  Blog posts can be automatically set to link to Facebook (from NetworkedBlogs), Twitter (TwitterFeed) and Linkedin (in the Applications) so one post = 4 placements.  To maximize social media messaging, try a social media streamlining tool like HelloTxt so you can do one message and hit ALL your social media set-ups.

3. Measure and prioritize. Put your energy where it counts.  Your web statistics will show what social media drives traffic and sales but do not discount the power of Relationship ROI (watch this video on what Relationship ROI is all about!) If Facebook work equals more friend bombardment than client connection, BREAK UP WITH IT AND SEE OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA.  Put your energy where it counts.  All marketing has to be tested, optimized and re-evaluated.  Respect your time and put your energy where it counts.

4. Be ready to commit to social media. It does take work, I’m not going to deny that.  Think of social media marketing as a lifestyle.  Just like exercise and eating right, you want to engage in social media as part of your marketing mix…add it to your routine and it will become part of your routine.

5. Use social media marketing to give your existing work legs. So many marketing patients don’t realize how connected all the web marketing tools are (that IS why we call it the world-wide-web you know!).  You do email blasts, that same content can also live on your site.  You do a great educational blog post, then that can get messaged out to your readers via tools like twitter.  When marketers look at all the web marketing options as separate, unconnected tools, you better believe that overwhelm will hit!!  Use all your web marketing in unison for multitasking web marketing maximization!

Social Media can be an amazingly valuable marketing tool…if you keep your mind in a place of calm, quiet focus and invest in tools that matter and support one another.

If you have a question for the Marketing Therapist, email us at help@webmarketingtherapy.com, or contact us. You can also follow us on twitter @WildWebWomen and@WebTherapist and ask questions at @WebMarketing_RX. We’re here to support you!

One of the first observations I have is that most entities interacting for the first time with social media marketing truly struggle with the concept that relationship architecture and network analysis MUST be preliminary steps. And this is done using LISTENING tools like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, Trackur, Compete, JIVE and the like. The concept of listening to OTHERS as an INTEGRAL aspect of formulating marketing plans and models lies outside the conventional creative bent. Most of the super-creatives I have run into this last week are hell-bent on THEIR own vision, which is fabulous of course. AND it has been my job to be the listener and translator of what their prospective audiences say each day about their material.

LESSON #1: Transitioning creatives to customer-centric marketing/sales tactics IS JUST AS CHALLENGING as doing so with brand managers, marketing managers AND general managers at major corporations. BUT once both types of individual and entity see lists of top bloggers, top tweeters, top FB groups and top forums in which their audience resides AND the volume of their potential market…ONLY THEN do they wake up to the amazing POSSIBILITY that social architecture and relationship analysis provides. Again, employing strategists trained in LISTENING TOOLS is vital to customer-centric vs. product-centric business. (ie.- A single Key Influencer who tweets to 1.5 million of their prospects OR a FB group of 850,000 entirely populated with their kind of tribe members OR a blogger who over 2 million read every day. Those are NOT numbers to turn away from).

USE WEB MARKETING to SERVE FIRST – that is how you will SELL!
Put web marketing pieces together and make execution click with a service-first approach.

Follow social conversations and monitor web statistics to listen, understand and make ongoing optimizations based on what consumers are saying and doing.

Have customer service teams use Facebook and Twitter to manage Q/A to save time, energy and money – other customers with similar issues see conversations to self-help while prospective customers observe dedication to service, initiating a trustworthy connection.

Value-rich web content (site, article marketing, email, online press release, blog, social media) that educates buyers will multi-task to increase credibility, search visibility and sell-ability.

Embrace the new era of P2P (People to People) marketing and tap the service-centric, value-rich social web.  Remember, web marketing is not a means to push propaganda – it is a social marketing servant to support relationship development, build awareness, share information, educate, connect, serve and ultimately (when the previous are established) sell.

JWT illustrates 12 Steps for an effective Social Media Strategy-so sit back, watch the video and get ready to take notes.  You’ll be ready to hit the Wild Web (or at the very least start formulating your strategy) with your new knowledge to increase YOUR brand awareness online!

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Need help putting together your plan or making it a reality?   The Wild Web Women would love to help out – we can train YOU how to do it OR you can let us take the reins! Just hop on The Marketing Therapist’s couch and she’ll have you drinking the social media kool-aid in no time!