image credit: www.bugglefug.com

I’m sure most of you are aware of this infamous beast, the frightening werewolf. Werewolves are one of the most fearsome monsters which stand out from the usual, scary bunch. It’s that transformation, from the familiar and expected, to the brutal and uncontrollable monstrosity, which gives us that chill in our spines. According to werewolf legend, the main way to stop such a beast is with a silver bullet.

In thinking about internet marketing, there are occasions when your strategy or campaign starts off clear, concise, and manageable. After a while however, your strategy starts to take on the characteristics of the werewolf due to flawed plans, a misguided budget, and uncontrollability. When this starts to happen, we look for that silver bullet to quell the beast. Question is, does it exist? Simply put, yes, and no.

image credit: www.tvbabble.com

Essence of Internet Marketing: Inherent Difficulties in the Nature of Internet Marketing

When talking about the essence of internet marketing, one first needs to think of all that which encompasses this umbrella term. It’s a compilation of various concepts and strategies that are all interconnected by his/her goals and what one wishes to achieve. Putting more thought into this, the essence of internet marketing is an abstraction. The conceptual construct is generally quite the same under various manifestations. At the same time, however, it can be meticulous, methodical, and highly detailed.

We now will take a closer look at the inherent properties which make up the essence of internet marketing: changeability, visibility, and uniqueness/saturation.

Changeability:
For internet marketing to be most effective, it must be able to evolve and keep up with the ever-changing internet itself. We see a change in techniques every couple of months and sometimes even weeks. Keeping up with current trends, adjusting ones marketing strategies to target his/her audience more precisely, and utilizing effective advertising are some of the key points that the internet marketer should be keen on. If one fails to stay afloat, he/she will not survive for too long. Change is an essence of internet marketing due to the sheer fact that it is intertwined so intimately with the internet. As a result, there will occasionally be pressure to improve what has been done until that node/concept is irrelevant, and something else replaces it. What worked before, is not as effective now in comparison to current strategies…and what works now will be inadequate compared to future techniques.

Conformity:
The tools that the internet marketer has at his/her disposal are ample compared to a few years in the past. Ones efforts are still limited, however, due to the inherent properties of the tools itself.

Ones creativity is not bounded by rationale, but must be throttled regardless in order to interface with the reality of internet marketing strategies and mechanisms. Even a brilliant artist will be hindered without the proper tools. Ergo, we face a similar dilemma. One can only “tinker with margins, tweak pricing and promotions, add incremental features to products and come up with slightly more effective campaigns and media plans” so much (Batra Rajeev, professor of marketing at the University of Michigan).

Visibility / Uniqueness:
Thousands of individuals are promoting their brands/services/etc. through internet marketing these days. As a marketing strategy becomes useful, more and more people follow suit. It’s inevitable that we are reaching points of saturation in certain niches already.

The more popular a niche gets, obviously the more saturated it becomes. Marketing(online) a product or service pertaining to a niche such as consumer computer technology will be much more difficult to do so now then it was before. Thus to market a product or service, one’s internet marketing strategy must be unique and not so much as to the approach, but the message being conveyed.

Uniqueness is an essence of internet marketing because of the inherent difficulty of offering something valuable and “selling” it. First, the skills of the internet marketer must be adequate. Does he/she have the proper arsenal at his disposal? Second, the value of product or service must be determined. An accurate analysis for this will improve the effectiveness of one’s internet marketing efforts.

It can be quite the jungle out there on the internet. There is fierce competition to get one’s product or service on the quintessential “front page”. One might think he/she has done an extensive campaign only to witness that the competitors have doubled their efforts as well. Thus, another essence of internet marketing, the inherent difficulty of competition, or more so visibility, comes to focus.

image credit: www.heroesfanatic.com

Silver Bullet to accidental difficulties: Outsourcing

While breaking down each component of internet marketing, we see that in practice, it’s not so difficult per se. The sum of all parts however, can be quite complex. From purely textual representation of data, to the multiple channels of media to communicate your message, the internet has come a long way. Therefore, this has increased the number of ways to market ones product and service. As a result, the amount of time required to effective market has increased in a linear fashion. Fortunately in recent years, a multitude of services are available to the internet marketer.

The number of options to outsource ones internet marketing work these days are vast. Virtually anything can be delegated. Thus in terms of productivity, it has definitely increased the amount of projects that one can handle, as well as maximizing ones time efficiently. This has become quite a breakthrough which mostly solves the accidental difficulties of time-consumption and complexity.

Promising “Silver” Horizon

Advancement of Internet Marketing tools
Marketing executives agree that there is a higher need for more theory and analysis in internet marketing. This also what I believe. The environment is dynamic and complex. Therefore we need to approach internet marketing in a similar fashion with that in mind. Emerging analytical tools are giving us a clearer picture of this active and ever changing domain. It gives us the data that we can use to form more effective internet marketing strategies which brings in a more targeted audience.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)
I have high hopes for SMM as many others do as well. It is definitely changing the landscape of the internet and may potentially be the “tip” of the silver bullet. Let’s break it down as to why:

• Highly viral if used correctly.
• Visibility more “approachable”.
• Although the traffic isn’t very convertible, getting on the front page of a social network will get the momentum going.
• Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks.
• “Banner-blindness” and other forms of traditional marketing are becoming less effective. With SMM, one can reach out to visitors without resorting to the these failing techniques.

Great Internet Marketers
It all comes to full circle. Great strategies are not developed by simpletons. It’s this creative process where one truly finds the need of a great internet marketer. They have striking qualities which stands them apart from the rest:

• Passionate, sound methodology, sound principles, inspiring, pioneer, great ingenuity, stubborn.

With that in mind, there are vast amounts of resources to teach potential internet marketers. Online, there are various articles and tutorials on nearly any subject. Offline, there are events and workshops to further improve one’s skills and interact with mentors/each other. It’s impressive to see so many opportunities given to starting internet marketers which they can grow and develop upon to be great.

Perhaps this is the main piece of the silver bullet. While SMM (and analytical tools as well) may be the tip, great internet marketers make up the body…backing up the tip and giving it more power/momentum to push on through.

—

And with this post, I’d like to bid you all adieu. I’ve been lacking in developing my other sites and studying for school. So good luck to all you internet marketers and bloggers out there. A few words of advice, “Go the route less traveled”. I’d like to give a big thanks to all who commented as well, especially Catherine Lawson whose commented the most. Thank you and farewell.

image credit: www.steelso.net

image credit: www.dkimages.com

Generating an allure of mystery for your blog makes viewers want to “learn more”. When using this strategy however, one needs to find the balance between giving too much information away, and not giving enough. When is it enough and when is it too much? Well, as the saying goes, try to walk in someone else’s shoes. Imagine what their thoughts would be when they come across your link, ads, guest post, etc (or you can contact me and I’ll give a quick analysis :D). When you are doing this, keep these questions in mind:

• Are you being too literal? When putting text on your link/ad/etc., how are you displaying your message? By telling your viewer exactly what your site is about (For example, saying your site involves internet marketing and blogging advice) from your marketing, you are removing that veil that raises the viewer’s curiosity.
• Are you using images effectively? If you are struggling from coming up with a catchy phrase or text, images would be a good candidate to get your message across without being too straightforward. Consider examples that have happened to you in your life. Haven’t you, at some point in your life, clicked an image link solely because the picture intrigued you?
• When you look at your message, does it bring up any questions in your mind? If it does, you are probably on the right track. When viewers look at your ads or read your article, even if they don’t like it at all, if it raises questions, they will want to know “What’s going on?” and will want to know more.
• From initial looks, will it leave a lasting impression? To make your message successful, it can’t just go in one ear and out the other. Make sure you leave a lasting impression to change the viewer’s usual behavior and make them curious as to what “you’re all about”.

image credit: www.travelprotectors.com

The technique of creating mystery is more effective in some niches/industries than others. The key is to know who and what you are marketing. I’m not going to delve too much into the details of know who/what is best for this method since this isn’t within the scope of this article, but I will say that you should follow your colleagues. See how they display their ads/links/sites, see what works, and try to improve on it by putting a mysterious twist. This may take a few brain cells but will give you an unique and sticky edge.

Using mystery to entice people is not a new technique whatsoever, yet many fail to utilize its potential when it can be quite effective. It creates a pull for people to come back to your site. Of course, there are other tools of the trade at your disposal (such as incentives, use of influencers, social media, etc.) which you should implement as well. Know what techniques to use (i.e. By figuring out which methods complement each other.) and you could have a great, diverse marketing strategy.

image credit: www.wingnuttoons.com

image credit: windycitymamma.blogspot.com

High quality content helps on so many levels as you can imagine. As I mentioned earlier, it is also a major variable to consider when establishing credibility. A well-written or thought-provoking article will show more authority in your field than a shallow blurb about whatever. People tend to think that the more you write on a particular post, the more higher the quality it is, which is not necessarily always the case. It’s true, that oftentimes when creating high quality content, to fully elaborate and really get into the subject, the post usually gets very long. Articles can be well-written and generally short however, if it’s concise and to the point. Choosing to write shorter post would be your best choice considering if you want to post daily and do not have a lot of time. Just be sure to define your objective(s) and stay focused on what you are determined to write about. I know how easily it can be to get sidetracked from your main points. Another quick advice on content in general, double-check your grammar and spelling! It helps so much to just go over your writing once or twice. Although you may not find all the errors, you may be able to get most.

image credit: blog.rssapplied.com

The look and feel of your website should look professional and clean-looking, depending on your niche. For example, you do not want to use a crazy colored theme with graffiti-like fonts on a blog about finance. Remember, you are trying to create a name for yourself. It’s somewhat subjective as to what is considered a good design (I have much more to say on that subject later on…) and can be quite challenging, especially if you aren’t the type of person who is into design in the first place. A good general rule of thumb is to use two to three main colors for your blog and use the common fonts (Arial, Times New Roman) for your text. The last thing you want to do is scare the viewer away because they are having a hard time reading your articles. Content is one of the main components which you would want viewers to focus. Make sure your design complements whatever part you want them to concentrate on so they will not get too distracted on other things. If you wanted to highlight your advertisements for example, you wouldn’t want to make a crazy top banner and choose colors that directs the viewer away from the ads. Of course, you could always hire a professional designer to design the blog for you. If you are not looking into paying, there are many free professional-looking themes out there that you can work with.

Something that people may not consider when establishing credibility is when you are commenting on other blogs related to your niche, to consider how/what you write it. Your first comments are the virtual first impressions. You want to give off a good image by trying to elaborate on your thoughts about the person’s post. Of course, flattery is another way to write your comment, but try not to be too overbearing. Likewise, honesty is just as good if not better. Constructive criticism and letting the person know how you really feel (in a polite manner, of course) will truly show your character. By giving a good initial impression of yourself, you are building upon your credibility and will strengthen it with further quality comments.

Another small piece of advice is keeping your promises. It can be quite the turn-off when you say you will do this and never do it, or you will write about X in Y days and you fail to deliver. If you can’t do whatever…simply don’t say you will. Keeping to your words is more powerful than most people realize, and backing down on them will turn off your viewers. As the frequency increases, the effect increases exponentially.

image credit: remote.lohudblogs.com

Eventually you will see the results of what you are doing to establish a name for yourself. Traffic will definitely increase. You will also start witnessing yourself becoming more and more involved with the community by answering people’s questions and such (even when they aren’t directed to you!). If you stay focused on your niche and keep up with developing your authority, as the time comes, you will be well established and your credibility will speak for itself.

image credit: msnbcmedia.msn.com

Analyzing the Reason of Disabling Comments Initially

There’s some credible reasons as to why one would want to turn off comments. The main reason, that most would consider the key point, would be that it makes your blog look less like a ghost town and unpopular. This is a reasonable thought due to the fact that comments are one of the best ways to interact with your viewers openly. When you don’t have any comments, “some” may get turned off by that and quickly leave. When you turn off the ability for others to comment on your blog, you are trying to hide what your blog really is. Therefore, you may convince the reader that you are doing so because you want don’t want to deal with spam type messages, or you are too busy to keep up with comments.

image credit: www.newmexiconuts.net

Does it Really Matter?

At the end of the day, one should contemplate…does it even matter to turn it off? If one has a majority of tech-savvy viewers, won’t they recognize what you’re doing anyway? Sure, some will be convinced you have other motives, such as what calacanis and stevepavlina stated, but arguably, the majority will know why you really are doing so (especially if you do not exclaim your motives like the examples above, in which they had genuine reasons to do so) regardless.

Too Much Focus on the “Popularity Contest”: Keeping Your Comments On

The previous paragraph brings me to my next point, being authentic. Some may think that I’m getting too worked up on this subject, but one should consider multiple sides of each action. So, does being authentic having anything to do with this?

To reiterate, the main theory for disabling your comments is so your blog will be portrayed as popular, or at the very least, not a desolate wasteland. If you keep comments on, sure…most likely you probably will initially have no comments. My theory on this however, is that it doesn’t matter if your blog comes off as being unpopular, but sticking to being genuine as well as not so circumstantial.

So maybe you do turn off comments and wait until you get that big traffic to turn it back on, which does happen. What if there is a long stint of post with no comments, are you going to resort to turning it off again? I just don’t think it’s necessary at all in the first place, in most circumstances. Consider the following:

• Do YOU focus on the comments so much to the point of leaving the blog solely on that fact alone? Personally, I focus more on the content. I don’t know, maybe I’m not tech-savvy enough to instantly reject a post only because it has no comments.
• Your content. No need to say more…well, I’ll just say another sentence. If your content is unique, interesting, informative, valuable, and targeted to your readers..it won’t matter if you have 0 comments or 100 comments…your content will surely “shine” through.
• Comments can be motivational. Understandably, one can lose momentum when keeping up with their blog, especially in the beginning. By disabling comments, your eliminating that chance of motivation. Even one comment can lift your spirits, and make you keep going at those crucial moments.

By no means is this the concrete answer, and it could very well lead to an open-ended discussion. It can be argued by many that it’s best to disable comments, but I believe otherwise and I gave a different view. In my opinion, the pros, even if their not 100% certain to come to fruition, outweigh the cons. Consider this…if those shallow viewers are leaving solely based on 0 comments, are you going to missing out on much anyway? I say, good riddance.

*Update 02/29/08*  AbleReach made a good point on StumbleUpon in regards to my post:

“There are phases in the startup of any new thing when paying too much attention to the reactions of others can take attention away from more productive areas. Enabling comments can go either way.” 

Indeed, using comments can go either way, and some thoughts should be considered beforehand. There is no right or wrong answer, merely what one deems is the best route. I consider the benefits of enabling comments outweigh the negatives. In regards to the comment above, certainly many things could potentially be counter-productive, but it’s how you manage your time and how you measure “productivity” that one should think about. Personally, I do not mind spending a part of my time tending to the reactions of others. I get to interact and make connections with my audience as well as possibly add more value to my post.

“Great questions. ‘Good repetitiveness’ ……hmmm I’m wondering what kind of articles fall within that mold. “ (Maki)

It sounds kind of weird doesn’t it, Good repetitiveness? In reality however, many people use good repetitiveness and sometimes if done very well, it can be even more popular/interesting than the original.

image credit: imagecache2.allposters.com

How Can Being Repetitive Be a Good Thing?

Oftentimes, when you hear something being repetitive, it’s generally considered a negative. In the context of good repetitiveness however, it can be a great thing. Let’s go over a few things first:

• In nearly any established niche, you are bound to write content that’s been written already and in many cases, it’s been written a lot.
• Articles usually do not cover every “side” of the story and thus leave room for expansion.
• Overlapping another person’s article itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s in the way you set yourself apart from that article.

With that in mind, as long as you bring “something to the table” when being repetitive, it definitely won’t come off as such.

image credit: www.gasdetection.com

How to Use Repetitiveness Wisely: Give a Different Side to the Original Story to Make it Your Own

This is one of those “easier said than done” kind of things. Not every article can be used for good repetitiveness, but most can.

1. Consider using articles you thoroughly enjoyed. If you truly like an article for what its worth, then you’ll be able to bounce off ideas more naturally. You’ll have a good foundation or base which you can branch off different ideas and views from.
2. Combining that article with other articles that gave a different view. If the article was quite popular, there will be others who have developed their own opinions. Integrate parts of their article to the whole mix, thus giving you a whole section in your article to compare and contrast each side and develop your own thoughts into it. For example I use this in my article on ugly design.
3. Give new examples. Nothing illustrates your point more than examples. By giving new examples you are reinforcing your content’s validity and demonstrating your grasp on whatever subject or topic is at hand.
4. Ask questions. This is somewhat related to step one. When you are engaged in an article, you start to spring off questions and such. Instead of asking them all to the original poster(OP), consider answering them yourself first and then maybe asking the OP. Several times these questions are the catalyst for good repetitive articles.
5. Interact with your viewers and/or potential viewers. This ties in with steps three and four. Engaging with readers or potential readers can breathe new life into a stagnant topic. This can be done with polls, questions, etc. Include quotes from readers who you asked to give their thoughts on the subject at hand in your article.

Is This Really Being Repetitive However?

I was also thinking about this. Arguably, if you’re bringing something new to the original article, can it really be even called repetitive in the first place? In my opinion I think that technically, yes it can be. The reason is being that your article is based on someone else’s writing, or at least will be viewed as such if the viewers see your article after similar ones. Regardless if you agree or disagree with my branding of “good repetitiveness”, the main point is that when you discuss a topic that has been written about already, injecting new ideas or extending upon the original idea will remove the thought of being the colorless, boring, run-of-the-mill drivel from the reader’s mind.

image credit: www.optimizeandprophesize.com

Case Study Overview

For one of the first times, LAH’s (Leskove, Adamic, and Huberman) study directly observes the movement for hundreds of thousands of products, and the effectiveness of word-of-mouth advertising through it. A total of 15,646,1212 recommendations were made by 3,943,084 users on 548,523 products (99% of these products falling into the following categories book, music, videos or DVDs). Their analysis is centered around a recommendation referal program from a large retailer with the following Criteria:

• Every time a person purchases any item, he/she is given the option of recommending the item to friends through email with a 10% discount.
• The sender also receives 10% credit on their purchase.
• Only the first person to respond to the email by purchasing the following item will receive the discount.

Limitations:

• The observation of the recipient purchasing the product through the same vendor is the only indication of a “successful” recommendation
  • There is no way to know whether the person had decided to purchase the item elsewhere.
• Delivery of recommendation is through email.
  • It’s not quite the same as one person telling another about a product in casual discussions and other similar contexts.
  • Someone reading the email may consider it as spam, or less important than a conversational recommendation.
  • The recipient of the email may consider the friend is just trying to get a discount for themselves than actually recommending it.

While this analysis does have its limitations, it gives us an accurate and detailed view of recommendation dynamics however. The results will reveal to us a greater understanding how influential social networks are in purchasing decisions.

Results

A great amount of information can be obtained from the data of LAH’s results. Their analysis provides several graphs and tables showing different statistics of social network’s influence on product recommendations. I will only highlight the key figures that can give you a broad picture of their analysis. For a deeper understanding, feel free to view the whole report here.

Terms:

• Node: Represents a single person.
• Edge (i, j, p, t): “Indicates that i recommended product p to customer j at time t“[LAH].
• Buy-edge: An edge that points to a node which acted on a recommendation, but did not receive the discount.
• Buy-bit: Flag that indicates a purchase.
• Largest Connect Component: Represents the biggest network of nodes connected by recommendations.

Table 1: Sizes of the Main Product Group Recommendation Networks:

Key Points:

• DVDs are the smallest of the other groups in terms of the number of products, yet it accounts for over half of the total recommendations.
  • The DVD group has about 10 recommendations per node (while books and music have about 2 per node).
• Music recommendations closely followed DVDs in terms of the number of nodes, yet Music only need 1,443,847 recommendations while DVDs used 8,180,393. That’s roughly 5 times fewer than DVDs.
• The number of “unique” edges (recommendations to unique, or different, nodes) is relatively small.
• With total number of recommendations (r) and purchases (the b’s added together), we can do some estimations on the number of recommendations needed to make a new purchase.
  • For books, one out of 69 recommendations resulted in a purchase.
  • DVDs on average needed 108 recommendations for a purchase.
  • For music, we saw 136 recommendations per purchase.
  • Videos needed the most recommendations with 203.

Table 2: Results of the Largest Connected Component for Each Product Group

Interesting data. This is just one of many graphs that details the largest component, but it is the key graph indeed. We can see in this table that all the largest connected components are relatively small compared to their respective networks as a whole. As stated in the analysis, “one would expect that a fraction of the recommendations in the largest component to be proportional to its size”…but this is not the case. This can be shown in the results for DVDs. 84.3% of recommendations are within the largest component for DVDs, yet it only consists of 4.9% of the nodes (a tiny portion of users generated the most of its recommendations). Looking at the bigger picture, the largest component in its entirety contains only 2.54% of the nodes yet has 52.9% of all the recommendations! Key point: The way the largest component behaves is much different from the rest of the network.

Success of Recommendations

Again, this is quite interesting. As one would assume, there is a fine line between recommending too much and too little. If one is too selective and recommends only to few, chances of success will be small. If one recommends too many people and spamming them, success will also be slim. Recommending to the relevant subset of people will be most effective in getting successful buys. The top row of figure 10 shows us when saturation occurs. For books, music, and videos, saturation is apparent when about 10 recommendations are reached. At this point, purchases begin to slow down or decrease. DVDs however, show a different behavior with a steady increase of purchases throughout the graph. LAH’s analysis brings up a good point…that the results become even more interesting when you realize that the receiver of recommendations likely does not know the frequency of other people who have also been recommended the same product. This brings up the question, are there dependencies between the characteristics of the products and the person who recommends the products exhibited through the number of recommendations sent? Some explanations one could consider that LAH’s analysis mentions:

• Widely recommended products are not suitable for viral marketing.
• The recommender didn’t put much thought into the selection of people to recommend.
• People soon start to ignore mass recommenders.

The Timing of Recommendations and Purchases

The mechanism of this referral program encourages people to buy the recommended product as soon as possible in order to maximize the opportunity to receive the discount. In the analysis, we are given several percentages as to the times that certain products are purchased:

• DVDs: 16% of purchases occur more than a week after the last recommendation, 23% of purchases are made within the day of recommendation, and 78% of recommended purchases did not include a discount.
• Books: 10% of purchases occur more than a week after the last recommendation as well within the day of recommendation, and only 21% of recommended purchases did not include a discount.

The last parts of the bullets make sense due to the fact that DVDs have a higher frequency of recommendations and thus, there are much more people who will purchase the product too late and not receive the discount.

When looking at the graph dealing with the purchases and the time of day, we see that recommendations and purchases graph show a similar pattern. Looking at these graphs, we can conclude that recommendations did not greatly effect the amount of purchases. The purchases with discounts, however, show an inverse pattern when one would assume it to look like the other two graphs. What does this mean? Most of the discounted purchases occured when the number of of purchases were small, meaning that these discounted purchases happened in the morning when traffic on the website was relatively low. When you think about it, the graphs actually make sense. Most recommendations happened during the day, therefore if a person wanted to optimize their potential in receiving the discount (since only the first person from the same set of recommendations can obtain it), it would be in their best interest to purchase when traffic on the website was at its lowest.

What Effects do Communities of Interest have on Recommendations?

LAH’s analysis goes into great detail as to what effect specific communities have on recommendations. A community discovery algorithm was applied to detect communities which exchange recommendations amongst themselves and which products they prefer. As one would expect, certain communities would be more effective than others and certain products would be preferred over the other. We can see an example below:

A greater discussion can be found in the actual analysis, but from a broad perspective, LAH states that communities were usually centered around a particular product (books, music, or DVDs). Nearly all, however, shared recommendations for all types.

Observations/Conclusion

I’ve really only scratched the surface of this analysis. From just looking at the analysis in general, we can see that DVDs are purchased in higher frequencies as well as having more recommendations. On the other hand, books are recommended less. A plausible reason could be simply that books take a longer investment in time than a DVD. While a DVD can be viewed in a few hours, a book may take days and even several weeks/months. Another reason that LAH’s analysis discusses is that DVDs are more heavily advertised than books, thus the factor of how informed a customer is on a product can be put examined. Referral websites is an external factor to consider which may have had some effect on the results. These websites allow people who want to purchase a DVD and receive the discount, to ask for recommendations and thus eliminating people to really “know” each other.

LAH’s analysis gives us incredible insight on how viral marketing works which question what we would normally assume in this kind of epidemic propagation (individuals have an equal chance in becoming infected every time an interaction occurs which is not the case in viral marketing…in fact, the probability of infection decreases with repeated interaction when the saturation point is reached). Thus, marketers should be warned that providing too many incentives for customers in order for them to recommend your product could actually cause a backlash and cause the exact opposite as well as losing some credibility. Found within this report are limits to how influential “high-degree” nodes are in the network. This limit is related to the saturation point. When this limit is reached, the success per recommendation decreases, indicating that a person will have influence over a few of their friends, but not everyone they know. This also correlates to the next subject which is that smaller and more tightly knit groups tend to be much more effective in viral marketing.

An interesting idea would be to expand this analysis, but using social media networks, such as StumbleUpon, instead of emails to spread recommendations. Some questions instantly come to my mind:

• Which types of products/services/information would be most “marketable”?
• How difficult would it be in tracking recommendations and “successful results”?
• What would be considered a “successful result”?
• How much of a similarity would there be compared to this analysis?

Although viral marketing is a great technique in advertising/marketing today, the results shown in LAH’s analysis indicate that it’s not as effective as one would expect in general. To effectively grasp viral marketing, one has to understand various key elements, such as the topology and interest of the social network at hand. LAH’s study gives us detailed knowledge about this and a greater understanding of the intricacies of viral marketing.

(All graphs/tables and quotes are from the analysis of Leskovec, Admaic, and Huberman’s paper.)

Design can be subjective. It comes as no surprise then that anti-marketing design, or what some call ugly-design (more on this later), had been of much debate since scobleizer wrote about anti-marketing design back in March of 2006. Raking up about 300 comments, it caused quite a commotion throughout the web and deserves a revisit. Without beating too much of the same arguments to death, I will touch up on some of the key points of this debate and provide some of my own thoughts to the discussion.

image credit: www.carouseldinnertheatre.com

Scoble’s post about anti-marketing design highlights plentyoffish.com as a prime example. According to the blog, Plentyoffish pulls in 10,000 visitors per day by Google (in 2006) and links its success to its anti-marketing design. Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish, mentions “ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and generally be more fun to participate in, than sites with beautiful designs.”

A well-written counter blog was done by Leisa Reichelt. She responds back by disseminating the term “design” into two aspects closely following Scoble’s post. The visual design is the part which most people think of when contemplating design. The ‘look and feel’ however, is only half the equation. In her post she defines the aspects of design being part visual-based as well as information/interface-based, a critical difference that many often overlook. Information/interface design is the other part of the puzzle which refers to the ease of use(of the website) and placement of information. Clearly these are important things and deserve to be separated to its own part.

Anti-marketing design and ugly-design are often used interchangeably, which I do often (and please forgive me as I do so in this post as well). When using the term ugly-design, there is a common misconception how its used in this context. Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I understand about ugly-design is, that it doesn’t necessarily always mean the design is visually unappealing. It can be quite the opposite in fact. Ugly in this context refers to the core of anti-marketing….simplicity and functionality, raised to the highest priority. As a by-product, it can potentially be visually unattractive (i.e. Craigslist, Del.icio.us). At the same time, however, it’s not a prerequisite and can be in fact quite appealing (i.e. Google).

So how does one start with anti-marketing design? A systematic approach is to consider what information should be placed and how to fully utilize interaction between the site and your visitors. There’s no “best” layout, so just cognitively plan it out by keeping ’simplicity’ and ‘functionality’ in mind. When you have the information/interface design figured out, should you think about the visual design. Notice that is just one of the many ways to implement ugly design!

To summarize in a sentence, ugly-design’s purpose is to strip a site of its “ornaments” and put a higher priority over functionality with a minimalistic attitude. I dare say that ugly-design’s sole reason for its success can be due in part of the changing behavior of viewers in general. As I briefly discussed in my previous post regarding anti-marketing, people are becoming more and more inclined for simplicity, they want their information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Oftentimes adding flair (i.e. elaborate backgrounds, fancy images, etc.) can deter readers from absorbing information because it can easily be a distraction. By focusing your efforts on functionality, you can maximize on getting your information through to the readers.

More and more companies are convinced that the effectiveness of traditional marketing is not favorable compared to their expenses. People are building a stronger mental filter towards advertisement each day, however, companies still need marketing to generate awareness. Thus, they are turning to unconventional methods which would gain more attention from its viewers.

Viral marketing is a natural evolution of marketing which reduces the amount of “information overload” that we are facing from traditional marketing. It came from a need to capture the attention of viewers to the point of where they would be the main marketers. Think of viral marketing as a “marketer-induced” word of mouth. Organic word of mouth is great because it excites people and creates a natural enthusiasm that they wish to share. Unfortunately, it may take a long time to establish such an effect as well as being out of the company’s hand. Therefore viral marketing encourages word of mouth and accelerates the process.

image credit: www.utalkmarketing.com

The Semi-Usual Suspects: Tools of the Trade and its Methods

(Note: Parts of this information was influenced by the writings of Anneke Loeffen and Leon Oosterwijk about buzz marketing.)

• Influencing the fluencers: Within your niche, some people have more influence than others. Effective use of influencers will accelerate the acceptance of your product and disburse information about it, effectively igniting word of mouth. A popular method in the blogging world would be guest posting. Taking a deeper look at it, getting your post on an influencer’s blog means that the influencer approves of your message and thinks it’s worthy of being posted on his/her site. Furthermore, he/she wants other viewers to notice what you have to say. This could be a doorstep in getting the influencer to recognize you and be a frequent visitor to your site…which brings me to another point, write great content. I cannot stress enough how important your content is. It is that which will drive your blog/site in the long run as well as create buzz. Try not to be intrusive when asking to guest post, but do be honest. Request them to have a look at your writing as politely as possible (Most of them don’t have much time…and will immediate hit the ‘delete’ button or stop reading if you come off as rude and pompous.) and then ask them that if they enjoyed what they read, you would be appreciative to have it posted on his/her site.
• Planting the Seeds: Typically, when companies want to get their name out there, they do what is called seeding. This refers to the technique of handing out their product, or a sample of it, to strategic points of various networks. Seeding gives a strong impression on the company. By being able to hear, touch, and see, they will be more likely to remember your message. In the blogosphere, an example would be the eBook. Handing out an eBook effectively lets the viewer experience your knowledge and they will be intrigued as to what else you have to offer. The effectiveness of this technique depends on the whether your eBook discusses a topic that people are “talking about” (aka of great interest). As a side-effect, seeding will make you come off as being generous, which will relate to the next bullet.
• Events: Creating buzz around your product can be done quite easily with holding events. The more unique or extravagant, the more it will ’stick’, or spread through out the mouths of others. The idea behind holding events is that it will get people talking because of the sole reason that people like to talk about what they are doing (just look at Twitter, for example.). When people run across something unique or extravagant(such as an event), there is a high possibility of them mentioning it. In blogging, we can do this by holding a contest and think of ways to make it unique (By either the prizes or the ways to win the contest.).
• Give your readers a ‘behind the scene’ look: In general, people like to naturally be the first to know of something extraordinary, as well as how things work. Give the reader something along those lines…give them the “inside scoop”.
• Generate scarcity or mystery: In viral marketing, the main focus is spreading the word about your product. At the same time however, you don’t want to spread out too much information, but rather sharing it gradually over time. This all relates to the idea that if something is scare or hard to come by, that it’s probably valuable. Creating mystery piques the viewers interest and makes them curious as to what is ‘under the veil’.

image credit: adam.t.bull.googlepages.com

Viral marketing is all about generating interest in your product and encouraging it to go viral. I discussed the various ways of harnessing viral marketing mainly through blogging examples, however, it can be applied to any medium. Do your research and consider what are the best techniques to get your site out there. I’m sure you’ll find it very rewarding.

image credit: www.allposters.com

Indrajit Sinha, an associate marketing professor at The Fox School of Business, examines anti-marketing in his book Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New “Pull” Game. A great example to explain his point, is mentioning Simon Cowell, you know…that British guy on American Idol. Oftentimes, he’s more cruel and rude than necessary to the contestants…but guess what? People like that. It’s his authenticity and his disregard of being political correct that makes him so appealing.

A good example in the blogging world to refer to…and in some part what compelled me to write this post…is Geoff’s blog, Can’t Get Rich. To put it bluntly, his views on making huge amounts of income online is basically that you can’t. His message is quite effective…why? Trying to make a target seem unreachable piques ones interest. It’s simple, it’s authentic, and being politically correct is not put into consideration at all.

image credit: cantgetrich.com

Creating curiosity gives the customer a presence of mystery and wanting to know what is “going on inside”. Sinha mentions many restaurants and clothing stores not addressing their addresses in commercials. Doing so adds on to the allure of mystery. Something that restaurants do in making it seem more mysterious, is having the blinds used on the windows. I can personally say that this an effective strategy because when I went to New York City, my friend and I came across this restaurant called “Jekyll and Hyde Club”, which refers to the famous character with a split personality. It had various figures outside for display, such as Mr. Hyde and various skeletal statues. The windows and any openings, however, were all shut…creating curiosity and giving mystery. We eventually decided to go in and check this place out (unfortunately the anti-marketing created, overshadowed the quality of the restaurant itself!).

In his book, Sinha states that, “with traditional marketing changing, those clinging to the old rules are paying a big price“. Apple’s iPod success can be contributed to its simplicity. Whole Foods and bottled water are influencing marketers use of nature. Clearly, more and more large corporations are becoming aware of this emerging trend. They are embracing the change of traditional marketing strategies, and have become quite successful. Bloggers can apply anti-marketing to their blogs as well. The first step in using anti-marketing is understanding the fundamentals. Just remember…keep it simple, keep it authentic, and disregard all political correctness.