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How to succeed on Broadway? Mix Facebook, fans and video

August 4, 2011 by  
Filed under Latest Lingerie News


Wed Aug 3, 2011 12:48pm EDT

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying is making a big push on Facebook, with a contest to find its biggest fan by asking users to record video testimonials. Those testimonials become great word-of-mouth advertising for other potential theater goers.

The Broadway musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying is making a big marketing push on Facebook, with an innovative campaign to find the show’s biggest fan. The show, which stars Harry Potter‘s Daniel Radcliffe and Night Court‘s John Larroquette, hopes to drum interest with fan-generated video submissions.

The “Ultimate Fan” contest, which can be found at on the show’s website and its Facebook page, asks users to tell the producers why they are the show’s biggest fans. Those fans then get 20 seconds to record their best pitch. The contest winner will be flown to New York City to watch the show, meet the cast and take part in a video series highlighting the experience.

my attempt at being a super fan

Jim Glaub, creative director of How To Succeed‘s Ultimate Fan campaign, said the producers of the show were looking for ways to engage with and reward fans on Facebook. The contest was one way to do that. But of course, there’s also a marketing angle to the contest. “Besides being able to reward one lucky fan, there are benefits from a marketing standpoint,” Glaub said.

The genius in the campaign is that the show’s biggest fans are also its biggest evangelists: Videos from fans can be watched by other viewers on the How To Succeed page or on Facebook. By showing real people with real enthusiasm for the show, How To Succeed hopes to drum up even more interest from viewers who might be on the fence.

Not just that, but fans that have recorded their own testimonials can then share their videos with friends. Since the number one way that theater goers hear about a new show is through word of mouth, getting on people’s Facebook walls is one very easy way to spread the word.

The whole campaign is being managed by video startup VideoGenie, which provides a platform for companies to gather, manage, publish and analyze videos that are recorded by their fans. VideoGenie, which recently raised $2 million in venture funding, has run a ton of these types of campaigns so far, and claims that leveraging fan testimonials has been pretty effective for clients looking to better engage with their target audiences.

Take the Tony Awards for instance. In May, VideoGenie launched a campaign on the Tony Awards Facebook page, asking users to answer the question, “What Does Broadway Mean to You?” About 40 percent of all traffic from the campaign came from users clicking through videos that their friends had shared on their walls. The average viewer watched about a minute and 25 seconds of video content, which means on average they watched four separate testimonials. And each video shared, on average, sent 67 people to the Tony Awards site.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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An Early Overview of Google+ As A Content Marketing Platform

August 4, 2011 by  
Filed under Latest Lingerie News

Ramon Ray the Smallbiztechnology.com Team

Rex Hammock of Hammock Inc. released his e-brief (free download) evaluating Google+ as a potential content marketing platform and “business” social network. Google+, if you haven’t yet heard, is Google’s new social network, which offers a variety of features that would be useful to conducting business. Hammock outlines how Google+ is different from other social networks, and what that could mean to small business.

Hammock said in the e-brief that Google+ could really position itself by focusing on the aspects of social networking that appeal to business executives. Facebook Pages, for example, has never done well for business-to-business services, and Facebook has that association as a place to goof off rather than conduct business. However, Google+ still isn’t Facebook, which may not necessarily be a good thing.

Hammock also said that social networking for business should mean increasing productivity and efficiency. Google+ has the ability to do that, especially with features like Sparks and Hangouts (really don’t like that name) that could be used to make business more productive and more efficient. For those who want to utilize social media for business purposes, Google+ could cut into that time that’s now split among Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Hammock also remarked on an early drawback for Google+ and business users: no support for Google Apps for Business. Granted, Google announced that Google+ will have business pages before the end of the year, but it’s not the same as integrated with all those wonderful apps. This lack of of support also initially alienates the employees at three million companies who have Gmail accounts, but not the type that works for Google+.

To conclude, Hammock offered six predictions for Google+. To learn more about Google+ as a business tool, please feel free to download the e-brief at the top.

  1. Google+ will be a big success as a business-oriented product – even an enterprise employee-to-employee product.
  2. Google+ will attract adult consumers who think having a Facebook account is ridiculous.
  3. Google+ won’t have much impact on Twitter or LinkedIn.
  4. Google+ is a bigger threat to Facebook than any other social networking player, but more so in the business-to-business area than in the consumer area.
  5. Google+ will be a big hit with small businesses.
  6. Google+ has the opportunity of being the most open social network if it allows users to be part of the Google+ network using their own identities, not the identities that Google owns and controls.

Read more posts on Ramon Ray the Smallbiztechnology.com Team »

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