As a web developer I realize the importance of social and viral media to promote my business and generate new leads. When work is steady rolling in I seem to neglect my social and viral networking responsibilities. I consider myself lucky since the media would have everyone believe that the sky is falling in on us with the economy. I also realize that not all business owners are as lucky as myself. Viral Marketing can be a relatively cheap way to market your product or services while providing a boost to your websites rankings and traffic. It can become time consuming so some business owners choose to pass it on to a web developer or marketing companies. Whatever you do DONT ignore social  networking and media. Lots and Lots of people are on these sites. It can also become a good a form of advertising depending on how far you take it. For example Burger King has launched a new ad campaign that I must admit is pretty clever. Starting out with the “Whopper Virgins” people who have never had a whopper before…you have to crack a smile at that one. The latest viral marketing campaign they have launched involves a custom built Facebook application called Whopper Sacrifice. The catch…delete 10 of your Facebook friends and get a free Whopper.

Viral Marketing & Social Media Advertising Campaign

What is the point of this social-viral ad campaign and the Facebook application?!? I’m glad you asked. Lets break it down. If one person with a Facebook profile add this application to their profile the first thing that happens is a notice will appear on their wall notifying anyone who browses the profile of the “Whopper Sacrifice App” Curiosity will definitely stir the interest of some individuals and they will begin to add the application. What about the 10 friends that get deleted. The funny part is that when you sacrifice someone they show up in your activity feed. So it’ll read, for example, “Alex sacrificed Mark for a free Whopper.”  A certain percentage of the 10 people that are deleted along with those who read the activity feeds related to the application will add it to their profiles. Pretty soon you will know who is and isn’t a vegetarian on Facebook. I’m not sure if Burger King recently switched ad agencies or not but this is on smart idea. I guarantee you will see copy cats of this. Happy New year everyone. Make 2009 your breakthrough year. Let Incept Design take your web presence to the next level.

Sincerely,

Alex Adekola – Founder and Lead Developer at Incept Design

Over and over I find myself in a conversation with business owners informing them of the opportunities the internet provides in getting out their message, promoting their business, selling products, and building their brand. Obama transcended this concept into a presidential campaign.

Some say it’s never a good idea to talk about politics, but I think we can all agree that the recent presidential election has changed politics forever. Not only in how our political map is divided, but the importance of the internet in getting out the vote in this and every election to come. Obama launched an unprecedented internet campaign during his election that helped tremendously in tipping the scales in many of the swing states. Obama’s web team included the founder of Facebook a popular social networking website with 70 million users. He also had an email base of over 10 million names.

Obama leveraged social networking websites Myspace and Facebook. A UCLA survey of 272,000 college freshmen found that 86 percent spend “some time” each week on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Obama had 2.4million users as supporters on Facebook alone compared to McCain’s 624,000.

Obama posted nearly 2000 videos on Youtube, and launched a text messaging campaign. In fact Obama announced his VP choice at 3am via text message.

During the primaries, volunteers could sign in online, download a list of phone numbers and make calls from home to voters in the target states. A brilliant idea.

How are you using your website to generate sales?

Are you on the social 7 – Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkIn, Twitter, Flicker, & Digg?