One of the things that irks me these days is the tendency for people to pronounce things dead. The idea being that some radical change is occurring  or has occurred rendering something obsolete. This old something must now in fact be pronounced dead. This pronouncement is given even though this old something has been so powerful in the past. In fact compared to this new thing the old thing has a demonstrated track record of high performance.

I’m sure there is a reason to think major changes are ahead that might permanently change things, but pronouncing things dead? Especially those things that have been mainstays for such a long time. Isn’t that taking things a bit too far.

So, here is a list of marketing tactics, techniques, ideas and thoughts that have recently been pronounced dead:

Jeff Gomez pronounces that “Print is Dead”

Marc Miller and Jason Sinkovitz pronounce that “Selling is Dead”

Michele Eggers asks “Is Marketing ROI Dead?”

Rick Aristotle Munarriz asks or states (can’t tell) “Death of Affiliate Marketing?”

And these are just a few examples. Over the years I’ve also heard the following:

• 60 second elevator speech is dead
• Personal Computer is dead
• Microsoft is dead
• Resume writing is dead
• Cover letter writing is dead

And recently I’ve heard a few people already pronounce that social media is dead.

And the biggest one of them all is when German philosopher Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Last time I checked he was the one that was dead.

photo credit: Shahram Sharif

By the time March rolls around in Colorado everyone is sick and tired of the cold. “How do yo know?” you ask.  O.k., while I’ve never lived in Colorado to personally experience it. However, I did live in Wisconsin for seven years. So, believe me, by March you want out! At least I did when I lived in Madison.

So if you’re one of those in Colorado dying to get out of the cold, here is your chance. The Tempe Convention and Visitor Bureau is organizing a thumbs video contest and the lucky winner get a free trip to Tempe, Arizona in March! The grand prize includes (but is not limited to) two FREE round-trip tickets, a  three days/two nights stay at the Tempe Residence Inn by Marriott and, tickets to spring training games in the area. In case you didn’t catch it, that is just he beginning of the prize list. Details of the entire prize package is posted on their website, where you can also register for the contest.

How do you enter you ask? Well, simply make a funny video of your thumbs (see example below) explaining why you deserve a trip to Tempe. Upload the video to YouTube (add the video to the Tempe Thumbs group page) and register. That’s it. Winners will be announced on March 9th!. Good luck.

By the way if you’re a blogger in the Colorado area feel free to pass this information along t0 your readers. Unless of course you want to enter and increase your chances of winning by keeping the news to yourself.  Shame on you. But I understand!

Disclaimer: My employer AIR Markeitng worked with Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau to develop this video contest. I am blogging to spread the word.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to speak with Ken Morgan and Julie Dougherty over at 1510 AM KFNN. Ken and Julie host “Business for Lunch” between 1pm and 2pm on weekdays. We discussed online reputation management in the age of social media.

Click on the play button to listen to the recorded podcast:

Viral videos can be a great way to introduce your work to a new audience. There are videos which have made the rounds on Internet and have achieved millions in views. The most notable recent example is the BlendTec “Will it Blend” videos. With creativity, marketing savvy and a very clear cut message, BlendTec has been able to introduce its brand to over 5 million people in a very short period of time.  This is an astounding achievement in my estimation, considering how little the company spent to put the videos together.

Developing a video in the hopes that it will go viral is very difficult. Part of the challenge is you’re counting on viewers to pass on the video to their sphere of influence – and there is no real way for you to be able to influence this action other than by the video itself. Clever content is a good start but you also have to make sure it’s easy to forward the video – either the link or the content itself.

In many ways, what people pass on is a matter of personal taste and preference. While I think funny videos get passed on more than others, I don’t’ think a video has to be funny to be passed on. Content that is sufficiently out of the ordinary seems to go viral as often as funny ones.

I recently came across the blog “No Permission” which documented how a certain on of their videos went viral. Here is how he says the entire thing got started:

A couple of weeks after I had posted, a friend sent me an IM “Hey, you never stumbled Nanny”. He meant that I’d never given the video a thumbs up via the StumbleUpon browser plugin. StumbleUpon is a social network / link sharing site, in which your friends in your network see sites you’ve given a thumbs up, and vice versa. We’ve had some success using this and other similar sites, and I usually Stumble a new video post on YouTube as a matter of course. I use YouTube as the preferred Stumble site because it’s the most popular video site, and a video there benefits more from a greater view total than on any other site.

In any case, my friend Stumbled the site, and I immediately seconded it. The seconding serves two purposes, one it’s a vote of confidence in the first Stumble, which makes it more likely to be seen by others, and two it combines my stumble network with my friend’s, increasing the number of people the video can be exposed to.

Nanny caught on with the Stumble crowd, and racked up a number of views from people Stumbling on the page over the next couple of days.

But then the big step happened- the video got added to the FunWall application on Facebook. Someone, likely one of the Stumblers, started “forwarding” the video via FunWall, and the view count really took off.

I encourage anyone interested in making viral videos to read the full post. Here are some of the takeaways I came up with after reading it several times:

1. Submit your video to Stumbleupon since its more attuned for videos
2. Video receives greater exposure once a second submission is received (vote of confidence)
3. Post on Facebook FunWall (reduces link friction – ease of passing links on)
4. Distribute email attachment version
5. Once you reach critical mass traditional media will pick it up increasing exposure even further

Of course this is only one example and the whole thing would have been a failure if the content had not been so compelling, but this is a very useful case study. I was also struck by how proactive you have to promote your content so as to feed the frenzy (if there is one).

Picture courtesy of foreversouls.