The Annoying Orange Web show has taken YouTube by storm. The YouTube channel has well over 1 billion views and more than 2 million subscribers. Dane Boedigheimer, the creator of the phenomenon, recently spoke with WebProNews about the viral sensation and its television deal.
Boedigheimer, who is more commonly known as “Daneboe,” told us that he had created several one-off talking food episodes prior to the launch of Annoying Orange. He expected Annoying Orange to follow the same trend, but instead, it took off.
Boedigheimer credits a large part of the success of Annoying Orange to their efforts on Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook page has over 10 million “likes” and the pages for individual characters have many fans as well. Twitter is also a key tool for the show since users can read what are, essentially, mini episodes from the various Twitter accounts set up.
What’s more, the show captured the attention of the Cartoon Network. The TV series is set to air in June, but the Web show will continue. Boedigheimer told us that he hopes the shows will work together and push traffic to each other.
He is excited about the future and said his team will continue to create consistent content.
Have you jumped onto the “Annoying Orange” bandwagon? We’d love to know.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Mar 3rd, 2012. 
Since online privacy is a very controversial issue, it’s not surprising that the debate is heating up again with the FTC report and Commerce Department report expected to be released in the next couple of weeks. WebProNews spoke with Jules Polonetsky, the Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, who told us that the Commerce Department’s report would be interesting since it will dictate the direction the White House takes on the matter.
While he doesn’t think the U.S. will see legislation this year, he does think we’ll have it eventually. He said that the U.S. was paying a lot of attention to Europe, especially since it is expected to change its privacy directive as well.
Polonetsky did tell us that 2012 would include even more scrutiny of companies and lots of hearings.
“I’ve never seen as much scrutiny,” he said.
For the companies that are not in favor of legislation, he recommends that they show how they are self-regulating.
Would you like to see online privacy legislation? We’d love to know your thoughts.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jan 17th, 2012.
In a recent Harvard Business Review study it was revealed that only 12 percent of companies surveyed indicated that they were effective users of social media, and just 7 percent said they were able to integrate social media into their marketing activities.
These are the marketing problems that are all too common for businesses attempting to succeed in today’s social media environment.
Facebook the Social Media Marketing Powerhouse
Facebook is the social media marketing powerhouse and most of the younger demographic think Facebook “is” social media. The value of a Facebook ‘like’ is now starting to be calculated and measured with companies such as EventBrite (an on-line ticketing company) able to measure its worth.
Brands are still working out how to effectively leverage the power of Facebook’s reach, frequency and time spent in its ecosystem.
- Facebook accounts for 90% of all time spent on social networking sites
- In the US alone Facebook has 160 million visitors a month
- One in 13 people in the world are on Facebook (it is a ‘very’ global platform)
- Many iconic brands have been able to amass substantial Fan followings, with Coca Cola, Starbucks and Disney each boasting more than 20 million Fans as of July 2011.
The scale of this reach is focusing attention by marketing agencies on how to “market at scale” with social media and more specifically Facebook.
Why You Should Target ‘Friends of Fans’
A survey by ComScore in conjunction with Facebook looks closely at what the potential reach of not only the “fans” but “friends of fans” . This what you call the ‘secondary effect’. These friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers (34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages)
While Bing with a fan base of approximately 1.7 million fans on Facebook, the number of “Friends of Fans” is 232 million – more than 130 times the size of its Fan base
With this sort of secondary reach it is certainly worth looking more closely at ways to reach “friends of fans”.
Is effectively marketing to these friends of fans the holy grail of Facebook marketing?
Two Ways you can Reach Friends of Fans
In the survey ComScore describes a unit of branded content called a “social media brand impression.” These impressions occur throughout a social network and may be delivered through a variety of channels. The two primary vehicles through which unearned (not paid for) impressions are delivered are:
1. Page Publishing
These unpaid impressions appear on the Fan page wall and may also appear in the Newsfeed of a Fan or a Friend of a Fan.
2. Stories about Friends
These unpaid impressions occur when a Friend actively engages with a brand (e.g. Amy “Likes” Bing) and become visible either on a Friend’s wall or in the Newsfeed. These stories may appear to Fans and Friends of Fans.
Now it must be kept in mind that not all news updates published on a Brands “page” appear on the Fans profiles.
Why don’t all Fans see the Content Published?
Facebook analysis indicates that, on average, 16 percent of Fans are reached by branded content.
Why don’t all Fans see a particular piece of content from a brand? Some fans may miss content if they are not logged onto the site during a period when brands are active.
Additionally, the Facebook Newsfeed uses an algorithm (called Edge Rank) to rank content based upon the likely interest to a user so, unlike in other social media settings, only the content determined to be most relevant to a user is delivered at a specific time.
These results are similar to the degree of reach between users and their Friends – a given status update from a user will result in approximately 12 percent reach among their Friends, according to a Facebook analysis.
Fan Value and Social Media ROI
The study also looked at what is the value is for these social media brand impressions and asked perhaps the most common questions that arise in evaluating social media efforts.
- What is a Fan worth?
- What is the return on my social media investment?
Comscore quantified the value of a Fan in the following ways:
- Increasing engagement and loyalty among Fans
- Generating incremental purchases among Fans
1.Engagement
Website visitation was significantly greater amongst Fans and Friends of Fans of Starbucks with website visits up 418% by fans and 230% by Friends of fans.
2.Generating Incremental Purchases
Starbucks fans and friends of fans spent 10% more and transacted 11% more frequently than the average internet user who bought at Starbucks
. 
This survey shows that generating more Facebook likes and increasing engagement will increase the reach and provide marketing at scale. It also revealed the importance of the secondary effect and the magnitude and opportunity promised by reaching the “Friends of Fans”. Is achieving effective engagement with “Friends of Fans” the holy grail of Facebook marketing?
So the challenge continues to improve the ROI for your Facebook campaigns and amplify your marketing!
Image by Dan Culleton
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jul 28th, 2011.
Ahh, “summer reading” . . .
Who can resist the lure of a good book while sitting at the beach, lounging by the pool or jetting off for a well-deserved vacation?
If you’re like me, though, it’s difficult to leave the office completely behind, and whenever I have a bit of downtime for reading, I like to catch up on business books that can add dimension to my marketing view.
Don’t groan.
Not all business books are the dry tomes we (somehow) conquered in our Intro to Marketing class in college. Many, many are quite enjoyable; they entertain and inspire –even as they educate.
For example, let me recommend three of my recent favorites, any of which would be a valuable addition to your beach bag, pool tote or in-flight carry-on:
1. Switch: How to Drive Change When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
Given the current dynamic of rapidly proliferating channels and variable internal constraints, marketers have no choice but to embrace change. But, let’s be honest: being the change agent isn’t always easy. In Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath, present an analysis of why we often fear change and what we can do to modify our behaviors to start moving in a new direction.
As the authors explain:
“In our research, we studied people trying to make difficult changes: People fighting to lose weight and keep it off. Managers trying to overhaul an entrenched bureaucracy. Activists combating seemingly intractable problems such as child malnutrition. They succeeded–and, to our surprise, we found striking similarities in the strategies they used. They seemed to share a similar game plan. We wanted, in Switch, to make that game plan available to everyone, in hopes that we could show people how to make the hard changes in life a little bit easier.”
2. Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton.
Strategy Maps evolved from Kaplan and Norton’s ongoing research with hundreds of Balanced Scorecard adopters across the globe, and it’s a book that has truly transformed how I set strategy. Strategy Maps is a toolkit, of sorts, and using the methods described, I find that I’m better equipped to navigate the multi-stakeholder environment that’s now commonplace for me (and all CMOs).
3. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin.
No summer reading list for marketers would be complete without a book by Seth Godin. Poke the Box was released earlier this year. But, my all-time favorite remains Tribes. I come back to this book again and again, whenever I need to be re-inspired by Godin’s unconventional take on leadership. Tribes encourages us to throw away the old rules and embrace the possibilities offered by a new world of engaging and communication.
Remember: Even marketers get to kick back a little now and then. Enjoy your summer. Relax. And, take along a few good books to help re-invigorate your approach. You’ll come back to work refreshed and ready to hurdle the challenges that inevitably lie ahead.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jul 22nd, 2011.
 More WebProNews Videos |
PubCon Las Vegas gets started tomorrow (at least content-wise), and promises to deliver tons of great information about social media marketing, search engine marketing, etc. WebProNews will be covering the event with many exclusive interviews with speakers at the show (see PubCon’s full speaker list here).
At BlogWorld last month, WebProNews sat down with Brett Tabke, CEO of WebmasterWorld, which hosts the event. "We have a huge kick off keynote this year from New York Times’ Mr. David Pogue, lead tech editor…very well known in our space. We’re really excited about having him out," says Tabke. "We also have a huge social media panel the second day with Brian Clark, Scott Stratten, Chris Brogan, PR Sarah Evans…"
Tim Mayer, former head of search product and business at Yahoo, will also keynote the third day.
"We’re really looking forward to it. We have a huge presence this year in social media…kind of turned the corner on search this year…obviously that’s our core interested – SEO, SEM of course, but social media, just a huge set of tracks this year on social media," says Tabke.
"Coming up to about two years ago, we had done traditional marketing, offline marketing, PPC marketing…buying ads here and there. We had limited success with it," he says. We know it was working to a degree. People used coupon codes, took us up on offers, and then we decided…well, with the advent of Twitter and how huge the impact it had on events, such as SXSW…all the conference space, we decided to move exclusively to Twitter and Facebook marketing. It completely changed the nature of our business and the nature of the attendee that comes to PubCon."
It’s not only PubCon’s content that focuses on social media. Tabke and his team take full advantage of social media to organize the event as well. "We found quite a few great speakers via Twitter and through a service called Klout that rates tweets and their influence, and we tracked everybody through Klout and we came up with some very interesting speakers, such as Scott Stratten (we discovered him through Twitter 2 years ago), Chris Brogan (a couple years ago as well)."
Topics to be addressed at the event include: reputation management, PPC tactics, in-house SEO, affiliate programs, modern CSS and HTML coding, social media marketing, retweets and influence, Twitter apps, keyword research, large scale search programs, hiring SEOs, optimizing for universal and personal search, WordPress SEO, multimedia SEO, SEO tools, geo-location marketing, content creation and marketing, backlinks, monetizing social media channels, PR, link-buying, community administration, information architecture, e-commerce, optimizing for contextual ads, analytics, local search, and much more.
We’ll be providing continuous live video coverage throughout the event. Stay tuned to WebProNews.com and live.webpronews.com throughout the week.
Filed under Social Media by on Nov 9th, 2010.
