Yesterday Rage Against the Machine (RATM) become the first UK Christmas number one from downloads alone. The Facebook group “Rage against the machine for Christmas no.1” boasts 975,476 members and was the catalyst to the most exciting chart battle for years. The Facebook campaign directly challenged the X Factor’s dominance for the Christmas No 1 slot – X Factor winners have dominated Christmas number ones for the last four years.

Over the last ten years we have witnessed a communication revolution. The rise of online shopping, the blogging phenomenon, iPhones and smart phones and online advertising spend overtaking TV advertising. The rise of social media has shaken up the marketing and advertising industry by introducing new dynamics to communication.

The RATM Facebook campaign really highlights the digital revolution we have experienced and thus makes a perfect end to 2009. It proves that online campaigns can make a serious impact on society and firmly reinforces social media as one of the most important technology developments of the past decade (and possibly the last 50 years).

If you think traditionally the X Factor single should have won. It had:

• A 12-14 week show on Saturday and Sunday nights
• A proven history of successful X Factor number ones with four previous winners
• A hugely successful record label financing the single
• High street sales; HMV, etc

The RATM campaign had

• £0 financing and marketing budget
• No store sales
• And a song which was 15 years old

But where it lacked in investment it scored in emotional connections with the UK population. Facebook gave people the opportunity to really make a difference and be heard. The viral campaign spread within days and topped 500,000 members in under a week.

The power of social media cannot be ignored. It has challenged the traditional forms of advertising. Consumers will be heard and must be listened to. Brands which do not listen will simply not be around in the future. Companies need to move their communication efforts to where their target consumers are, and many statistics show that as of 2009 more and more of us are spending time online especially engaging on social media.

Give your followers value

Before you even set up a Twitter account, you must plan a campaign and set goals for what you want to achieve. What is the purpose of your profile and what will your customers gain? If you were a customer what would benefit you? If you wouldn’t want to follow the updates then most probably neither would your customers.

Keep your profile updated with regular tweets, but only if they are useful to your followers. You don’t want to tweet useless updates like “I am hungry” which nobody is interested in. Tweet links to blog posts, discounts, news stories and anything else your customers may find interesting. Once you find a topic that brings in a lot of followers or sparks discussion you can expand on this and even write a follow-up blog post.

Don’t over-tweet and clog up your followers’ profiles because they will most probably be following other companies too. There’s a danger that your tweets may get in the way of other updates and people will just stop following you.

Etiquette

Twitter is not an instant messenger. It is designed to communicate to thousands of users at once. Try to make your tweets appeal to all followers and don’t get stuck in two way conversations. Re-tweet (RT) other relevant tweets which your followers will find valuable. Reply to your followers and find related queries other users might have that you can answer.

Promotion

Use your corporate branding to style your profile so users trust you and don’t think it’s a fake profile. Find other users which are related to your industry and follow them. They might return the favour and in turn pass on their followers.

Research what other people are saying before posting a tweet. Use Twitter Search to see what key phrases are being used and try to include them in your tweets. Use hash tags before and after your key phrases. Tweet at peak times so your tweets don’t get lost. Peak times can vary depending on your industry and country but the majority of users go on just before and after work.

If you have a company blog or website, add a link or feed so that people can see your latest Tweets. Add a link in your email signature.

Tweets

When it comes to writing a tweet, don’t just write “Here is a great article http://bit.ly/crDzc.” Spark conversation by asking a question e.g. “None, sharp, crisp, strong or smooth? Which photoshop anti-aliasing works best? You decide… #photoshop #design http://bit.ly/crDzc.”

Here I have asked a question which will entice followers and hopefully get a response and create even more exposure. I have also added key phrases so it will be picked up in Twitter Search.

Getting the most out of Twitter is a matter of trial and error.  You can only find out what works for your company by trying different approaches.

Guides

Newbie’s guide to Twitter
Twitter Glossary
Hash Tags

Tools

http://bit.ly/ – Use this website to shorten your URLs/Links so you can fit more characters in your tweets.
http://twitpic.com/ – Upload and share photos on Twitter.
http://refollow.com/ – Manage your friends and followers on Twitter.

Anyone can upload a video onto YouTube and thousands of people do this every day making it increasingly harder to get noticed. Uploading a clip while thinking it will automatically reach a wide audience just isn’t the reality and unless you do it with SEO in mind you may find that it just slips into the YouTube sea of useless information.
Appearing on page one for any chosen key phrase is essential to achieve maximum results. Applying SEO can get your video on the first page of YouTube and if you get that right you could also see yourself appearing on the first page of Google for the same key phrase. This will all depend on how competitive the key phrase you are targeting is and how well your video is produced, because at the end of the day you will need to create something that is visibly pleasing to the eye with relevant and useful information.

A good example of this is the video for the Magicard HoloKote Tool that I recently uploaded onto YouTube. After applying traditional SEO techniques I have got the video to appear number one on YouTube for its chosen key phrase “ID Card Security” and just recently it has started to jump between page one and two on Google.com.

Below is a screenshot I took today which displays the video at position one on Google.com

Alternatively search for [ID Card Security] on Google.com

Using traditional techniques like optimising the title, description and tags, have laid a solid foundation for us to build upon. Our next step is to create a newsletter that we can send out to all of the Magicard dealers. This will detail how they can embed the Holokote video into their site. Doing this will bring further exposure to the YouTube channel and move us up the SERPs. If we can get 30% of Magicard dealers to embed the video on their site then that’s a job well done and we should see the video move into the top five positions on Google.com regularly.

So in conclusion, using video as a marketing tool can bring a great return if you can achieve a first page ranking in any top search engine. And with more people turning towards the internet for video/media whether it is on a mobile device or through traditional means you may want to decide if this is something that you need to get involved in.

YouTube if you want to.