Surely you've heard of sites like YouTube by now and the power of videos when it comes to Social Marketing. If you want to discover a powerful social marketing technique that is a highly-effective way to produce videos, and is actually far cheaper and less time consuming - read on…
Get other people to create your own promotional videos for you by announcing a contest and awarding the winners. The key is that the contest needs to either have a very entertaining element to it, or it needs to have a prize that’s big enough that people are willing to work on it even though it may not be as exciting.
The idea is to structure the contest so that people can logically relate to your product or website as a one-of-a-kind problem solver. For example, launch a contest that shows people’s faces when they discover your product. Shouldn't be too expensive to produce now is it? That way the videos that get produced actually become commercials for your website.
It is recommended to run the contest through YouTube, so that the entries are posted directly on YouTube or some other video sites. That way people are adding lots of videos onto YouTube that promote your product or website, generating more traffic and search results.
The guidelines for running a contest on YouTube can be found here.
Ideally, you should have 3-5 different videos that have viral power all their own and obviously own all rights to the winning videos.
Part of the judging process should involve social media, for example – take into account the number of Diggs or votes on YouTube received for each video. Anything that can turn the contest over to the social media is a blessing.
The key to success is to generate lots of buzz about the contest and draw people to sign in. To do so issue a press release, advertise the contest on social networks, blogs & forums, and try to get top bloggers to write about it.
After the videos have been produced you should distribute them to major video sharing sites. Here is a partial list:
• www.Blip.TV
• www.EyeSpot.com
• www.FreeIQ.com
• www.GoogleVideo.com
• www.Grouper.com
• www.JumpCut.com
• www.OurMedia.com
• www.Revver.com
• www.VideoEgg.com
• www.Vimeo.com
• www.vSocial.com
• www.YouTube.com
You may also want to consider video distribution tools such as TubeMogul or Kyte.