Yesterday we talked about Karmaloop’s SEO success. Today we’re going to talk about its innovative affiliate marketing widget. Most of Karmaloop’s customers and Facebook group members have no clue about what affiliate marketing is. But many are masters of their MySpace domain, or Facebook profile, or maybe even a blog. So they’re qualified to evangelize Karmaloop through these profiles with the widget, while earning “Rep Points” to reward them for their participation.

GET YOUR CUSTOM WIDGET HERE!
Now you can promote your favorite Karmaloop products and EARN REP POINTS on your Myspace page or facebook or website with the Karmaloop Widget. Just fill out the form then copy and paste the code on your Myspace page or facebook or website.

Example:

See the widget in action on Facebook.

If you recognized this was NOT an official OfficeMax Elf Yourself video, perhaps you’re one of the 26.4 million people who took part in the real OfficeMax viral campaign last Christmas. (For our non-US readers, you can read up on this campaign here).

There’s no denying that this was the biggest social media marketing success for a major retailer in 2007. Hitwise ranked ElfYourself.com as the 51st most visited website in December, and users spent a total of 2,600 years on the site. Even more remarkable, 40% of visitors to ElfYourself.com were 55 years or older - proving that social media campaigns can engage boomers successfully.

OfficeMax VP of Marketing and Advertising Bob Thacker said: “We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren’t looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization.”

Continue Reading:
Viral Marketing: Can Dancing Elves Move Product Off Shelves? »

This is an oldie but a goodie based on a Backstreet Boy parody by Weird Al Yankovic, in case you missed it.

Did you look closely? This is not an official Weird Al video. It apparently was put together by a 12 year old back in 1999 (thanks to a Google of “Kronix Project”) with a budget of practically nothing on some really basic slideshow software. Yes folks, link bait is that easy.

High Fidelity was a great movie. One of my top five things about that movie is that the main character Rob Fleming (played by John Cusack) always had a top five for important things in his life. Well, as a social media marketer, I pulled out my personal top five Youtube commercial spoofs that are used to promote blogs, podcasts or websites.

If your social media marketing team is sitting around the boardroom table (or leaning back in oversized inflatable plasitic armchairs, as the case may be) wondering “what kinda viral video should we do?” there’s nothing easier than creating a parody of a successful ad campaign or viral video. Half of your concept is already there - all you have to do is make fun of it. Plus, you’re likely to get found in Youtube through intelligent tagging your video with keywords related to the original ad or video. This can help you appear in related video suggestions whenever these popular videos are viewed.

So here’s my personal top five Youtube parodies that promote actual websites. But I’d like to hear from you which you think is the best of the five by voting in the comments. If you have your own favorite (so long as it’s clean — this is a family blog) please drop that in the comments as well and we’ll be happy to link back to your site. There are a lot of good user generated parodies out there, but we’re looking for examples that explicitly promote a blog, podcast or website outside of Youtube or MySpace (either with a URL on the video or in the video’s description on Youtube.

Continue Reading:
Friday Chuckle: Top 5 Youtube Ad Parodies - VOTE PLEASE! »

Wikipedia defines “podcasting” as:

“a portmanteau of Apple’s “iPod” and “broadcasting”, is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.”

(Now who’s got a definition of “portmanteau?” )

The popular viral podcast series “Ask A Ninja” (or AAN) likens podcasting to a method for apple pie factories to produce apple pie for whales.

Continue Reading:
Friday Chuckle: What is Podcasting? »

When veteran companies like Random House embrace very forward thinking marketing practices like ecommerce widgets, the winds of change must be blowing.

What is a widget? Simply, a third party item that can be embedded in a web page. The most common being embedded Google AdSense ads or YouTube videos (most often found on blogs and social networks like MySpace).
What is an ecommerce widget? Well a widget that helps sell stuff of course.

Random House ‘gets it widget on’ in a similar fashion as the popular Amazon ‘Search Inside’ feature with something called ‘Insight‘.

Bloggers and social networkers can embed their favorite book widget so visitors to their blog or profile can:

• view the book cover
• view inside the book (or in the case of audio books, listen to a sample)
• buy the book (links into the product page of the online store)
• get the widget code themselves

The Random House ecommerce widget is seen below:

Learn more about the Random House ecommerce widget or read detailed coverage of the offering at Read/WriteWeb - Random House - Widgets and Web Services Done Right.

Note: Random House runs on the Elastic Path ecommerce software platform with excellent integration with SAP, which makes this story even more cool.

In a portent of things to come, on May 22nd on the heels of the ACCM show in Boston, DM News published an article called “Elastic Path to launch video parodying online shopping.”  Besides declaring a war on boredom, Jason provided Chantal Todé

a sneak preview of the clips which you can enjoy in full over at the “Crazy Messed Up World of Ecommerce” page.

E-commerce services provider Elastic Path Software hopes it can shake up BTB marketing a little when it launches a viral video on YouTube about what would happen if real-world shoppers were treated the same as online shoppers.

“Other companies are boring — these conferences are boring,” said Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path, about why the company decided to create a viral video.

Some of the scenarios in the video included a consumer who asks Google for an orange and ends up in a store where everything is the color orange, and another who asks for a turnip and the clerk keeps to trying to cross-sell her by asking if she wants a t-shirt with her turnip or a warranty or a peeler.

Also noteworthy on this topic is Jordan (a Vancouver-based marketing consultant) Behan’s comments about both the funny ecomerce videos and Capulet’s blogger outreach approach, as he described thusly:

Full disclosure: I am an acquaintance of a few of the Elastic Pathers, and the firm that produced the spots as well. That being the case, it should be noted that the email I received containing the link was a terrific example of blogger relations.

I thoroughly enjoy the immediacy of the web, post a project and get real-time, unfiltered opinions from cool acquaintances like Jordan as they spread the word by telling ten more friends.