Internet Marketing Strategist

Brilliant illustration of edgy viral brand marketing. This Viral marketing video was conceived by Robert Rugan, creative director at Superfad. Durex PR firm Fitzgerald+CO conceived the viral, which was then produced by Rugan of Superfad New York.  Today, it is essential for marketers to be bold,  and not be afraid to push the boundaries – its noisy out there and if you want your message to be heard in a crowded place you need to be loud – so speak up!

“When you get the chance to create ‘karma-balloon-animal-sutra’, everyone involved gets really stoked about pushing the boundaries as much as possible.”

-Robert Rugan, creative director at Superfad

A very clever viral production, perhaps one of the most risque viral productions I have seen illustrating what the product is used for but also incorporates the product itself into the advert. Genius! Too risque for mainstream Americanism and its moderate media palette It is a bold approach to play out the “act” with balloon animals made out of condoms simulating the “act” where condoms are required. The media campaign was a huge success in the UK and inspired a couple leading female contraceptive suppliers to follow suite with its own flavor of viral madness.

Durex is the number one ranked global supplier of condoms, a testimonial that if you shout a littler louder, you will stand out in a crowed space.

The Twitter Guide Book, a one-stop shop for getting up to speed with everything Twitter (), from managing your Twitter stream to promoting a business. Now, we’ve packaged up all of our best Twitter resources in a downloadable presentation so you can flip through all of the content in one place, and print and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Presented by Adobe Acrobat 9, sponsor of this year’s SlideShare “World’s Best Presentation Contest”, the Twitter Guide Book includes a special audio introduction from Mashable Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore, as well as five chapters:

1. Twitter 101: The Basics
2. Building Your Twitter Community
3. Managing Your Twitter Stream
4. Sharing on Twitter
5. Twitter for Business

• Always use tags – as many as possible while still being accurate. Put multiple word tags in surrounded by quotation marks “”

• Make descriptive titles for your photos

• Create thematic Sets for your photos

• Links on profile, sets and collection pages are not nofollowed

• If the photo is location specific, go into Flickr’s tools and geotag the picture
  • Go into the Flickr set tools, and locate the location on the Yahoo! Map, then drag the picture onto the map to pinpoint its location

• Creative Commons license your photo and put how you want the user to credit you in your photo’s description

Have you created your LinkedIn acoount? Is your LinkedIn account being maxim ized? LinkedIn is an amazing social media stategy that packs a lot of bang for thebuck, and its FREE. . Below, I have drafted an outline of some best practices that will supercharge your social media campaign to expand business or personal brand awareness, improve your Google PageRank, or enhance your search engine results.

Here are 30 ways to use LinkedIn more effectively.

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or Twitter stream into your profile.
3. Do market research and gain knowledge with Polls.
4. Share survey and poll results with your contacts.
5. Answer questions in Questions and Answers: show expertise without a hint of self-promotion.
6. Ask questions in Questions and Answers to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think.
7. Publish your LinkedIn URL on all your marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects learn more about you.
8. Grow your network by joining industry and alumni groups related to your business.
9. Update your status examples of recent work.
10. Link your status updates with your other social media accounts.
11. Combine your social media approach: when someone asks a question in Twitter, respond in detail on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
12. Use the search feature to find people by company, industry and city.
13. Start and manage a group or fan page for your product, brand or business.
14. Research your prospects before meeting or contacting them.
15. Share useful articles and resources that will be of interest to customers and prospects.
16. Don’t turn off your contacts: avoid hard-sell tactics.
17. Write honest and valuable recommendations for your contacts.
18. Request LinkedIn recommendation from happy customers willing to provide testimonials.
19. Post your presentations on your profile using a presentation application.
20. Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
21. Ask your first-level contacts for introductions to their first-level contacts.
22. Interact with LinkedIn on a regular basis to reach those who may not see you on other social media sites.
23. Set up to receive LinkedIn messages in your inbox so you can respond right away.
24. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere, with a summary of why it’s valuable to add to your credibility.
25. List your newsletter subscription information and archives.
26. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
27. Post discounts and package deals.
28. Import vCards and contacts from other applications to find more connections.
29. Export your contacts into other applications.
30. Buy a LinkedIn direct ad that only your target market will see.
31. Post job listings to find qualified talent.
32. Look for connections related to a job you want.
33. Find vendors and contractors through connections.
34. Integrate the Box.net widget – pulls in external files, so you can display word, powerpoint, pdf and many other files. Box.net isnt my choice for other social media sites. Comes with plenty of storage capacity.
35. Add your LinkedIn hyperlink to your website, blog, and one other URL and select “Other” so you can specify the anchor text. Don’t use the pre-selected categories “My website” etc.
36. Add a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) or two to your network.
    –i.e. a “promiscuous sneezer” (in Seth Godin-speak)
    –Use the TopLinked.com list. e.g. Flip Filipowski
37. Add your email address to your “professional headline” so folks 4+ degrees away don’t have to waste an InMail to contact you

Show Yourself – Transparency Builds Loyalty

In social media world, you are the brand. With Twitter, being one of the major players in social media, showing yourself on the profile page can be very effective way of strengthening your brand and community around your website.

Example: Todd Defren – Shift Communications @Tdefren

Example: Darren Rowse – ProBlogger @problogger

Modern economic theory analyzes human action within a “society” or a “nation” and attempts to predict how it might respond to various policies. Let us turn to a basic philosophical principle concerning free choice; Groups don’t make choices, only people make choices. Classical Economics, and advocates of the Libertarian creed vehemently reject polices aimed at the maximizing utility of the “common good”.

In opposition to “common good” policies, classical economics defends the intimate relationship between economic freedom and personal liberty. In order for liberty to thrive, natural rights without exception or equivocation must be an integral consideration when public policies are on the table.

The underlying philosophical doctrine of Classical Economics is rooted in “Aristotelian Philosophy” adhering to rationalism, private property, social responsibility, subjective individuality, natural law, natural rights, and universal truths of human action.

How to Change Your Twitter Background

The 6th tab in Twitter account settings is design, and we encourage you to do exactly that! Customize your profile page with one of our 12 profile templates, or get creative with your profile by changing the colors of the background, text, links, sidebar, and sidebar border to create a custom profile of your own.

You can add background images large or small, and even tile an image if you’d like. Background images must be in PNG, GIF, or JPG format, smaller than 800k. To customize your design:

1. Log in
2. In top navigation bar, click Settings (or go to http://twitter.com/account/settings)
3. Click the last settings tab, Design
4. Select a template, change your text and background colors, or upload your background image
5. Save your changes

While there is no minimum size for your background image, the max is 800k, which will resize the maximum width to 2048. To start from scratch with the default background, select “Use the Twitter default style” and save your changes.

How to change your Twitter background

Use a Twitter Background Template

This Twitter background was provided by Chad Engle. His backgrounds have gained a lot of attention from Twitter users, this was his response when asked how he design his Twitter backgrounds and get everything to look right. So, instead of telling everyone- He took a few minutes and made a twitter template. Inside of the template he made guides that match up with different resolutions.

Twitter Background Example

Twitter aligns all backgrounds to the left.

Make note of this when designing your background. Also, you can put elements to the far right but be aware that some users will not see them depending on what monitor/resolution they are running. I included the “twitter container” (logo and space where your tweets are housed) it is actual size. So you can move it into different resolutions to keep in mind what other users will see.

File Type: PSD
Number in Set: 1
License Type: Creative Commons 3.0
Author: Chad Engle