The hilarious “Jesus Christ in Richmond Park” has been viewed over 600,000 times (at the time of writing this) since being uploaded only a few days before. Having been picked up by various media figures and publications, the viral initiated a host of parodies including Benton in London (American Werewolf in London), Benton Vs Bambi and Jurassic Park Benton, as well as the creation of a spoof Twitter account @BentonsOwner dedicated to the frantic “Oh Jesus Christ” shouting dog chaser.

You can’t help but wonder if the owner of Benton is actually aware of his infamy, and what success the stress of trying to catch up with his eager four legged friend and a herd of deer will bring to his life.

It was recently reported that YouTube fame can become a nice little earner for the stars of well timed video moments that go viral. The family of finger biting Charlie (Charlie Bit My Finger), arguably one of the biggest viral videos of recent times, have made over £100,000 from its success by introducing ads and signing up to YouTube’s partner programme.

For businesses trying to cash in on viral victory, the path to success is tricky as you have be very original when trying to create a video which will be shared and viewed by audiences, who are not necessarily interested in your brand or product. The point of a viral is that it gains you notoriety and brand recognition, and this needs to be remembered when coming up with a concept. The objective is that, yes, it does have an effect on your ROI but ultimately its first step is to create a buzz around your brand…one that will be associated to whatever content you put out there.

Earlier this month web agency SapientNitro posted a cringe inducing music video on their Facebook page which rapped about the role of their ‘Idea Engineer’. Predictably, from the minute it appeared the video was ridiculed and in a moment of thoughtlessness SapientNitro deleted the post and comments which resulted in a huge backlash and over exposure of the content, when it was re-uploaded onto YouTube and became the feature of many blogs. Their, probably heavily planned and costly, video became the target of many critics and their understanding of digital media was questioned. It really couldn’t have seemed worse for SapientNitro at the time – on the flip side though, it did get them trending on Twitter for a day or two!

The argument when it comes to achieving viral success is…is all publicity good publicity? Of course digital experts and agencies are going to voice their opinion if your video results in as many gasps of horror as SapientNitro’s, but ultimately they did achieve increased brand recognition…it’s just a shame that from now on their industry peers will always remember them as a badly rapping idea engineer surrounded by a small entourage of awkward looking ladies. SapientNitro’s clients may have loved it though, and in terms of recruitment its most likely not had a detrimental impact.

It should be said that SapientNitro are not the first company or web specialist to try and achieve success through a badly devised music video, and we’re sure they won’t be the last. Let’s face it though, unless you can compete with the likes of Yeo Valley it might be best to stick to something closer to your talents.

For those of you who haven’t yet come across possibly one of the most successful YouTube business case studies, let me introduce you to Blendtec. Makers of the ‘world’s best blenders, mixers and mills’, Blendec have made a series of videos showing how their product can blend pretty much anything. From iPad’s to Golfballs, Justin Bieber to Old Spice (nice little social media reference there) The Will it Blend? Campaign gained them over 400,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel , millions of hits and most importantly an enormous uplift in sales.

Bendtec YouTube Channel

Viral success is one big experiment and whether you’re an unsuspecting dog owner, a high profile web agency or the maker of blenders you really can’t predict how far a simple upload will take you. There are no rules, just a hungry audience waiting to rate your efforts if you’re fortunate (or in the case of some unfortunate) enough to get noticed in the first place. You can stick to what you know best or create something that appeals to a mass audience but is so far removed from your actual service or product you create a new identity.

One thing you can learn from though is others…Lesson One. Don’t rap unless you can. Lesson two. Don’t let your dog off the lead when around deer.

HTC Wildfire Broken

As the mobile development landscape is so diverse there are a number of issues that still arise thanks to every mobile platform moving in their own direction with no solid standards being adhered to. Some mobiles have different browsers and different versions of browsers. Take the HTC Wildfire, which runs a custom webkit based browser. From a developers viewpoint this can cause a host of issues.

The problem we encountered was with a mobile specific website that uses the Meta Viewport tag, which isn’t implemented correctly across all devices:

Our Viewport Tag:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0">

This works fine on the iPhone and most smartphones, but the HTC Wildfire rendered everything with increased zoom.

Fix the viewport on HTC Wildfire

This was a little more tricky as the device DPI is so low and there isn’t a great deal of documentation on-line about rendering websites in the HTC Wildfire. After a few hours of playing we came up with this:

@media screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio: 0.75) {
/* CSS for low-density screens */
body { zoom:0.82; }
}

This fix appears to re-adjust the zoom to cater for the low density pixel ratio. It’s a good thing that media queries in CSS have been introduced or this would be impossible to fix.

The Finished Code:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0">
<style type="text/css">
@media screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio: 0.75) {
/* CSS for low-density screens */
body { zoom:0.82; }
}
</style>

HTC Wildfire Viewport Fixed

As you can see form the screen-shot to the left this worked a treat, you may want to tweak the zoom and font size in the CSS media queries to fit your design perfectly.

On the first screen shot you can see the text being cut off the right hand side of the browser, the images being cropped off the screen and the bottom navigation missing an item. Once the zoom is fixed it renders as expected.

If you’re a developer then hopefully we have just saved you some time and more importantly frustration!

Soak were asked to hold a workshop at the event which engaged and inspired students on choosing a career in the industry, and informed on the best paths in to it.

We’ll be honest, we were slightly apprehensive about the level of enthusiasm and interest we were going to be greeted with, especially as we’d prepared a compulsory task for them (yes we had braced ourselves for a chorus of groans and “do we have to’s”). Thankfully we were proved entirely wrong and a rather nervous looking Adam, Chris and Emily soon relaxed in front of their most potentially critical audience to date.

With unemployment affecting over one million young people in the UK, we decided it would be apt to give some advice on how to succeed when attempting to find a job. Given that we’re bombarded with CVs from hopeful job seekers throughout the year, we wanted to challenge the students to think about how they can play on their own strengths and create an original online CV, which makes them stand out from an ever growing crowd.

We held two workshops which required groups of students to create digital marketing strategies for an imaginary candidate of a similar age, and with similar experience, to them.

Fuelled by the incentive of HMV vouchers and the chance to win a week’s work experience at Soak, the groups got to work and devised some truly imaginative tactics for promoting the skills and attributes of their chosen candidate to would be employers. Both workshops were a huge success and the teams considered an impressive variety of web strategies, social media channels and digital platforms to gain maximum exposure – with very little help from us we might add!

Well done to the bright sparks from City College Norwich and Great Yarmouth College who won our (probably pretty lame) voucher prizes and who we are very excited about interviewing for our work experience placement.

Hopefully in the future we will see an array of innovate CV’s hit our inbox. Remember…we can sniff out a bulk emailed CV a mile off!!

Here’s a really innovate example!

Users want to be informed, entertained and have something exciting to share with others. Therefore, the key to a successful social strategy is to know the rules of social media etiquette.

Rule 1
When communicating with your audience do it authentically, openly, and know the world is watching.

Rule 2
Remember, there needs to be a conversation…not a one way push.

Rule 3
Let go to gain more. Have fun with it and show your customers you’re human.

Rule 4
It’s important to understand that the participants of these tools are in charge. The more an organisation is seen to control the dialogue the less effective it will be.

Rule 5
Know what Social Media is about, what it represents and what its values are:

It is…

• Consumer Driven
• Transparent
• Engaging
• Inclusive
• Sincere

And it is not…

• Controlled
• Impersonal
• Exclusive
• Formal
• One-sided

Rule 6
Remember that user generated content is now an integral part in peoples research and decision making process. If your customers are talking about you it’s better to talk with them. This means responding to both the good and the bad.

Rule 7
Share, inform and educate. Social media audiences want to learn new things they can then discuss with their friends and followers. They do not want to be sold to or preached, so think of new and refreshing ways to get your audience to engage with your product.

Rule 8
Be passionate! If you don’t sound interested in what you’re talking about then you can’ t expect your audience to be.

Whatever your ultimate goal is from using social media, you need to establish trust with an audience for you to gain loyalty – and without a loyal audience you won’t get very far.

1. Listen to yourself

I said you’d hear it again…Know what you want you want to get out of social media and have an objective you constantly keep in mind. Social media is a space to interact and communicate, if you’re not doing this you’re doing it wrong. So remember what your mother told you and think before you speak!

2. Listen to others

The conversation about your brand, industry or service has already started, but before joining in, make sure you understand the atmosphere and protocol of it by doing your research first.

Start listening to:

• Key public figures
• Mentions of your company
• Popular industry/ advocacy sites
• Newsgroups
• Blog comments
• Companies like you

3. Create personas

Your audience want to interact with you as a person, not as a corporation. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to act professionally but relating to the mindset of your customers will help you to identify potential character traits, personalities, habits and attitudes of the consumer base you want to target.

This will enable you to create a social media plan of ideal scope and size, as well as helping you better understand how to interact.

4. Select resource

Got big plans for getting your brand heard across as many social media platforms as possible? Well before plan your social domination, make sure you consider how many hours and people you can devote to running it, and who needs to be involved in strategising.

Think about:

• Technical experience of staff
• Having a volunteer base (long-term v short term)
• The amount of time that staff members can devote to social media
• Time saving devises: repurpose existing content for social media sites

5. Define conversions

What are the things you want to achieve and measure the success of your social media activity against? Knowing this will prevent you from losing sight of your goals, which can easily be done in the ever changing and trend shifting environment of social.

• Build better relationships
• Raise brand awareness
• Increase sales
• Increase website traffic
• Build up your database
• Inspire people to action
• Increase donations

6. Create a proposition

Promoting yourself in a social space does not require long sales pitches and lengthy corporate spiels about your history and ideals. So think about how you define your company in a single, simple phrase.

Ensure your proposition is:

Focused and on point 

Has a cohesive, unifying theme

Easily grasped by short attention spans

7. Select channels

By researching the social landscape you’ll be able to select which channel(s) best suit:

• Your goals
• Your brand story
• Your resources
• Your target
• Your content

If you’re not sure how you’d fit into a platform then don’t use it! Start by selecting the social platforms you’re comfortable and build your strategy to incorporate more, if necessary, as your social status grows.

8. Join the conversation

So, you’ve listened to what’s being said and now you’re ready to join in and connect with your audience but remember to adhere to the basic principles of social media etiquette:

• Stay Transparent
• Keep It Conversational
• Write What You Know
• Admit Mistakes
• Don’t Ignore Negativity
• Trust Your Instincts

9. Listen and learn

Don’t ever stop listening, its how you found your audience in the first place and its how you’ll keep them.

• Find new conversations to join
• Track responses to your social media activity
• Discover what messaging works
• Re-evaluate your strategy and focus on growth through your successes
• Drop what isn’t engaging and learn from it

10. Don’t be afraid

Start now and fine tune later! The sooner you get started the better, and relax…remember every mistake you make in the beginning is an opportunity to improve.

Our Pumpkins

The Soak team have put togther a collection of pumpkin carvings, please take a look and vote for the one you like best, to vote simply Facebook like or Tweet the one you want to win!

• Uncle Percy

  

  Vote For Uncle Percy below:

  Tweet

• Fang

  

  Vote For Fang below:

  Tweet

• Muncher

  

  Vote For Muncher below:

  Tweet

• Roy

  

  Vote For Roy below:

  Tweet

• Timmeh

  

  Vote For Timmeh below:

  Tweet

• Hello Kitty

  

  Vote For Hello Kitty below:

  Tweet

• Skeletor

  

  Vote For Skeletor below:

  Tweet

• Pac Man

  

  Vote For Pac Man below:

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• The Kernel

  

  Vote For The Kernel below:

  Tweet

Firstly you have to find your audience and when you do, before you jump feet first into trying to get them to like, share, +1 or engage in your content, you have to know how they expect you to interact with them. Get that wrong and you’ll quickly leave with your tail between your legs!

Make sure you have investigated all the key social media platforms available to you, and don’t discount the less obvious ones as they can be just as effective in achieving your objectives and strengthening consumer relations:

• Social Networks
• Blogs
• Online Video
• Chat Rooms
• Pod Casts
• Viral
• Widgets
• Forums

The initial, and ongoing, research involved with planning your social media strategy should give you an indication on which channels your campaign is best suited to but it’s also worth considering:

• If your target audience is likely to use a particular platform
• How the audience are likely to engage with you on said platform
• What the best style or format to present your content in is
• Can you share your content on other more niche / audience relevant platforms

The only true way to fully understand where your business will fit in to the landscape and what types of conversations are going on either about you or your competitors is to listen. The importance of learning about the environment you are about to publically connect in can’t be stressed enough. To help you get a gauge of this, and keep track of conversations about your brand or key business terms, employ a monitoring tool such as Google Alerts or social mention. There are a wide variety of these monitoring tools on the market, some free and some with a monthly tariff, so do your research and invest in one which ticks all your boxes.

Keep in mind that social media platforms are continually evolving and growing so be prepared to review your use of them regularly, and make sure that if you’re employing more than one your content isn’t duplicated across them. Social media audiences are typically registered with multiple channels, and repeated information is dull and will more than likely turn them off you altogether.

Having a content strategy and understanding what your audience are looking to engage with, on the various social media channels they are signed up to, will help you deliver fresh, relevant and interesting material that keeps audiences coming back for more.

There are of course situations where it is appropriate to share or promote content from one of your social media platforms to another, for example posting a link to your latest YouTube video on facebook or detailing a snippet of your blog through a link on twitter, but remember your audience will not be impressed if they are directed to another channel only to consume the exact same information.

It’s easy to get caught up in several social media platforms at once but they need to be maintained and regularly updated to keep your audience interested. Start by developing and perfecting one or two and then build up your repertoire as both your confidence, and audience, grows.

You wouldn’t invest in PPC, devise an email campaign or commission developments to your website without a firm strategy in place, and this premise should also be applied to a business’s social media activity. Besides, how are you able to measure the success of your campaign if you don’t know what you want to achieve.

So, if you’re going to develop a strategy (before or after the launch of your social media initiative) you’ll need to consider several important factors which will enable you to comprehend what’s involved in managing and developing your presence within this space.

• Get to know the social media landscape, understand what’s out there and how your brand can fit in.
• Listen and learn from what people are saying as this is the best way to identify what types of conversations are going on about you.
• Monitor your competitors and gain insight into what currently works, and what doesn’t. Start by using free tools such as Google Alerts and Social Mention to get to know your market, and pick up on conversions.
• Have objectives, know what you want to achieve, set goals and think how you’ll achieve a conversion.
• Engage, remember this is SOCIAL media and to appear legitimate you need to converse and interact with your audience.
• Plan, refresh and review your content as much as possible as it is the most crucial factor when trying to entertain and increase your social presence.
• Remember that it takes people and time to run a social media campaign so think about what resource you can commit. Involve your staff and let them engage with your audience as this will showcase your teams’ enthusiasm for your business or product.
• Have a budget, social media might be a less expensive form of advertising it does take time, and time is money. Ensure your budget accounts for all costs involved.
• Put in place a system to measure your activity on your chosen social platforms as it will enable you to identify what works and what doesn’t. Set realistic goals and be prepared to adjust your strategy in response.

Deciding on a strategy that encourages participation and shows off your company’s personality might take you away from your comfort zone, especially if you’re more familiar with logical, planned and methodical approaches to marketing your organisation, but to succeed in gaining trust and loyalty from your audience you need to communicate authentically, openly, and keep in mind that the world is watching.

Remember, there needs to be a conversion – not a one way push. It’s so important to understand that it’s the participants of social media that are the ones in charge and the more an organisation is seen to control the dialogue the less effective it will be. One thing is for certain, the more you get involved in a conversation at the start, the less risk you will have over time.

Ultimately businesses are looking at social media as an opportunity to increase revenue and if that’s your reason for using it then ensure that you build your strategies and activities to reach that goal. You also have to appreciate, when starting a campaign that’s core objective is to make money, that social media is all about engaging with your audience. If you think shouting about how fantastic your product is will suddenly drive people to love you, and part with their hard earned cash, you’re going to be disappointed.

The reason why, because social media is about a two way conversation and building loyalty and trust in your brand. The hard sales approach does not work and people will not respond to being told to buy your product just because you think it’s great. Social media offers a unique platform on which to engage with an audience, and it is through this engagement that relationships can be leveraged to enable the delivery of valuable (tangible or intangible) benefits.

There are the obvious and most immediate benefits…

• Driving direct online traffic.
• Letting customers know about new product ranges.
• Keeping customers up-to-date and informed.
• Boosting SEO.
• Getting testimonials / Reviews.
• Driving footfall and visits to the offline store.
• For PR and media opportunities.

…and then there are others such as…

• A filter for information.
• Collaboration and networking.
• Feedback / Surveys.
• Scoping out new opportunities.
• Product development.
• Branding.
• Customer service.
• Crisis management.
• Recruitment.

Statistics surrounding social media get more compelling by the year and the audience potential is huge. The ever increasing number of social media users is reason enough to get your business up and running but for those that are new to the social media landscape, it’s natural to be apprehensive. Concerns over relevancy, audience engagement, the best platforms to employ, cost and ROI are common but the best way to overcome these is to start researching the activity of relevant brands and your target audience.

There are clearly a few major players within social media and you could make a pretty safe assumption that you’ll find an audience, for your brand and social objectives, within at least one of them.

Social media is an exciting and interesting new route to connect with your customers and build brand awareness, and if you take this attitude and adhere to social media etiquette you’ll not be disappointed by the results you eventually achieve.

A chance to add value

A thoughtful mobile offering can vastly improve the experience of a growing proportion of your visitors; take the chance to engage with users and encourage feedback. Since most new mobile devices provide a good level of HTML5 support, you can utilise a lot of the new features.

It’s cheap

The tools you need are the very same used to build websites. You should already be using great developers who are aware of the latest standards and possibilities of HTML5.

Don’t try to be a native app

Know the difference between a native app and a mobile-optimised web app, then scale your expectations. Better to master simplicity than drown in complexity, but don’t be half-hearted or unimaginative. Functionality can be trimmed back in favour of simplicity and ease-of-use – see eBay and Amazon as examples.

It’s quick and easy to experiment

Unlike mobile apps that require user permissions and manual re-installation, updating a web app is as easy as updating your website. Use this to your advantage by responding to user feedback quickly and introducing new features gradually, enhancing rather than continually revolutionising.

Testing is easier than ever

Don’t be put off by the variety of available devices, most run the same browsers and are available through testing platforms such as Device Anywhere and Perfecto Mobile. Targeting one platform may come back to hurt you as market share changes over time, it’s worth getting a few test handsets to play with – just don’t try to buy them all, as models are quickly superseded.

Mobile users are forgiving – if you follow the rules

While mobile users demand more from mobile-specific software and can be quick to discard apps, you won’t be punished for trying to accommodate them if you follow a few rules:

• Maintain small page weights to ensure short loading times
• Allow mobile users to access the full desktop version of your site, and don’t continually nudge them back
• Respect and embrace the variety of devices – as an Android user, I don’t want to see iPhone styled navigation and buttons

Analyse and track goals

Accurate tracking is vital. Know your audience’s devices and see what’s working and what isn’t, then try to find out why. Rather than guessing your next move, try to test with real users where possible.

And finally: you’ve got nothing to lose!