What is Web 2.0 Web 3.0 and Viral Marketing?

To really begin to understand Web 2.0, one must first become familiar with Web 1.0. In many ways, Web 1.0 was fairly similar to traditional forms of media (i.e. newspaper, radio, television). The audience was essentially in a passive, receiving mode. Then, Web 2.0 enabled the audience to set the agenda, and gives them the opportunity to reply back to a story, talk to a marketer, or simply connect with other people. A simple way to visualize this would be to compare Web 1.0 to reading and Web 2.0 to writing. Now with Web 3.0 we can all be publishers of stories instead of just responding to them.

How important is social media marketing to YOUR business? That is the important question. Please click to learn more about social media marketing.

Please click to see a social networking website that we designed and we are marketing. This is a perfect example of how we can help a business to spread virally.

With Web 3.0 marketing we can become a producer of a TV commercial that we put on youtube.com. In this media format our TV commercial is available for viewing 24/7. Here is an example of a youtube.com commercial we produced as part of our Web 3.0 marketing strategy for this ad agency. Once people e-mail the link to the video to their friends then it has become an example of viral marketing. Viral marketing campaigns therefore begin as social media network marketing.

On the video below you can check out the results we were able to obtain for this dentist using viral marketing and web 3.0 marketing campaigns.

With traditional TV advertising we pay for every time our commercial runs on TV. With successful social marketing campaigns we only pay to produce our videos then viral marketing takes over from there. Web 3.0 will prove to be transformational because it is changing relationships. The user experience is faster, with easier content creation, consumption and sharing and this has lead to the explosion of what is known as Social Media. The Web 3.0 and Social Media environment are leveraging an easy to use, user-centric platform with rich interfaces, which ultimately makes it easy for one person to reach many. In addition, Web 3.0 communications significantly reduce the cost of finding and exchanging information.

Here is a video we made to run in a movie theater for a Fort Lauderdale cosmetic dentist. We converted it to a YouTube video and now run it on the Internet. Our dentist now gets people who see her video then go to her website. We also posted a video about root canal and to our surprise this is a hot topic that gets viewed a lot. We think this has something to do with pain so we also are doing some things to help her do better with the phrase Fort Lauderdale sedation dentist. As a result of our work she is seeing more traffic to her website.

Today this dentist is getting fantastic results from the three month viral and web 3.0 marketing campaign we setup for her. In the past she used to pay a lot of money to buy leads. Today she no longer needs to do this because she is able to generate the leads that the third party lead generation company was selling to her. Please watch the video below and see what she has to say about how this has changed things for her.

YouTube isn’t for kids most viewers are between the ages of 35-55 and this is why BMW produced this Madonna video. On youtube.com you can watch a funny video that BMW could NEVER have shown on TV. While other car dealers are laying off thousands of employees BMW is experiencing double digit sales. They put $25,000,000.00 into producing these videos. Although this may seem like a very large amount of money they brought 21,000,000 people to their website and drove sales through the roof.

There are many articles published about how people are successfully using viral marketing in their business.

On youtube you can also watch a Terry Tate linebacker video produced by Reebok. The fact that visitors to the Reebok online store has quadrupled is nothing to laugh at.

You can read all about it in an article published by USA Today.

Since viral marketing campaigns are being used by corporate giants shouldn’t your business be using viral marketing. Please click for a free price quote on your own viral marketing campaign.

Anything that will get people to look at your website and then e-mail a link to your website to their friends is an example of viral marketing. We built a website in 1995 that used a card trick to get people to visit the website.

For some reason men typically try it many more times and don’t figure out how it works. I don’t know why this is true but I think this is the reason that it works as an example of viral marketing.

Here is how MoveOn.org is helping Barack Obama take the lead in the election. What makes this so effective is that you e-mail your friends and enter their names. Two things happen:

1. Your friends see their name in the video so they want to do the same with their friends. This is what makes it viral.
2. MoveOn.org collects the e-mail addresses and names of your friends for marketing purposes.

Web 3.0 means many things to many people. For example:

to a housewife, it might be the ability to share her favorite pictures and recipes with her friends
to a businessman, it might be the ability to get in touch with people, information and contacts without going through conventional means.
to an Enterprise it is about harnessing collective intelligence and leveraging ROI using productive information sharing tools like mashups, blogs, and wikis

Clearly, it can do many things for many people, and is very low cost, but the big question is… what are the opportunities to specifically focus on?

The most significant opportunities are to take your business to the next level by developing out a platform that a) enables you to grow your brand and b) generates and drives more targeted internet traffic to your sites.

The goals for this platform would be:

Being recognized as an expert in your niche
Enjoying a greater reach in your market
Potentially acquiring new clients more easily and cheaply
Receiving invitations to speak and give keynote presentations
Getting interview requests
Shortening your sales cycle. As your credibility rises, it facilitates your potential trust factor to rise

Your strategy needs to enable you to become a respected member of a community online and leverage their knowledge and experiences, which will in turn push your brand, potentially creating many new opportunities for your service. Don’t just employ Web2.0 tools in a haphazard, shotgun approach. Really think about where they add value to you, and research what is required to maintain them as nothing will sink you faster than a rouge community, or the discontinuation of community interaction. Content, or being more specific, relevant content, is King!

It stands to reason that astute companies will develop strategic plans and act on them. Here are some elements to consider in creating your strategic plan.

Determine where you are now and where you want to be
Perform a complete evaluation on your blog/web site/blog.
Generate a clear list of improvements specifically designed to increase results
Identify other bloggers/podcasters/online communities that can help you meet your goals
Create a social media map and become familiar with the communities that you need to participate in
Develop targeted messages and strategies to engage your audience in the manner that they are expecting, which in turn helps you achieve your goals

A long time client of ours is in the caviar business and wants better ranking within search engines when people search for caviar imported caviar, truffle oiland foie gras. To accomplish this we write blogs, publish new websites, create viral marketing campaigns on youtube and more.

A new client came to us because the only traffic he was getting to his website is from pay per click advertising. It is very expensive for him and so many people won’t even click the paid ads because they see them as advertisements. Most people prefer to click the regular website links so that is why he has hired us to use web 2.0 and viral marketing to help get many of our clients to have better ranking in search engines.