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Recently Ashton Kutcher challenged Larry King to see who would could get the most Twitter follower. Not to my surprise, Ashton won.  As of today, he has over 1.8 million followers.

Although Twitter has been around for years, it is not until recently that it has exploded.  Twitter is everywhere. Oprah, Ellen, and many of the big starts are now Twittering.  With a lot of the celebrities’ subscriptions hovering in the hundreds of thousands…if not a million plus…this got me thinking.  The selling power that these stars have is amazing.

A few weeks ago, Ashton tweeted that he tried, and liked, a new social media software called Seesmic. He told 1.5 million people that Seemic is worth checking out. He even provided a link. Imagine the effect this small Twitter post  had on Seesmic’s web traffic.

According to Compete.com, Seesmic only had 11,524 visitors in March. I’m willing to bet that in May, the traffic will skyrocket past it’s previous record of 55,000 visitors.

These Twitter stars are super hubs when it comes to viral marketing.  I’m not suggesting reckless spamming, but it might we worth following a few of these stars to see if a well placed @reply or direct message can be used to start a conversation. I know for a fact that they do reply to some of their @replies and DMs.

The power of Twitter is definitely worth checking out.

I was going to write a long article on why companies should explore Facebook for their next viral marketing project. Luckily, Monica Hamburg from “Me Like the Interweb” blog beat me to the punch.

Check out her great article…and don’t forget to create a Facebook page for your business!

29 essential tools for developing a Facebook application
Resources to help you build a successful Facebook app that users will love and spread.

8 tips on how to make YouTube videos go viral
Tips from David Meerman on launching a successful viral video.

10 viral marketing best practices
A list of important things you should keep in mind when developing a viral marketing campaign.

Are you interested in adding a social bookmarking option to your website but don’t know which ones you should concentrate on? eBizMBA has assembled a list of the top 30 social bookmarketing sites on the web. Check it out.

AT&T recently launched a new service that allows people to send a live video from one cell phone to another.

This got me thinking. With cell phone subscriptions numbering in the billions, what would it take to launch the world’s first cell phone distributed viral video? Perhaps a cheaper rate plan?

Dare to dream!

Photo credit: Steven Wilke

Within the past year, widgets have exploded in popularity as an effective new way to spread your marketing gospel. As a result, I thought it would be worth listing a few tools that you can use to measure a widget’s success: Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, I discussed how easter eggs can be used to generate buzz and traffic. However, the problem with easter eggs is that, by their very nature, they are hidden. So how do you get the ball rolling?

In addition to message boards and your friends there are a number of websites you can use to distribute the message. The following sites are completely about easter eggs:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Math of Viral
One man’s quest to use power laws and Metcalfe’s Law to understand how viral marketing actually works.

GoViral
This is a viral seeding agency that launches (seed) viral marketing campaigns for creative agencies, media agencies and advertisers world wide.

ForwardTrack
It can trace email forwards, map the impact of blogs, and facilitate web-based sign-ups and social networking.

Viral Vortex
This tool is said to have the ability to see valuable social referral networks, identify who a company’s top brand evangelists are, and provide independent access to campaign results.

Will Ferrell’s production company has partnered up with Sequoia Capital to produce yet another video hosting website. It’s called FunnyOrDie.com. This website is a little different than it’s competitors. It does something that I’m sure a lot of people wish YouTube did. They actually get rid of the bad videos. The website’s members can vote videos off the website. How great is that!  Just the good stuff…kind of.

I have to admit there is some gratification in knowing that I can personally help kill a lame video.

Is your viral video strong enough to survive FunnyOrDie.com?