Morgan's Tumbleblog

Veronica does a great job of outlining what it takes to turn your business in to a meme on the Web. In other words, how to go viral.

A lot of it is common sense; but for me it comes down to simply this: be remarkable. If you’re remarkable and resonate with the online audience your meme will spread. You can be remarkable in a bunch of different ways, from doing something that no one has done before, from being over-the-top, to giving graciously, to doing something better than it has ever been done before.

There are lots of great examples of companies and products that have taken advantage of this phenomenon to great success. The hard part is applying it to your business in a way that resonates and creates value for you.

In this video Veronica Belmont gives you a bunch of great ideas to get started.

Tim Ferriss has built an incredible blog. High traffic, high quality content, high engagement from the community. And it’s not simply because he is a best-selling author. In fact, in this video Tim talks about how the blog has actually helped the book rather than vice versa.

Tim covers a lot of ground in this video about what makes his blog successful; but some of my favorite takeaways are:

- Don’t chase the news. Write on your schedule and in the form that works best for you. Don’t feel pressure to crank out quick takes on the news. Take a concept, research, synthesize and develop your post.

- Don’t write if you’re not enjoying it or aren’t passionate about it. A blog can become a living hell if you let it (I know what he means, it’s true.)

- Don’t paint yourself in to a corner with a very specific topic - he uses his name which lets him cover any subject he wants without breaking people’s expectations of what to find.

- Don’t push people away with prominent links to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Welcome them in and encourage them to stay awhile.

For me much of this rings true. My first blog, a very successful mortgage site www.blownmortgage.com has gone from a passion to a distracting ball-and-chain which requires attention because of its level of success. It is the ultimate case study in what not to do with a blog. I am now trying to recapture the joy of writing and blogging by using tools such as Posterous to write short-form entries such as this one and then a new site, (not live) modeled after Tim’s (www.fourhourblog.com) that will allow me to expound on subjects that are important to me in a slower, more in-depth approach than the rapid-fire news-covering manner I’ve been accustomed to in the last 2.5 years on blownmortgage.com.

Nothing of value here, just a pretty funny musical riff on a bunch of your favorite online sites like Twitter, Hulu, Facebook, Pandora and more. Some good inside jokes for nerds like me.

Here straight from the product managers at Facebook on how to “pimp your page” (and no, they don’t have the, ‘make glitter rain from the top of the page’ option like MySpace). Great information for businesses looking to create a real branded presence on Facebook.

Just a couple of the cool tips in this video. Did you know the optimal image size for a profile image is 200 x 600? How about using FBML to create custom tabs in your page? If you didn’t know this, spend the 20 minutes to watch this video.

After watching this I have my work cut out for me.

A great presentation on how to make Facebook really work for your brand from WOMMU ‘09. A lot of people say they know how to build a Facebook presence, but a quick look at the examples in this deck gives you the real best practices on making Facebook work for you.

I was at a conference about two weeks ago when I asked Sandy Carter of IBM how they generate buzz when they’re just in maintenance mode (that is, they don’t have a big announcement, event, or ad campaign that can drive action and awareness). She had a great response, that includes a powerful tactic that you can use to build excitement for your social media presence even when you don’t have anything offline that you can tie to to drive excitement.

Her recommendation? Build in two momentum points throughout the year for your social media campaign. Pick them and put them in the calendar, determine what they’ll be and then begin to build towards them and come out of them. This gives your social media presence some cadence and a way to build excitement that is outside of product launches, major events or other momentum-generating activities.

Of course, those other activities should be leveraged to generate buzz as well; but in the absence of it picking two momentum points to build to and from make for a great way to create a reason for people to engage with you online.

A great interview with the owner and founder of TurnHere, Brad Inman about how he thinks as an entrepreneur. His inquisitive nature, bringing on the right people and advisors and driving quickly to revenue through aggressive sales and marketing is all excellent advice for anyone looking to start or grow their company.

Brad is the ultimate promoter and an inspiring person to work for. I know that his thoughts around sales and marketing work and help to push a company to new heights. Definitely check out the interview for more insight from a very successful entrepreneur who I respect greatly.

I get asked a lot by my friends and colleagues how to use Twitter for business. The problem is this. They all think it’s just another hallway to shout down in their search for customers. Few, if any, have the patience and willingness to put in the true effort the ecosystem requires to “work” for business.

Smaller businesses and those without a loyal online following will find the Twitter path a tough slog, and while I certainly think it’s worth the effort, it’s a tough sale to someone who needs business now and already feels pinched for time.

With all that said, this presentation does a pretty good job at giving a business framework for engaging with and using Twitter as a new channel. It’s important to look at the order of interaction here as I think this is a key that most companies miss. Ogilvy says “Follow>Create>Engage” and I think it’s a bit different, “Listen, Create, Engage” where following may be listening, but the idea is a bit different.

Brands need to listen to the people talking about them first, and then go from there. That’s the way to be successful for business with Twitter. Pay in first before you go looking for something out of it.