In the late 1990s, the Internet Dancing Baby came into our lives and the viral video was born. Back then, the video was passed around via email, but ever since, marketers have been on the warpath to produce the next viral sensation. Today, with YouTube and Facebook as well-known platforms where videos can connect with huge audiences and deliver brand messages, marketers still want to go for the gold and proclaim their project a viral success.

But can it really be done in today’s online culture?

To find out, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Pat Carew, CMD’s social media video expert and a member of the agency’s film and video department, and ask some questions about what viral video means and how achievable it is as part of a larger campaign. The big question, however, was can you plan a viral video?

“By definition, something viral happens on its own,” said Carew. “The bottom line is you just don’t know if your plans will succeed. They are incredibly hard to do. While you can say you want to produce a viral video, ultimately it’s up to the audience to decide if you have succeeded.”

If you do attempt to make a go at producing a viral video to reach your audience on YouTube or Facebook, Carew suggests a few tips to include in your strategic planning:

Go with humor: Most popular videos contain sex, violence or humor. Since brands tend to stay away from the first two, humor is left as the most-used theme. But, according to Carew, humor is the most difficult to pull off. The most popular videos on YouTube, like this one, simply make people laugh. Be sure to work with professionals on this task to represent your brand well and be tasteful.

Ditch the call to action: A viral video must have a cool factor; it should not be an advertisement. That means no call to action, such as a phone number or email address. This can be the most difficult thing for marketers to pull away from, since it’s a traditional part of video advertising, but remember the goal is entertainment and eyeballs, not direct leads. This Old Spice video is a good example. Notice there’s no call to action. It just entertains while delivering its message in a humorous way.

Monitor for production trends: Stay on top of production trends by researching top videos. Whether they’re stop-frame animation, tilt photography or auto-tuning vocals, there are always interesting production trends that sweep though social media videos that can make them more eye-catching. Don’t worry about the technique being a fad, either. Your goal is to get as many positive impressions as fast as you can. As you can see from this search, auto-tuning is particularly popular right now.

Provide the unexpected: Like the Old Spice commercial, and this video that was produced for Microsoft, the best chance of a video becoming viral is when you provide something unexpected. The viewer doesn’t really know what’s going to happen next in the Old Spice commercial, and although the stunt in the Microsoft video is not real, it provides a “no way” response when viewed. Making the impossible seem real is a big trend now in the most popular online videos.

Be transparent: Above all, be honest in your video distribution. Refrain from posting a video from a personal account or trying to promote it without identifying yourself. This is risky in today’s social media world and can potentially be a big problem.

Finally, remember a video can be successful without being labeled as viral. A video with the right message, like this one produced by CMD, seen by the right people, might be more effective than a wide-reaching clip viewed by the masses.

What are your favorite online videos? Would you label them as viral? Share your thoughts and links with us, and we’ll revisit viral videos in future posts. If you have any questions about video best practices, contact Pat Carew at pcarew@cmdagency.com.

Did you collect enough eggs from your chicken farm? When was the last time you sent your friend a virtual cupcake? If you participate in two of Facebook’s popular external applications, then you are aware of what I’m talking about.

Now with more than 400 million users and 500,000 active applications that users can connect with, it’s obvious that most of us are jumping on Facebook for reasons other than finding out what our best friend from 8th grade did this past weekend.

For many companies, having a simple fan/company page is no longer enough to communicate with its target audience about client information or recent news. Such interactive entertainment applications like Farmville, Birthday Cards, iLike, Top Friends, and Mafia Wars demonstrate that millions of consumers on this social platform are interested in playing games, interacting with their friends, sharing personal interests and forming teams for a great cause—key traits that any marketer can and should easily incorporate into real-life interactive campaigns.

With 70 percent of Facebook users engaging with some of these interactive applications every month, it’s time to find out more about this strategy. Consider the following for effective application implementation:

1. Allow team building to be a factor for success: participants enjoy coming together for a greater cause and making a large difference all together. On Facebook, sharing is very much caring. Example: Best Buy has online “Best Buy Communities” that help answer customer questions and assist in finding the best price possible for products.

2. Make it easy to interact with your company: one-click downloads, photo uploads, donations, and “forward to a friend” buttons will help spread your message quickly. Example: T-Mobile Blackberry has simple “download now” buttons for wallpapers, applications, and tips of the week.

3. Have a variety of communication tools available for use: Captivate people’s attention by offering videos, photos, music, ability to make wall posts, and direct chat. Example: American Red Cross posts live video updates from natural disasters.

4. Make your page visually appealing: Colors, shapes, fonts, and placement of accomplishments on personal profiles will spark the interests of consumers. Example: Target allows fans to flip through an online magazine and mix and match new product lines.

5. Offer a “game mentality”: It always feels good to reach a set goal. Set goals for participants and they will thrive on the instant gratification. Example: Chase Community Giving encourages its Facebook fans to vote for their favorite charity to receive money, then Chase makes the donation on their behalf.

Are you a fan of any interactive applications? If so, are they missing from my list? We want to hear about what you do on Facebook and what makes you choose to participate.

Over the years, printed newsletters have been popular vehicles for communicating company news and information directly with customers and employees. Today, many clients ask us if newsletters are still relevant in an increasingly digital world.

In short, the answer is “yes.” They’re not dead, and here’s why: company newsletters have been redefined, and can be leveraged across new platforms to expand their reach and cross-communicate in various channels. That’s a big payoff and great ROI on content that otherwise would have been sequestered in a printed piece. If you plan strategically, today you can get more bang for your buck out of newsletters than you ever could before.

Here are five tips to keep in mind to set your company up for newsletter success:

Content is king. No matter what form a newsletter takes–printed or email–content is still the most important element. Develop stories that help, encourage, and inform the audience with timely information. Expand the content out beyond just you and your company to include industry trends, case studies, and tips that readers can benefit from. The best content is brief enough to engage those with short attention spans and not too self-serving. As the news media shrinks, this approach is an opportunity to tell your story directly to customers.

Plan, plan, plan. Organizing a successful newsletter takes planning. The first step is setting a purpose for your newsletter. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish for all the effort and expense. Next, establish deadline and publish dates to keep everyone on schedule, and evaluate timing to coincide distribution with trade shows, product launches, or other timely opportunities that can support the brand message. This has proven to work for both printed and email newsletters.

Leverage social media. Newsletter content makes great fodder for a company’s social media channels. For example, post newsletter stories on your website and distribute links via a Twitter account to your audience. Or post on Facebook and ask customers to comment. By doing so, you reinforce your message and get more mileage out of your efforts. Social media is also a rich environment for gathering content. For instance, we use one client’s Twitter account to conduct quick survey polls using SurveyBob on industry topics and run the results in the company’s quarterly newsletter.

Appoint an in-house publisher. CMD works on newsletters for several clients and the most successful ones are those that have a single, internal contact who acts as publisher. Our experience shows that bringing too many people into the newsletter process is like inviting too many chefs into the kitchen. Everyone has an opinion and the end result usually isn’t that good. Plus it never goes out on time.

Survey says. Have you asked your customers recently what they want to read about, or do you just think of story ideas that sound interesting? Remove the guesswork and survey your audience about stories, frequency, distribution method, etc. You can’t give them what they want if you don’t know what it is. This step could save you time, money, and improve your odds of positively connecting with customers.

Social media can be a dream tool when the digital seas are calm and customers are singing praise far and wide across Twitter streams and Facebook walls. But what about when a crisis hits and the once-beloved social media channels turn from a lovefest to a battleground for disgruntled customers and fans? Recently, my alma mater Texas Tech University faced this very situation.

When news spread that the university had fired Mike Leach, the beloved, eccentric head coach of the Red Raider football team, Texas Tech fans, students and alumni stormed the university’s social media accounts to find answers, voice their opinions and vent their frustrations. What fans and high-paying students and alumni found, however, was that the university’s athletic department had locked its Facebook wall, was deleting fan-generated notes and comments, and had suddenly abandoned its regularly active Twitter stream.

Eventually, every company or organization will face a crisis or issue that plays out in the social media world. How you respond says a lot about you and your brand, and how committed you are to social media success. CMD counsels many of its clients on crisis preparation, and here are five tips that can help your organization face a predicament in the age of social media (Red Raider Athletic Department: Are you listening, yet?):

• Prepare
  • Do you have a social media crisis communication plan? Start by revisiting your existing crisis plans—do they include the use of your social media accounts? Spend time to develop messaging for each of your crisis scenarios and draft Facebook posts and Tweets so that your first communication during a crisis occurs within minutes, instead of hours or days. Are there prominent bloggers or Twitter users that can disseminate important information to target audiences during a crisis? Include them in your crisis plan. Also, assign a team member(s) to monitor and administer your social media accounts. In the case of Texas Tech, new Tweets and Facebook wall comments were coming in by the hundreds each hour—there needs to be a person dedicated to monitoring these conversations.
• Listen
  • An essential aspect of social media is listening—especially when a customer or fan is expressing a concern. What are the key issues your audiences are focusing on? What type of action are they calling for? Take this opportunity to let your customers and fans know that you not only hear their concerns, but you are taking them into consideration when planning your next course of action. The insights you gain from listening will help shape additional communications during a crisis as well as improve your communication plans in the future.
• Contain the conversation
  • People can be downright rotten at times, and unfortunately, the worst often comes out in the midst of a crisis or dispute. While you might not enjoy the name calling or what’s being said about your organization, it’s important for those conversations to occur in the appropriate space and that they don’t extend the reach of the crisis to unrelated digital properties. Don’t lock your Facebook wall or blog comments section, because detractors will simply find another place to voice their criticisms and these actions can add significant fuel to the fire. In the case of Texas Tech, the athletic department’s decision to lock its Facebook wall spread the flame war to the university’s general fan page, which is moderated by a separate office on campus and opted to remain open. Like Texas Tech’s general fan page, foster a place for open, two-way communication on a space that you control and are able to track. Also, keep in mind that your social media accounts should maintain the right to delete vulgar content; but don’t delete a comment because it states a point of view that you don’t agree with—after all, disagreements are simply human nature.
• Respond
  • Social media—especially Twitter—is all about what’s happening now. Your social media accounts will soon be, if they’re not already, the first places people visit when a crisis breaks. Become the main source of news by offering valuable information, such as insights from key executives on how they are taking steps to solve the issue. At the onset of a crisis, a post as simple as this could suffice while your team listens to the conversations and develops a forthcoming plan of action, “Hi all, we understand your concerns and we are here listening. We are taking everything you have to say into consideration and you will be the first to know when we plan our next steps.” Other actions include adding more robust content in the form of videos, additional information, updates, etc. to help balance the ongoing dialogue and achieve search benefits for your side of the story. For particularly influential detractors, determine whether it’s possible to take the conversation offline by offering to talk through their concerns or misgivings directly—person to person.
• Research
  • Research is essential to effective public relations. In the days and weeks following a crisis, track the conversations across your social media channels. Where did most of the conversations take place? What was the key issue that users focused on? Use this information to see what messaging was effective or what key events triggered a shift in your audience’s tone. This is also invaluable when modifying your current crisis communication plan to fit the behaviors of your target audience.

The year 2009 will undoubtedly go down as the year that Twitter exploded onto the communications scene. With so much attention and interest, Twitter gave us a new and interesting way to engage in two-way conversations with people, clients and customers, as well as take advantage of a plethora of off-shoot companies built to service the microblogging site. Also, due to Twitter, breaking news that was usually delivered 45 minutes or more after an event is now delivered in a mere 45 seconds.

To help our clients keep up-to-date on Twitter best practices, the CMD Earned Media team has presented numerous Twitter how-to seminars over the past year, guiding and showing how to use the channel strategically and addressing the basics of getting started. (See our earlier blog post on our Twitter 101 session for local Portland media.) We recently held a seminar for our CMD colleagues to offer insight and best practices to those who wanted to learn more and get started. The session was spirited and full of interesting questions, including these five:

Q: I’ve set up a Twitter account, but really, why should I be on it?
A: We all use social media to communicate in various ways. Some people use it to keep in touch with family and friends. For business-savvy users, you can listen to what is being said about your clients, research your competition, find recent news pertaining to an industry and connect with media and people who share common interests. If you’re interested in what others are interested in, then Twitter is for you.

Q: What type of information should I list in my profile?
A: It’s important to note that all information on your Twitter profile is searchable, which means that what you tweet will show up in real-time search results based on keywords that you use. Make it easy for people to find you by listing the company you work for, your current location, occupation and interests. Now that Twitter search results show up on Google and general Web search, it’s more important than ever to ensure that what you’re twittering is relevant and interesting, and not just a space-filler, i.e. “I’m eating lunch.”

Q: How do I develop followers or find people to follow?
A: There are many ways to develop followers. For example: using Twitter’s search bar, doing a Google search, or using one of our favorite free tools, www.twellow.com. Twellow is like the Yellow Pages of Twitter – with over 12.5 million profiles listed, you can harness your following/followers by looking up your favorite hobby, the industry you work in, location and more.

Q: What if I accidently share something on Twitter that I did not want to?
A: As we like to remind our clients, once you send a tweet, it technically lives forever in the “twittersphere.” Sure, Twitter offers the ability to delete a tweet (when you hover over your update when viewing your home or profile page, you’ll see a trash can at the end of the update), but there is no way to prevent it from ever not turning up in search results. When in doubt, re-read what you’re about to tweet to make sure you’re comfortable with the message.

Q: Can I update multiple social media channels at once?
A: Yes. We are busy people, and managing different social media profiles takes time. If you are interested in integrating both your Facebook and Twitter profiles simultaneously, visit: http://www.ping.fm/ (another favorite tool of ours). Also, LinkedIn has recently been enabled for Twitter updates, so your tweets can appear in your network updates section.

Questions? Tweet us @CMDPortland. We’re here to help.

During the past month, I joined my fellow CMDers for the annual Bike Commute Challenge. Okay, so in truth, I only rode to work a total of five times last month (shhh… don’t tell my team captain!). But as a team, CMD logged 2,245 miles and saved around 2,155 pounds of CO2 in the process. And that’s all that really matters, right? A group of individuals doing what they can to benefit the larger community.

That’s the philosophy that CMD has adopted for its commitment to sustainability. As a company, CMD believes that operating in an environmentally sustainable manner is not only the right thing to do, but it also makes smart business sense.

This was the guiding principle that led to the first year of our company being named one of the 100 Best Green Companies in Oregon by Oregon Business magazine. Given the caliber of leading green experts in the state, we were thrilled to be recognized. This effort lends credibility to our company as well as to the many clients and vendors we work with.

CMD’s sustainable practices are consistently reviewed and prioritized by an employee-led sustainability team that works to advance our company by setting goals, spearheading initiatives and engaging with employees. If you’re hoping to begin a similar initiative in your organization, you might find some of the programs we’ve implemented helpful.

1. Reduce waste – CMD focuses on reducing the use of raw materials by giving strong consideration to vendors who use recycled materials, offer environmentally preferred solutions and help reduce waste/increase efficiencies. We also reduce waste streams by choosing reusable products and expanding our recycling program (lots of blue bins!).

2. Conserve energy and water – CMD makes an ongoing effort to be more energy efficient and we actively assess our energy usage to evaluate solutions for continued improvement.

3. Encouraging the use of alternative transportation – Activities such as the Bike Commute Challenge, carpooling or other alternative modes of transportation are important not only to the environment, but to our company’s culture as well. Just ask the group of CMDers who bike over to the PDX food carts for lunch!

4. Making a positive impact on the community – We dedicate time, talent and resources to advancing the cause of select worthy, environmentally focused nonprofits, such as SCRAP, that are working to make a real difference in the community. In this way, CMD’s influence to foster greater environmental stewardship reaches well beyond our own core business and affects many others.