Last month, I discovered wanelo.com, a bookmarking social network which helps people find unique products and shows people where to buy it. Users can sign up for an account and create ‘wish-list’ folders, and users can follow each other just like on Twitter.

I’ve always seen awesome products here and there (a shark tea infuser and color changing mugs) but did not know where to find it. Many other people had this problem as well. However, many of these things can now be found at wanelo, which will direct you to the site where you can purchase the item.

Wanelo is much like the growing network, Pinterest, only wanelo is focusing on online shopping while Pinterest is much more vague.

However, I do wonder how wanelo expects to raise revenue, as so far it doesn’t seem like they’re generating ads from users. It also doesn’t seem like the vendors that are posted are paying wanelo as well, as users post these websites and not wanelo themselves. Pinterest was experiencing the same problem a couple weeks ago. Nevertheless, this is one of the first bookmarking social networks I’ve gotten into, and it’s a fun website to browse in my spare time. My wallet doesn’t seem to agree though.

By now, I’m pretty sure most internet-users have heard of the Kony 2012. The insanely successful viral campaign launched by Invisible Children has achieved over 82 million views in the matter of three weeks on YouTube alone.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

The campaign’s premise is the make Joseph Kony famous. Kony is a Ugandan war lord who is wanted by the International Court for crimes against humanity. This year, Invisible Children wants the world to know about Kony and to finally catch him. The execution and strategy is excellent. A well-produced video presenting facts and appealing to emotions (by featuring children who escaped Kony) captured people’s attention, while the strategy of getting normal people to tweet/contact ‘influencers’ such as Rihanna, Stephen Colbert and   various politicians.

Hours after it was launched, Kony hashtags dominated twitter, and #kony2012 trended worldwide for three entire days. Years ago, the mass public generally had no say in what the senior politicians and businessmen were deciding. Now, because of social media, the pyramid has turned around, and the general public is now influencing the government. Kony 2012 is harvesting this exact phenomenon by using the millions of everyday people to influence and put pressure on the ‘influencers’

Strategically, Kony 2012 is one of the best online marketing campaigns I’ve seen.

I recently found this infographic displaying the statistics of people who use search engines, and therefore why SEO is crucial for online businesses.

Statistics indicate that 90% and 91% of internet-using men and women, respectively, use search engines on a regular basis. That’s huge, considering how there are hundreds of millions of internet users in the world. This is a market that online businesses must take advantage of and market to through the internet.

Another important statistic shows that 80% of people have searched a product online and then purchased it offline. This seems counter intuitive as humans naturally search for the most convenient option, yet they’re taking an extra step here. Why? Most likely, it is because people feel uncomfortable with making purchases online. Now that the problem has been identified, online businesses must take this into account and create easy, fast and bug-free purchasing experiences for customers (See my earlier blog post, “Shut up and take my money”).

Google’s ‘Search Stories’ campaign is one of my favorite advertising campaigns. Google released a series of stories, but displayed them not through human actors, but through searches on Google’s variety of services with accompanying background music. The most successful is the Parisian Love video, which has garnered over 6 million views on YouTube and was run during the 2010 Superbowl. Another personal favorite is the Dog story.

These videos appeal to human emotion, making them highly enjoyed by all viewers while also displaying Google’s search, YouTube, Maps and other services.

The best part about this campaign is that Google invites you to respond and create your own Search Stories ad, so they are engaging people instead of just talking to them. Google launched a web application that allows you to select what you want to be displayed and provides a variety of background music choices. Then, you can immediately upload the video onto YouTube, one of Google’s services.

Throughout this whole campaign, Google informs and engages viewers while keeping them within the Google services circle. This is a great execution of user-generated marketing. I’ve tried making my own Search Story, you can too here: https://searchstories-intl.appspot.com/en-us/creator/

The internet has yielded many innovations in marketing and a personal favorite of mine is viral marketing, which is the use of pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awarenessor to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses (Source: Wikipedia).

Many companies have successfully completed viral campaigns. Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” holds the record for garnering the most views in 24 hours. The simplicity and wittiness of the commercial contributed to its success. Additionally, Old Spice had the actor in the commercial reply fan comments throughout three days, which generated even more hype and buzz. To this day, this campaign is arguably the most successful viral marketing campaign ever.

Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Guitar Hero also managed to generate much buzz when a seemingly home-made video was uploaded to YouTube under an ordinary name. Guitar Hero is normally played with a toy guitar, but this video showed a person playing the game by riding a bike. The video generated much buzz and curiosity, and ultimately Guitar Hero representatives stepped out and confirmed that this was indeed a viral marketing campaign they created.

Bike Hero