#hashtags: Creating a Viral Buzz on Twitter (#w2e, #hashtag #viralmarketing)

One of the funniest keynotes at the NYC Web 2.0 conference was by Baratunde Thurston: "Everything I need to know about social marketing, I Learned From Being @the_swine_flu". Baratunde demonstrates the incredible power that could be leveraged on Twitter, all done 140 characters at a time. He is profane and perhaps politically incorrect, but look past this - and you will see a highly effective campaign.

View Baratunde's - being @the_swine_flue presentation at the Ignite NYC session. <For a longer version of Baratunde' Swine Flu Viral Marketing Experiment - he begins the hashtag talk at the 2:50 time mark>

More to the point, Baratunde's experiment prove that Twitter can be applied to business to create a viral marketing buzz - a digital word-of-mouth. Another Twitter'r brought to my attention that Kodak did just this in April, to name a new camera. Unfortunately I could not locate the actual tweets onTwitter: the hashtag was  #nameakodak (view one Twitter's entries). Another B2C viral #hashtag campaign was with Moon Fruit (#moonfruit). In both cases, the winner in these campaign's won a prize.

Viewing Baratunde's YouTube video will give you a sense of the depth of thinking that is required to make this campaign work. In the case of a B2B/B2C campaign - the rules that exist for bloggers and other social media programs must be kept in mind. Keep it real. Be honest and upfront and try to make it fun. Of course you are advertising your company's product, however make it engaging, and where possible, informative to the participate. A blatant Twitter viral "advertisement' will fail and may in fact be a detriment to your brand.

Think Ebiz will try to duplicate Baratunde' campaign and we will report the results. Please Tweet me or comment if you know of other Viral Twitter campaigns. I am @sph001.

Comments

[The Counselor]

Twitter can be applied to business to create a viral marketing buzz - a digital word-of-mouth - the rules that exist for bloggers and other social media programs must be kept in mind- Nice post, thanks for sharing.

[buy acai]

Just wanted to let you know that it’s not showing up properly on the BlackBerry Browser (I have a Pearl). Anyway, I’m now on the RSS feed on my laptop, so thanks!