With the New Year basically here, it's important that we stay on top of what the trends are in the New Year.

The trends listed at Level Ten Designs include:

• Social fatigue
• Social shakedown
• Emphasis on ROI and metrics
• Mobile Boom
• Hyperlocal
•  … and more.

The trends listed at Entrpereneur.com include:

• Potential new standards in SEO
• Lower priced pay per click (PPC)
• Email marketing (still!)
• Social network marketing
• Content nesting (it's an interesting concept, be sure to read it)
• … and more

The trends listed at A B Strategic include:

• Growing prevalence of Bing
• Video marketing
• Mobile marketing
• … and more

Check out each list and figure out what is relevant and applicable to you. If you're already a social media rockstar then you should continue on that path and you'll do just fine in the upcoming shakedown predicted by LevelTen.com. If you're focused on global business but not on local, consider making changes to offer hyperlocal services. If you've avoided pay per click in the past because it wasn't a cost effective way to generate business, maybe Entrepreneur's blog will encourage you to rethink it for this year. If you haven't been doing any video marketing, perhaps A B Strategic's highlight of its growing predominance should encourage you to think about it for this year.

The bottom line? There was lots of "keep expecting a refinement on many of the things we've come to trust (like SEO, blogs, video) but we also saw 3 key trends in our research:

1. Bing. Bing is apparently going to grow. Could this be a breakthrough year for them?

2. Mobile. This shouldn't come as a surprise, it's been growing through 2009.

3. Social media shakedown. Now that Facebook and Twitter's honeymoon period is over, we can expect a shakedown and cleanout of people who have claimed to be social media experts but weren't!

Brought to you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

Viral videos. They’re passed from friend to friend and at some point they go from humorous to wildfire. They become the kind of thing that if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. In this blog, we’ll look at some viral videos and talk about what makes them viral and then explore whether businesses can create their own viral videos.

There’s the Star Wars Kid…

The Numa Numa guy…

The "leave Britney alone" guy…

The cringeworthy "map" answer by Miss South Carolina…

The infamous Asian "bus uncle"…

Or this recent one of a wedding dance…

You’ve seen these; you’ve shared them with others; you’ve laughed about them over the watercooler.

As a business, you might want to create videos that achieve a viral effect. But can you? Is it possible? And what do you do?

The idea of a decision to create a viral video is a challenging one. How do you create a viral effect? The videos above weren’t filmed to become viral. (In fact, the owners of some of them tried to have them removed or their impact diminished). On the flipside, I’m aware of numerous businesses who have filmed videos in the hopes that they become viral (and most – perhaps all – did not).

So, what is common about these videos that you can take away as a lesson?

First, these weren’t created for a corporate promotion. They were created as personal expression. The people filmed themselves (and, in many cases, never intended for these to be released). The wedding video was a personal expression in a public place, but it was still a personal expression. And the South Carolina video was a personal expression during a high stress event.

Second, these didn’t have advertisements present: They did have a point and the point was not to promote something. I each case, the point was to share.

Third, except for the Miss South Carolina clip, these lacked the slick quality of commercials. They are real people doing real things in an entertaining way. We laugh at them because they are hyperboles of ourselves. We all dance in the privacy of our homes, we all sing when we think no one is looking, we all get emotion about certain topics, we all wish we could have danced at our wedding. What makes these viral is that they are caricatures of who we are.

So, if you’re a business and you want to create a viral video, stop right there. The "decision" to create a viral video won’t get you anywhere. Instead, you need to share a relatable piece of yourself. It might not go viral… but it might if people can relate.

Here are some interesting articles about making videos viral. They do have counterpoints to what I’ve written but I’m open to many viewpoints and happy to be wrong with there’s success involved.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/

http://www.webinknow.com/2007/08/8-tips-to-make-.html

http://www.bizzia.com/behindthebuzz/how-to-make-a-video-viral/

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When you think of wine and wine connoisseurs, you probably think of quiet wine tastings by people in tuxedos (who might also be the kind of people to go to art gallery openings or museums). That’s fine for a slice of the populace but it’s a little reserved for most of us. But there’s one guy who is changing how we think about wine and at the same time he’s changing how we think about online marketing.

Gary Vaynerchuk (read his Wikipedia bio here and visit his website here) has enjoyed multimillion dollar success, national (even international?) fame and a multibook deal, all thanks to his online videos.

As the owner of a wine retail store in New Jersey (sorry NJ but you’re known for your wines), Vaynerchuk needed to promote his store, generate traffic, establish his expertise, and create a following. So he created WineLibrary.com, an online video blog where he tastes wines and talks about them.

I like wines, and I’ve been to wine tastings so the first time I saw a video I was expecting something like this: "This wine has good fingers with a hint of oak early and then a strong vanilla finish. You’ll enjoy it with a good cut of beef… blah blah blah".

But it wasn’t like that at all. One of the wines he featured he talked about how it reminded him of Golden Grahams, the breakfast cereal. He said other things, too, during his video but that stood out as the memorable thing for me. Since then, I’ve watched his videos – both on wine and on online video marketing – and find him to be engaging to watch.

Here is a recent video of his:
http://tv.winelibrary.com/2009/05/29/talking-new-zealand-wine-and-more-with-daniel-schuster-part-2-episode-685

If you have a business that you want to position, brand, drive traffic to, and grow, you might consider online videos as well. If you do, and you want to take some lessons from a page in Gary’s playbook, here’s what to do:

1.  Be consistent. He didn’t get where he is today because he did one video a month for a few months then stopped when he didn’t see any traffic. He has been taping consistently since 2006 (episode count is 685 or so) and is enjoyed by 90,000 people.

2.  Be opinionated and courageous. Your videos will fall flat if you try to explore both sides of the issue and let viewers decide. Have an opinion. Be brash. Tell people what to think. Tell others that they’re stupid. Don’t be afraid of backlash (just make sure that you can stand by your position and, of course, never ever slander someone).

3.  Find new ways to communicate. Gary doesn’t buy into the wine community’s lingo. He talks about breakfast cereal (and many other things – just watch his videos). He combines a New Jersey attitude with his wine tasting.

4.  Take a step up. You don’t have to invest in high end equipment right away. But your videos should probably be made slightly more professionally than if they were filmed on your laptop’s built-in camera. Invest in a camera with a microphone, take the time to script something about your topic, and go for it.

5.  Never one thing. If you’ve read this far and think that this is the only answer you need to be successful, you’ve missed the point. This is Vaynerchuk’s crowning jewel. It’s the thing he points people to when talking about wine. But he has also been active on blogs and forums and Facebook with good comments that are relevant to the topic.

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