What is viral?

as explained by Beau Lewis of Seedwell.com

• Parody (example: “Mac or PC”)
• Music videos (example: Lady Gaga or Beyonce, or a parody of Jay-Z song “New Dork”)
• “Did that just happen?” (example: anything by Ok Go)
• Too cute or too sexy (example: “Charlie Bit Me”)

Secrets of viral video

• If it’s an ad, why share? People are less likely to share a video if it is visibly an advertisement.
• Making a parody of a common pop-culture reference means that you can capitalize on the popularity of those keywords, and your video will appear in the same search results. Also, your parody will be linked intrinsically, if well done, with the original content you are mocking.
• Build a micro-site for the video where people can interact, comment, engage with content (like MacOrPC.org)

Who watches YouTube videos?

60% of people on YouTube are over 35 years-old

Who will spread your video virally?

• 1/3 of people who watch videos online will share them
• 70% of those people who share will share with just 1-6 people
• LESS THAN 3% who share will share with 20 or more people (these are the “influencers”)
• People who are connected online, who are at their computers often, who have a large network of friends/peers/co-workers.
• If someone sees your video on a social network like Facebook, it will be easier to share. Make it easy to click once and share your video!
• Where to fish, in a big pond with everyone (not all are your target audience)? Or in a small pond with JUST your targets? Go for the small pond every time. Find out where you influencers are and target that small group first. They will share for you!

Find out how Beau Lewis of Seedwell (the company behind “Mac or PC” and “New Dork”) became a viral super-star, and hear the advice he shared with us at the February HyperArts social media event:

Here are the other tips that Beau shared with us, about how to get your video FOUND in the search engines:

The SEO of viral:

• Plan release of your video around an event  (Olympics, election, Super Bowl, Oscars)
• Utilize those common keywords in your title and description. People will be searching for the original and stumble on your parody of what they were seeking.
• Your video thumbnail can be ANYTHING (not necessarily something even in your video!) so make it something that will catch eyes. This image will show up in search results.
• Make your video a response to another popular video that is related. This will show up on the original video’s page on YouTube.

If you want to show content to your fans, and require that a visitor to your Fan Page become a fan in order to view the content, here’s a nice bit of FBML to render content on your Facebook Fan Page only to fans. Easy as pie….

First, on your Static FBML page, begin with the following:

Wrap the content you want to hide from non-fans within these tags:

Then end your page with:

And that’s it! The content contained between <fb:visible-to-connection> and </fb:visible-to-connection> will be visible to fans only.

Other Resources

Facebook Developer Wiki – fb:visible-to-connection

In early 2010, Facebook made some modifications to the API which made the embedding of iFrames more restricted. Although they are no longer supported in Static FBML tabs, iFrames can still be implemented on application Canvas Pages. However, rather than an iFrame loading automatically — as it previously did on Canvas Pages — a user action — a click — is now required to load the iFrame.

In a PowerPoint that Facebook circulated in late 2009, Facebook explained the upcoming changes:

iFrames
Preserving iFrames (on a custom tab)
If you currently use an iFrame in your page and must preserve the content of one or more of your iFrames: Create a wrapper application that lives on a canvas page. This application can have iFrames since it sits on a canvas page. Have this light weight application include the image of what you want to display, with an “Activate” button. Link the “Activate” button to the canvas page wrapper application. More information here.

And here is that “wrapper application,” written in JavaScript:

There are two flavors of Facebook applications — iFrame and FBML — depending on whether you will render your canvas page in an iFrame or with FBML. Obviously, to embed an iFrame you’ll want to create an “iFrame” application. There are a number of resources on the Web for creating a Facebook application and, actually, it’s really not that hard. Here are several:

• Developing a Facebook App for Absolute Beginners – Emmanuele Feronato
• Facebook Application Basics
• Facebook Developer Wiki – Creating a Platform Application

Once you have created your Facebook iFrame application, you can visit your application page, if you’re logged in to your Facebook account, by going to http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php where you will see your application listed in the left column.

Server Requirements for hosting a Facebook Application

• Make sure your Web server supports PHP, preferably PHP5;
• You’ll need FTP access to your server so you can create a directory and add files;
• More info is available on the Facebook Developer Wiki.

In the directory you create on your Web server for the “Canvas Callback URL” for your Facebook iFrame application, you’ll have two files:

• index.php – contains the content that will be rendered in the app;
• appinclude.php – contains some meta info about the app.

For your “index.php” file, you’ll need to render the “wrapper application” referenced above in PHP:

For the “appinclude.php”:

Regarding the above, replace “[APPLICATION API KEY]” and “[APPLICATION SECRET KEY]” with the ones generated when you create your application.

The “$user_id” is commented out (with the “//” preceding it) because it will cause the application not to function.

External Resources

• Facebook Application Basics
• Facebook Developer Wiki – Creating a Platform Application
• Facebook Developer Wiki – Choosing between an FBML or iFrame Application
• Facebook Developer Wiki – iFrame Applications
• Developing a Facebook App for Absolute Beginners – Emmanuele Feronato
• Tutorial – Bring It On Home

I can only offer very limited support for Facebook app development. But if you post questions here, others may be able to help out.

Please refer to my tutorial on adding Static FBML to your Facebook Fan Page for details on adding Static FBML to your Facebook Fan Page. This tutorial shows you how to add a Flickr slideshow, created from one of your “Sets” in your Flickr account, to a Static FBML Application Tab.

Embedding a Flickr Slideshow / Set in your Facebook Static FBML Application Tab is fairly straightforward. Here’s how it’s done:

Create a Flickr Set

If the Set that you want to be the slideshow is already created, skip to Step 4. If you need to first create the Set that will be the Flickr slideshow…

After logging in to your Flickr account….

1) Click on “Organize & Create”:

2) Drag the photos you want in the “set” to the canvas area. When you have added all the pictures you want to have in this Set, click “Add to Set” and select “New Set”.

3) Give the new set a name:

and then click the blue “Save” button:

You will be returned to a screen that shows all your sets.

4) Click on the name of the Set you just created, or the one you want to be the slideshow.

On the left side, at the bottom click on “Open set page”:

On the next screen, click on “Slideshow” in top right area:

Click the “Share” button:

You will see a screen in the upper left:

Under “Grab the Embed URL” click “Copy to clipboard.”

Creating the FBML Code for your Flickr Slideshow

The code copied to your clipboard will look similar to this:

From that code you want to extract values to place in the FBML to embed the slideshow in your Static FBML page. The above code, when rendered in your FBML, will look like this:

As you can see, you’re just copying into the FBML tag fb:swf the values for the URL to the .swf object, the dimensions, and the “flashvars”.

“URL-TO-ACTIVATION-IMAGE” is the image that must be uploaded to a Web-accessible server that is clicked to enable the slideshow.

Take this code and paste it into your Static FBML box.

When launching a company blog, you want to get everyone on board. Even the people who are not directly contributing to the blog should know the blog’s mission statement. Your company is embarking on a journey that is different from traditional marketing and PR. This is a community effort, and your entire staff should understand the following ideas.

Your company should establish a set of guidelines, simple and clear, that outlines your goals and rules for the blog that will be read and followed by any contributor. The following list offers some general tips that will make any corporate blog easier to read, more likely to be shared, and much more relevant to your readers.

Share these tips with anyone who writes on your blog:

1) Gain Trust:

“Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them.

If you blog, your goal should be to create a blog about which people say “I like that – I don’t think of it as a company blog.” For the most part, that’s a hurdle you need to jump to gain their trust…

If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customers’ problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. Want an example. Check out Rubbermaid’s blog.”

From Groundswell

2) Learn from the experts:

These people blog professionally, so they know what they are talking about…

7 Deadly Sins of Blogging:

“It takes some time to build an audience, and momentum is your friend. Most of us don’t take off like rockets. We build slowly at first, then the snowball starts to grow.

If you’re not finding the audience you want yet, ask yourself:

• Is my topic actually interesting to someone other than my mom and my cat?
• Do I give my readers more than I ask to receive from them?
• Am I working on cultivating a network of like-minded bloggers, and supporting their work as much as I hope they’ll support mine?

If the answers are yes, you’ll need to cultivate a little patience.”

10 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging

“Be genuine. Your readers will know when you’re not. The Internet has a pretty good built-in BS detector. The other day, Adii, co-founder of WooThemes, tweeted, “You can’t buy loyalty and awesomeness.” He’s dead on with that.

Have a point of view. It doesn’t necessarily have to be unique, but you should be able to get behind it 110%. Stay focused.

Your blog is about you. But it’s also about your readers. If your audience is interested in what you’re saying, your blog will naturally evolve into one big two-way conversation.”

3) Don’t try to sell, EVER!

We already learned that people do not trust corporate blogs. Why? Because corporations try to sell things! So in order to combat that assumption, make sure you do not approach your blog with the intention to sell a product or service.

How to: Use Your Blog for Business Development

“Respect the rules of social engagement.

Communities (especially online ones) are extremely resistant to any attempt to subvert or use them for one’s own personal gain. Thus, you need to be careful that you are transparent and honest about your intentions. Any failure to do so will end up causing more harm than good.”

from the blog:

What is your blog’s BIGGER idea?

“Blog about the benefits of your products/services, not the product/services. For example, if you own a pet grooming store, don’t blog about dog grooming products, blog about dog grooming. Don’t blog about ‘The Ten Best Shampoos for Your Dog’s Bath’, blog about ‘Ten Steps to Giving Your Dog the Perfect Bath’.

Kodak’s A Thousand Words blog doesn’t focus on Kodak’s products as much as it does photography. Graco’s blog doesn’t focus on Graco’s products, it focuses on parenthood. Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line doesn’t focus on Patagonia’s products, it focuses on the environment, sustainability, and environmental activism. In each case, these blogs understand what content would be relevant and valuable to their readers/customers, and they tailor the posts they write with this in mind.”

from the blog:

4) Establish rules for anyone who touches your blog.

Apart from your blog’s mission statement that outlines your goals, you should also have a (preferably short) list of rules for the content of all posts. Every guest blogger should receive the guidelines before they begin to write, and make sure you agree on all issues surrounding self-promotion and back-linking.

You should also set rules for the moderation of comments (sometimes an author will want to moderate his or her own post comments, so set the rules ahead of time that determine when to censor and when to accept).

Here are some examples:

NY Times rules for blogging

10 Rules for Responsible Blogging

Rules for commenting from David Meerman Scott

Some areas you want to cover in your list of rules:

• Topics
• Titles and Sub-headers
• Images
• Post length
• Editing
• SEO (who will optimize each post for search engine visiblitiy?)
• Comments
• Links
• Signature and credit

More examples:

BiggerPockets.com Guidelines

Business.gov

The Fashion Police

Probably the most important thing to remember about guest blogging, is that YOU have the final word on any content being published on your blog. Keep in mind that your goal is to build a large base of subscribers to your blog. Don’t be afraid to ask them directly what they want to read about, and keep all posts relevant and reliable. Your readers are your number one priority.

Please feel free to add ideas to this list, and share your stories about corporate blogging with us and our readers!

It’s time for another freebie from HyperArts! Last month we offered a free FBML page to our fans and followers (stay tuned for an update on our winners and their custom pages).

This month we would like to give away a custom contact form tab. You can see the contact form that we have on our HyperArts Page, which looks like this:

Winners will receive a static FBML application tab with a functioning contact form. This will appear on your existing Fan Page as a separate tab.

To be considered for this prize, please send an email with the subject line “FREE Contact Tab” to smo at hyperarts dot com.

Include the following information:

• Name
• Website
• A link to your existing Facebook Fan Page

Also, become a fan of the HyperArts Facebook Page, where we answer questions, share information and advice, and generally have a good time.

Contest Deadline: April 1, 2010.

As many know, Facebook is planning some pretty significant changes in the coming weeks (or thereabouts) that developers really need to be aware of. These are not trivial changes, but significant changes in how information is displayed. Here is the PowerPoint that was distributed earlier in 2010.

The Big Picture….

• Reduced width of tab width from 760 to 520px;
• No iFrames;
• No Boxes, neither tabs nor boxes on the left-hand column of your Wall/Info tab, underneath your Page’s profile picture.

Facebook, in a PowerPoint that’s been distributed and is available here, states:

As part of a larger effort to improve user experience and promote consistency across the site, Facebook will be modifying Page and Profile layouts by simplifying how identity is managed and displayed.

Changes to layout:

• Tab width changing from 760 to 520 pixels [Discussed in a previous HyperArts post]
• Pages will no longer be able to implement iFrames on their Page. All custom content will need to be on a separate, custom tab, which you can add using FBML or a custom application.
• Boxes will no longer appear on Pages or Profiles. This means that Pages will no longer include the Boxes tab, or the Boxes that currently exist on the left-hand column of your Wall/Info tab, underneath your Page’s profile picture. You can move the content that currently exists in Boxes to a custom tab.

And then Facebook gets into some specifics:

Tabs
Tabs help organize the content on a Facebook Page. By default, every Facebook Page has a Wall and an Info tab (which cannot be removed). You can built a custom tab by adding the FBML application to your page and entering FBML code into it, so that it will display your custom content.

Boxes
Small, moveable application Boxes found on the Boxes tab and on the left-hand column of a Facebook Page’s Wall/Info tab.

FBML
Customize a rich, interactive experience on your Page using Facebook’s version of HTML. You can embed Flash animations or add a comments box to your custom experience (more info found on http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/ and http:// facebook.com/facebook-widgets/). The FBML tab can be as wide as 520 pixels and has no restrictions on height.

Fortunately, Facebook plans to warn developers and Page admins that the changes are imminent:

Page Admins will see a preview of what their tabs will look like after the design change, at least 2 weeks prior to launch.

Getting ready is simple:

• Adjust your tab widths
  Make sure all tab content will fit within 520 pixels. Includes native tabs (Wall, Info, Events, Photos, Video, Discussions, Reviews, etc.) & custom tabs
• Remove all Boxes (if applicable)
  Click “Edit Page” and ensure that you have copied the code for any/all FBML boxes. Remove all Boxes from your Boxes tab and Wall/Info tab (underneath page profile picture) by clicking “Edit Box” and then “Remove Box.” Once your Boxes tab is empty, navigate to another tab and the Boxes tab will disappear.
• Create custom content in FBML on a custom tab (optional)
  Move deleted content from Boxes to a new tab on your page by adding the FBML application to your page.
  • Click “Edit Page,” locate the FBML application, and “Application Settings” to be sure the application is configured as a tab. If some of your Boxes were custom applications (not FBML), make sure that the Application Settings enable the application to appear as a tab, then follow the same steps above to convert that application into a tab.
  • Click “Edit” to paste the code from your Boxes into the new tab. Adjust the code to arrange your content within the new 520px tab width.

  iFrames
  Preserving iFrames (on a custom tab)
  If you currently use an iFrame in your page and must preserve the content of one or more of your iFrames: Create a wrapper application that lives on a canvas page. This application can have iFrames since it sits on a canvas page. Have this light weight application include the image of what you want to display, with an “Activate” button. Link the “Activate” button to the canvas page wrapper application. More information here.

How to embed an iFrame application for Facebook

In a discussion on the Facebook Developers Wiki from 2008, this exchange:

“Q: Does [<fb:iframe>] work in FBML boxes on Facebook Pages or Facebook Profiles?
A: No. The <fb:iframe> tag can only be used in an Application Canvas Page — nowhere else with no exceptions.”

On the PowerPoint about the 2010 changes, above, they state: “Create a wrapper application that lives on a canvas page. This application can have iFrames since it sits on a canvas page. Have this light weight application include the image of what you want to display, with an “Activate” button. Link the “Activate” button to the canvas page wrapper application.”

Basically, you can still embed an iFrame in a Facebook application, but not in Static FBML. The JS activator suggested above acts as the “wrapper application” and conforms to their requirements. You have to create an iFrame application to do this. I will be posting a tutorial on how to do this shortly.

Other Resources

Roadmap Profile – Facebook Developer Wiki

Mar 3 2010: It appears the below iframe method is no longer supported. However, you can still embed iframes into Facebook applications, just not in Static FBML. You’ll need to create an “iFrame” application that includes a “wrapper application” (a simple JavaScript app will do) to trigger the iFrame. I have written a post on how to create a Facebook application with embedded iFrame.

You cannot have an iframe in a Static FBML application tab that loads when the user hits the page. As with JavaScript, Facebook requires a user action before it will execute JavaScript or load an iframe.

Note: We believe that the “late February 2010″ changes Facebook has announced may include eliminating the implementation of iframes altogether. They have stated “Pages will no longer be able to implement iFrames on their Page. All custom content will need to be on a separate, custom tab, which you can add using FBML or a custom application.”

So, given that restriction, how do you add iframe content to your Static FBML page?

Pretty simple. Here’s the JavaScript:

The user action that is required is clicking on the “Let’s see that iframe” (for example), which then loads the iframe and external URL.

Resources

Pulling Wufoo forms into an iframe in Static FBML
HyperArts Post on embedding an iFrame in a Facebook Canvas Page application in 2010
Recent (2010) discussion on Facebook Platform Developer Forum

In my earlier post on embedding Flash or YouTube videos on your Static FBML page, I described how Facebook’s Static FBML application supports the embedding of Flash objects, including YouTube videos.

For businesses or organizations that have a YouTube channel, the good news is that you can embed a slideshow of your YouTube channel on a Static FBML application tab page. The presentation is quite nice, with the main video and, below it, a scrollable row of thumbnails that appears when the big video is moused over.

Here’s the drill:

Create the Custom Video Player in your Channel Account

Log in to your YouTube account;

Click on your username in the top right corner:

Click on “Account” in the dropdown;

On the next page, click on “Custom Video Players” under “More” (third column):

Click the “Create Custom Player” button:

Make your selections, making sure you select the player that doesn’t have the two columns of thumbnails to the right of the main video (the one on the left, below):

(You want to use the narrower player because Facebook plans to reduce the width of Application Tabs from 760px to 520px in late February/early March 2010 (See my post on the Facebook Fan Page width reduction.)

Select the videos to include in your slideshow/player (probably “My Videos”):

After choosing all your options, click the “Generate Code” at the bottom of the page;

Your “Embed Code” that is generated will look something like this:

Create the FBML Code for Static FBML

You will need to extract the “value” string from the <param> tag in the YouTube-generated code and make it the value for “imgsrc”:

The “imgsrc” is the absolute URL to the image that will be clicked on to load the video player in your FBML page (Facebook doesn’t allow Flash to load or JavaScript to run until the user takes an action, usually a click). Make sure the image is the same dimensions as the width and height values of the video player, as reflected in the YouTube-generated code (492 x 391px, in the example here).

Simply paste the code into your Static FBML instance and, assuming the URLs to the player and to the load image are correct, it should work. (Refer to my post on embedding Flash or YouTube videos on your Static FBML page for more info.

Related: How to Embed a Flickr Slideshow in your Facebook Static FBML Application Tab Page

People ask all the time, will we get tired of so much social? Social media, social networks, social business, social marketing…

I don’t really think that’s the right question, especially because sites like Facebook have shown us that people like social, even if they tend to be slow to the uptake at first. I would ask instead, in what manner will social become completely intertwined with all online activity?

With the launch of Google Buzz, I see a new wave in social media interactions. Google did something very different by launching a social network within an existing network of dedicated users: Gmail. With approx. 150 million users, Gmail offers Google two important components of a vibrant social network: users and information. Anyone with Gmail becomes a captive audience and a potential user. By tapping into our address books, chats, email conversations, bookmarks, blog readers and photo sharing applications, Google knows everything about us, and is offering to share it with the world. We all have seen what Facebook has done with user-data in terms of advertising…will Google follow suit? Will I start to see “Meet Christian Singles” ads on the right hand side of my email inbox? (Matt Hames talks about Facebook vs Google here.)

Google’s messaging plays up the simplicity of using this new social feature. “We already know everything about you!” is essentially what their campaign says. Plus, they are very quietly launching Buzz, letting users do all of the marketing for them (see Twitter’s trending topic for the week of Feb 8-12 and you will see how many people spread the word).

Wisely, Google is using very similar phrasing and images to Twitter and Facebook (read more here about how similar Buzz is to Twitter). Buzz encourages us to “share what you’re thinking” as well as photos, videos and links. Smart, because similar=familiar and that means easy for people to pick up and instantly start using.

Another thing I noticed today, was the influence of my new “social circle” on search engine results. I searched “umbrella” in Google images and at the bottom of the page, was startled to see a picture of my ex-boyfriend sitting on the beach under an umbrella! Yikes. Google calmly pointed out that this was simply a photo from my social circle! Well, um, not anymore, obviously. But apparently now we have to be careful what we ask Google for:

Then I tried a few other searches to see what sort of keywords pulled up images from my friends (and others):

My friend's mother in a dance show

Pictures of the HyperArts team!

Is this how social will become the norm? When searching and browsing websites we will start to see a trail of our past and present (and perhaps future) friends and colleagues. We will be able to read what they think, what they say to their friends, see what they look like and hear how they sound. They will offer advice and reviews, perhaps inadvertently, when we are shopping for products and services (this is the social web that Jeremiah Owyang talked about last year).

Google (pioneering as always) seems to be the first to introduce us to a whole new version of the social web. I’m not sure how I like it, and it’s getting a lot of criticism already. Why? Because it’s predatory rather than opt-in. Yes, Google asks before sticking Buzz into your inbox, but once you let them in, they automatically know everything about you, and you have to scramble to hide anything personal. And I certainly don’t remember telling Google to include my ex-boyfriend in search results…

The new social web does not make the distinction between personal vs private. We wanted social, we got it!