Whittaker’s Chocolate, a New Zealand chocolatier and the Portuguese Sagres Preta, maker of chocolate stout beer, bravely decided to create their website only using chocolate, their main ingredient.

Everything from the interface design to the navigation and the social icons on their website is made of chocolate!

The idea is brilliant, and with this approach these two companies are showing that advertising should be fun and honest, not boring, false or evil.

To better promote this initiative, the companies also accompanied the campaign with videos of how the websites were done – from idea to execution. Check out one of the videos that went viral on the web:

Delicious, isn’t it!?
If you would like to reinvent your own website and find a creative way to promote your products like these two brave companies, feel free to get in touch with us.

As a final thought, I’ll just share this excellent quote from the great Jerry Della Femina, who said:

“I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

Facts about Facebook:

1. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
2. Facebook has about 100 billion hits a day
3. 50 billion photos on Facebook and more than 3 billion photos uploaded each month
4. More than 3 million active pages on Facebook
5. More than 70 translations options available on the site
6. 1.5 million Local businesses have active pages on Facebook
7. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
8. 100 million active users are accessing Facebook through their mobile phones

So how do companies successfully use Facebook to market its products or services to large group of users? Facebook Optimization is the answer. Here are some key points that need to be followed on a Facebook Marketing Campaign includes: developing specific messages to target audience, paying appropriate attention to what is being discussed, and engaging in a good conversation. There are special tools that are specifically made for Facebook portal that help small businesses engage more and more deeply with the consumers and prospects. Facebook open graph tool help optimize your Facebook pages and with this tool, Facebook Optimization is now increasingly becoming the new SEO.

The internet is much more than just a channel of communication. In the present scenario, the internet has become the fastest and most convenient way to communicate and to spread the message to the public in a cost effective model. Often called Interactive PR, Online PR or Digital PR, this process is helpful for companies of any size as it is a two-way communication that aims to build better relationships. When compared to the traditional PR, this method helps organizations build reliability with the target audience directly.

VSS data shows that PR spending in the US grew by more than 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. Also PR spending in America is predicted to go beyond $8 billion in 2013 with increased usage of corporate blogs and social media.

The important components of Interactive PR include: distributing press releases online with relevant keywords and optimizing for search engine rankings, news wire services, defining a new blogging strategy to engage prospects and customers in conversation about the products or services, effective podcasting, organizing webinars, starting discussions and following up in forums, creating news and events page in the website to cover the old and latest information about the company.

There is a greater demand for Interactive PR services than in previous years and firms of all sizes are looking at the ways they communicate with their prospects and customers. There are companies that do not practice PR on its own and may request help or outsource their needs for Online PR activities. This way they can build an ongoing relationship with the public and the media in a very cost effective manner.

The following are some of the benefits associated with Social Media Marketing, which include: Building exposure to businesses, higher rankings in search engines, increased traffic, qualified leads, new business development and relatively low expenditures. The top social media tools used commonly by marketers are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs.

Most companies are still trying to find the best ways to make use of social media platforms to market their products or services. An Omniture survey indicated that only 14% of businesses use mobile, video and social media marketing as part of their marketing programs. Recently, a number of companies have been outsourcing their social media marketing to specialized digital marketing agencies. Currently, about 25% of companies are outsourcing their social media programs in order to increase ROI and increase sales.

Charts from a CMO survey show that there is an increase of 60% in the overall social media marketing spending from 3.5% (August ’09) to 5.6% (February ’10). There has been significant growth in the field of social media marketing with a gradual increase in the budget allocation in recent years.

Blueliner Marketingis a full service internet marketing agency based in New York with offices in India and Bangladesh. Blueliner help clients place their products and services in front of their target audience through various social media marketing efforts that drive results.

This form of marketing is often referred to as Content Marketing, which is defined as “words and data to create unambiguous content that support meaningful, interactive experiences”, is now evolving as a new discipline. In addition to all your traditional marketing techniques, this form of marketing uses content to achieve higher sales through profitable actions from the customer and prospect sides.

What it takes, is an effective content strategy. Content development, delivery and administration are the three major points that need to be kept in mind when you define content strategy for any marketing plan. Rachel Lovinger explains more about content marketing in her article, Content Strategy – The Philosophy of Data.

Effective content can be a combination of both verbal and visual information that will have a greater impact among your prospects. Define your content strategy in a manner that can be tracked and results are measured by easy methods which plays an important role when it comes to continuous refining and managing content for future.

There are a variety of vehicles marketers can use to deliver content to prospects which include print and online newsletters, webinars, podcasts, websites, microsites, video portals, mobile content, gaming sites, interactive online forms, email campaigns, blogs and social media. Of all, social media forms a major component of content strategy now and content marketing is replacing certain traditional marketing strategies to achieve results in a cost-effective manner.

Research and survey reports conducted by Junta42 show that now 33% of total marketing budgets are  allocated to content marketing and the main area of focus being mobile and social media. Companies of all size are now taking the help of digital marketing companies to fulfill their content marketing needs.

Blueliner Marketing offers specialized services to clients who need a partner to transform their marketing goals to profitable results. Blueliner creates and administers valuable content marketing strategies to meet client needs and deliver higher ROI.

As the panelists introduce themselves and their backgrounds, we see a wide range of digital professionals, all talking about how businesses can not only be involved in social media, but make money as well.

Social Media landscape: Where should you be?

Toby Daniels recommends ignoring the moderator’s image. Says it’s too confusing and you should focus on customers and what they’re saying. Don’t worry about the specific sites just yet.

Arman Rousta says companies should integrate their social presences into their sites and customer relations efforts first.

Daniel Luxemburg brings up a very real concern. What if no one is talking about your brand?

Scott Cherkin says travel sites shouldn’t push deals out through Twitter. Agree?

Great question from the audience. “All this touchy feely stuff is great, but the client wants to know what are the metrics? What value does this offer?”

Ed Spiegel talks about how his company RentMineOnline.com drives ROI through peer recommendations.

Cherkin says, “I don’t believe social media will always be based on ROI. I think this is about brand building, not as much about a CTR.” “We’re seeing Facebook as one of our top traffic drivers, right under Google.”

New question! How do you measure success with social media?

Spiegel – We measure success on conversions and ROI.

Rousta says metrics are more akin to PR. Each social site has it’s own set of metrics. You need to build awareness in these areas to drive conversions in the future.

Daniels talks about Pepsi pulling ad spend from the Super Bowl and launching Pepsi Refresh. Investing in ideas and social movements instead of ad spend. They have no idea how they’re going to measure this and they’re ok with it.

Cherkin talks about the opportunity to move share above the bottom of the funnel. Brings in example from Travel Ad Network about reaching people in the research phase, not just targeting people on Google. Measuring success needs to be how many people ended up buying, not just how many fans and comments.

Luxemburg makes a really interesting point about how many conversations and WOM about businesses happens in private that companies can’t see. How to you incorporate that?

Question from the audience? Should you charge users to use social media?

Daniels uses Craigslist as an example. It’s successful because it’s frictionless for people to use. Super simple, incredibly effective, and free. It starts with focusing on fixing a problem before focusing on a business model. Also talks about how display ads will be a small percentage of the future of the online economy.

Cherkin makes a good point, “Finding people who really want to engage in your brand is hard.” I guess it really depends on who and what your brand is.

Luxemborg talks about technology (aka Facebook Connect) breaking down barriers, reducing friction and allowing people to easily join new branded networks.

Kanalley: If it’s difficult to build your own social network. Huffington post uses Facebook Connect to build community 16% of all comments are through Facebook Connect.

Daniels brings up social graph optimization. Says optimizing people’s social graphs will be huge in the near future.

Rousta talks about social search. Google displays results from your social network. Talks about Twitter’s upcoming advertising platform.

Spiegel is giving a run through of his company to highlight how social lead generation can work and how his company is utilizing the social graph to generate business.

Good question from Cherkin. Do you worry about backlash from people getting paid to promote the products like what happened with Pay Per Post? An equally well thought-out answer from Spiegel. People aren’t getting paid to promote something they’ve never used. This is basically the same thing as receiving a referral fee for bringing in a friend to rent an apartment in your building, which is the same program that has existed for years.

New question for the panel. Let’s talk about money. How do you make money in social?

Rousta brings up the Dell example of over $3 million in sales from Twitter. Also brings up the great example of the Red Cross using social and mobile to raise funds.

Luxemburg talks about mobile social and how big of an opportunity exists there. Geolocation is huge and will continue to grow.

Really interesting point from the audience. US is incredibly behind when it comes to mobile. People in Europe are paying for parking and shopping with their phones. “Our phones are our wallets. I can’t believe how far behind the US is.”

OK, the moderator lets us know that we’re now out of time. Check back next week for video of the panel. Thanks for reading.

In the 20th century, distribution was more of an art form.  Trailers, posters, stickers, and samples were used to elicit certain emotions in consumers to purchase a product or service.  Google, with its revolutionary search algorithm, takes marketing strategy to a new level.  Nowadays, your website must be optimized for search keywords.  Otherwise, your content will not make an eye blink.  Social media and mobile marketing also are rising factors in strategy, along with good web design.  Through the 7 Pillars of Marketing, Blueliner delivers all these elements at a high quality with a reasonable price point.

The internet, as we know, is a thrifty way to distribute content to the masses.  We also know that the internet has a lot of content to keep minds busy.  How do you get through the clutter? I believe that segmenting your demographic with steady content is a good start.  You don’t always become an overnight sensation, but you build a client base.  Advertisers like client bases since they increase the chance of realized revenue gain.  Small firms should have a budget for technical upgrades.  It doesn’t make sense to start up a business without reserve capital for technological improvements that catapult revenue gains. Before anything else, though, you need a staff with energy and imagination.  They collaborate to produce the content for a mass demographic.  If a firm can deliver high quality distribution at a good price and quality, then they shine above all.

The once mighty must during web 1.0 has returned – The Industry Standard. Starting in 1998 it quickly rose to sell a record 7,558 advertising pages in 2000, making it 300 pages. The unfortunate victim of the dotcom crash it was bought up by IDG in bankruptcy court for $1 million and left to sit till now.

“We found that the brand had quite a bit of equity left,” says Derek Butcher, General Manager of The Industry Standard. “People remembered what the brand stood for before. Still, there’s obviously going to be a new generation of people who have no idea what it is.”

“We’ll have news coverage, but mainly from other sources such as IDG and bloggers,” says Butcher. “The area where we will try to differentiate ourselves is on the analysis side.”

Their motto this time is Predict the Future and they present a new way to consider the future. It’s by getting registered users to predict news stories and even suggest things to predict. Beyond valuable to any internet marketing and analysis.

They give users $100,000 in credits at registration to place yeah or nay bets on stories and new technologies. If things go the way you chose to predict you get more credits. Topics range from what will Yahoo, Google and Facebook do to Ad spending will shift from impression to performance-based marketing in 2008. If you predict correctly you can then apply them to prizes and increase your web cred. “The cool thing about prediction markets is that they do seem to be pretty accurate,” Butcher says. “It’s an effective way of forecasting.”

It seems that TIS is just in time to propel us further towards the next phase of the web or web 3. Building on the web 2.0 social networking phenomenon, folks argue web 3 is shaping up to be a phase of recommendation, customization and with the increased influx of ad revenue formally with television, rich, glossy and fast.

TIS out of the gate, looks and acts great. The site is well designed and implements a lot of the social networking standards we’ve come to enjoy. The bulk of the analysis is top notch and the breadth of the writers is wide and concise. The topics range from what company will be acquired next to what’s new in search engine optimization to technology infrastructure topics.

It should quickly be bookmarked by anyone in the technology industry and those like myself should also register, so you can start predicting. For the ability to predict the future is always valuable for business. To bad the Industry Standard had to go away for all those years.

Considered one of the longest campaigns in American history, beginning nearly two years prior to the election day. The 2008 race for the White House is crowded and full of interactive PR, social media, new internet marketing, new avenues of media revenue and voter attraction.

Diverging from previous campaigns where a candidate was considered progressive if they had an online presence, in 2008 it is imperative for a candidate to have a focused online strategy. If a candidate lacks complex online marketing strategies and an army of social networking minions applying web 2.0 efforts they are behind the curve and if they don’t have an online presence they might as well concede the race.

Largely pioneered by Howard Dean in 2004, the battle for voters online has become a hotly contested one. Each of the major Democratic and Republican candidates has established a web presence and has made it a vital part of their campaign, garnering record online contributions to their campaigns (Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Barak Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney).

Primary results aside, Congressman Ron Paul is leading the charge in this web 2.0 world: in two months, a user video for Paul caught 16,000 views, making it the sixth most popular of 2007; he’s got a Twitter feed and a Justin.tv lifecast; 5,589 fans on Facebook; and a staff that makes a clutter-less or seizure free MySpace page. Yes, Ron Paul has it all 2.0 and it’s translating into dollars. On Guy Fawkes Day, he set a record for one-day fund raising by a Republican, gathering $4.2 million from online sources. Six weeks later he hit $6 million in one day.

If we look at the other side of the coin. The Democratic Senator Obama raised $6.9 million—more than a quarter of his total—over the Internet from more than 50,000 online donors, a base of supporters his campaign hopes to cultivate into regular givers. Obama is also setting records because the campaign contributions that he is receiving are coming from small donations online and adding up to big dollars. His campaign said 90 percent of the online contributions were for $100 or less. Not to mention the user generated “Obama Girl” and the viral support it generated for him. Remember the Sopranos video spoof Hillary posted on her site that went totally viral? Some might argue it was a first of its kind and that it is more valuable than bigger budget TV ad’s.

In what is shaping up to be a huge year for youth turn out, having a strong online presence is vital to reaching possible like minded individuals. Perhaps the electoral college is proving necessary after all. With it being harder to get the attention of everyone, the candidates are having to reach further into the web 2.0 fabric to garner support.

I’m sure that in this age of information the other candidates are learning from each others campaigns, and they are trying to get as much influence in as they can before the Nominations in late August and early September. Which will finally bring closure to a marathon run for election day.

Paul or Obama may go the way of Dean, but their efforts illustrate two things: creative and serious investments in social media sites get seen and these online forays into social networking can provide major returns. Marketing Companies, SEO specialists and eCommerce capitalists looking to cue into the same markets should take a strategic long look at the ways these candidates are implementing web analytics and social marketing to gather up the support it will take to bring their parties nominations and a hopeful new address at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.

MySpace and new marketing.

No one in 2004 ever thought that MySpace and contemporary media platforms where synonymous. But its four years and a $580 traditional million major media buyout later. MySpace, still the highest trafficked Social Networking site with 110 million active users a month. Now in 24 countries, the site is expected to make $800 million in revenue in 2008, the majority of that income will be from the advertising and marketing sectors. Google, recently inked an advertising deal with MySpace’s parent company, Fox Interactive Media for $900 million.

So what’s the problem? Well, its called Facebook and the growing use of the term “MySpace-refugee” that has begun to erode MySpace’s market dominance. Facebook, known for its higher technology, cleaner interface and wider demographic is garnering users at a faster rate than MySpace. The advertising and marketing industries are seeing Facebook as a better bet for their money these days.

MySpace is no longer considered the “sexy choice” for scenesters in the know, as it is beginning to be seen as a traditional media outlet by turning into a portal, like Yahoo, AOL, or worse, Netscape. To be fair, Fox intended it to morph into a portal, but hoped it to be further along in that vision by now.

Some might argue that this is due to the hands off approach by Fox Interactive. With Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe signing new $7.5 million dollar contracts recently, it looks like it will remain that way. DeWolfe says that Fox Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, reports about once a month and is “very aware of the product road map.”

The struggle is between the chaos of free programming that is de rigeur for MySpace users and the clean cut neatness that most consumer product companies have become used to. “The challenge…is making it more of a well-lighted environment for big-brand advertisers, the Procter & Gambles and Unilevers” said David Cohen, the US director for digital communications for the media buying agency Universal McCann.

Some experts say that it’s just not conducive to advertisers with it’s cluttered, often third party looking layout and it’s just not good from a consumer experience standpoint. Also MySpace is suffering from an image problem, with a deluge of unwanted friend requests, spam and sexually suggestive material. These issues have lost it some users.

MySpace is prepped to counter the trend and holds some heavy numbers to give it some room in this seemingly troubled time. Second only to YouTube in online video viewership and still holding a gigantic 1.3 billion page views a day (which did dip for the first time in December 2007 according to comScore), MySpace insiders are not showing that they are concerned. Instead, they are moving to meet the needs of its advertisers and users by introducing customized features, mobile device services, new security and sighting its growth potential. MySpace has announced an accord with 49 states to tighten privacy restrictions, in response to concerns of child predators.

Despite competition nipping at its heels, MySpace is still far and away the most trafficked internet site and heavy numbers will give it some room in this seemingly troubled time. “Think about the size and scale of MySpace and the opportunity to affect people and the opportunity to play a role in the culture” said Peter Chernin, the president and chief operating officer at News Corp., “there’s really nothing like it”

Weather or not the size and scale of MySpace will remain is yet to be seen. It has a great head start and very capable people at its front. But advertisers and users will be the tale of the tape.