As if he wasn’t already good looking enough, skilled enough, or romantic enough…now he’s a genius at viral marketing too!

It’s official, the Old Spice Man is sending out personalized messages to Tweeters with a lot of followers—and I’m not talking a short retweet; I’m talking a full-length, personalized video that talks directly to them!

Well not exactly to you, but to well-known folks with a lot of followers—like Digg founder Kevin Rose, Olympic skater Apolo Ohno, actresses Alyssa Milano and Justine Bateman, and super-techy site Gizmodo. The familiar, well muscled spokesperson is addressing even less famous folks on Twitter by name (i.e., the personalize message to Gabe) via more than 100 personalized YouTube videos.

Check out Old Spice Man’s YouTube message to Kevin Rose, after Rose posted a Tweet that he was sick. Its hilarious and social media doesn’t get more personalized than this.

Do you know why he’s doing this? Because these folks have a ton of followers, which equates to tons of social networking power. They will retweet the videos and spread them virally amongst their huge social media networks.

It’s viral marketing at its best—strong, sexy, smart, and maybe even on a horse!

Another Look at the Value of Blogging Frequency

Yesterday we examined at the age-old blog dilemma: does blogging frequency or the quality of posts matter more? And while I let the Google experts weight in with their informative tips from Google Webmaster Central, this morning I came across A Simple Blogging Formula from Chris Brogan, owner of New Marketing Labs and chrisbrogan.com.

It seems that Chris, someone who blogs daily and is pretty darn successful at it (he has 50K daily readers subscribe to his RSS blog feed), favors the side of blog post frequency. However, he also claims that he thinks of way more valuable and relevant ideas to write about than he has time for…kudos Chris!

So check out Chris Brogan’s formula for blogging…it’s definitely worth reading if you’re considering starting a blog.

Social Network Tips for Growing your Business

We’ll be enjoying a statutory holiday here in Canada this weekend, so as things get social at the cottage, around the campfire or on your back deck on our Monday holiday, I thought I’d whet your appetites with some social networking tips for businesses from Bloomberg Businessweek…to get you all caught up on Tuesday morning  :)

The article, ‘Get “Social” to Grow Your Business’, discusses how 70 percent of online customers are looking to the web—and specifically to social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc.)—for information and entertainment. The opportunities for businesses are obvious—start using social networking to:

  • Spread your brand identity
  • Expose your products and services, and
  • Build solid, personalized relationships with customers

How are you taking advantage of social networking to promote your brand and business?