1. How did you come up with this idea? Did it just develop out of your studies in history and interest in social media, or is there more to it?

We came up with the idea after seeing Mad Men characters Twittering in mid-2008. People were signing up as the characters from the AMC show, and the juxtaposition of fake 1960s characters using 21st century technology was interesting. Thinking as a marketer and comedy writer, I called my friend (and former boss) about the idea of Twittering as all the previous U.S. presidents — and having them comment on the then-current presidential election. Luckily for us, that idea sounded like too much work (plus, how many times can Taft be funny?), so we settled on single tweets from lots of historical figures.

2. I started a street-fashion blog a few months ago called Work It, Berk. Although I’m starting to get a bit more traffic, I’m interested in knowing how your site was able to jump to 4.5 million page views in a year. What methods did you use? Word of mouth, other sites, Twitter, Facebook?

We launched the site in October 2008 with 50 tweets in queue, and we probably made 100 more blog posts total during the next 8 months. Around June/July 2009, we were featured on Time.com and CNN.com — and even Ashton Kutcher tweeted about us — and we got 2.5 million page views over a weekend. Crazy.

Honestly, we didn’t do any extensive marketing, nor do we continue to do so. It’s kind of a lesson plan on what not to do. Our Twitter account is not very active. We don’t have a Facebook fan page worth looking at. We don’t really reach out to other bloggers.  As the book looms closer, we’ll probably do more of that; talking to history and education bloggers.

The thing that we do successfully, though, is that we keep the content coming. The sheer amount matters. 10 tweets would never have taken off. We needed a critical mass of at least 100 posts to really get noticed. I don’t know why that’s a rule, but I think it is. Totally unscientific, and with no real numeric basis.  When it comes to online content, it pays to be prolific.

The other positive thing is that we let others participate. From day 1, we put the Photoshop template on the site. The complexity of Photoshop keeps most fans from contributing, but it’s been a nice way to reward our true fans who want to do the extra work.

In the end, however, we just struck gold.  Our idea was right and the timing was right.  I’ve jotted down and created tons of sites in the past few years.  None of them have hit like this.  It was just my time.

And I’m not going to lie; every time I see someone tweet “I’m kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner,” the little malicious boy inside me grins and does a backflip.

3. What did you do before this site?

I’m a self-taught web designer with 10 years experience building web sites, leading marketing strategy. I also have a lot of experience acting and doing improv comedy — which has led me to write a lot of comedy TV scripts. Somehow, all those skills have contributed to this site happening the way it has…. but I never saw it coming.

4. Is this site for mere entertainment or do you do “corporate social media” for your day job?

The site, originally, was for entertainment. But now that we’ve gotten some traction and a book deal, we see it as a way to promote ourselves as creative thinkers and creators — people that can make something memorable and viral out of something as “boring” as history. We’re hoping the site can continue to entertain fans, but also bring corporate marketing clients our way. It’s already working… we’re close to working with a couple of big, international clients to do social media for them.  We’re really excited.

Thanks for your email, Brittany.  Best of luck to you as you push forward (keep pushing, btw… it will come…. you just don’t know what “it” will be).

The simple concept was to capture the twitter messages of historical figures, and in doing so, create a funny and compelling new type of content.

Together with Alan Beard of Wave Strategies, we wanted to combine a hot new technology (Twitter) with the boring old history books to showcase how content can create a new conversation (and hopefully generate some laughs along the way).

Some messages are benign, some are lame puns, some push the envelope, and some will likely offend. But the goal was to create something of interest out of something common — history and pop culture.

The Early results: in three weeks, after 20 posts, with nothing more than a Twitter account, and submissions to both Digg and StumbleUpon, the site has generated 2400 unique visitors and 12,000 page views. Not bad for little to no marketing work.

As the site grows in interest, we will enact a more active marketing campaign, but, so far, this content experiment has yielded great results.

Do you have “common content?” Every organization has its own, boring content — history, milestones, stories, and more. How can you use this content to your advantage in an engaging way?

You can subscribe to Historical Tweets by Twitter, RSS Feed, or Daily Digest Email.

The “viralness” of your video depends on a) whether or not your video’s tone resonates strongly enough with your target audience, and b) whether or not your target audience is web-savvy enough to forward, blog about, re-post, and redistribute your viral video to their friends, contacts, readers, etc.

An interesting statement from the post:

Some respondents said a viral video for a marketing campaign is a hit if it draws 100,000 views, while others pegged success at 250,000 or 50,000 views.

One million views seems to be the number that everyone throws around, so it’s good to see smaller numbers get some attention as well.  50,000 views is an expensive ad buy for $100k, unless your 50,000 viewers were hitting your client’s sweet spot.

Where this doesn’t apply so much is the opening up of a marketing campaign to draw in viewers. As news continues to become commoditized, how do you stand out?

CNN crossed two mediums that don’t seem to work together. Headline T-shirts.

Brilliant. What does CNN have an endless supply of? Headlines. What would be the least-relevant news delivery-vehicle? Clothing. Put them together and you have a humorous, self-referential motif that really works.

In this case, the number of shirts they sell don’t matter as much as the concept itself. They are printed on demand, and carry the benefit of a buzz-worthy idea.

I am really impressed by the size and brightness of that screen, and was overall impressed with the visuals that went behind it.  At times, they seemed out of sync with what he was saying, and other times, added to the moment.  The biggest problem with the setup was that they didn’t make sense to the TV audience during the close-ups (Garr goes into details about this).  He should make available a wide shot photo of each and every slide with him in front of it.  It would give bloggers something to talk about, rather than just the missteps.  My visuals grade: A for Effort, B+ for Execution.

Conversely, Barack Obama painted a different backdrop at his speech at the DNC.  His staging wasn’t that fancy: what seemed like a bunch of American flags in front of a building (looked like a ranch-style house, or stable?).  But the true backdrop was the crowded Denver stadium.  The TV cameras were able to cut away to thousands of average, seemingly middle-class people listening to the speech.  It was a different way to generating and furthering a message.  My visuals grade: B for Effort, B for Execution.

There are a lot of bloggers up-in-arms about this, as bloggers can be (read: “The DMCA sucks!” “Burn copyrights!” “Anarchy!”). Bloggers, who tend to be writers, creatives, artists, and marketing self-promoters are probably especially fond of Mad Men, and were, probably, like me, excited about further interacting with the characters. Twitter seemed to be a spot-on communications tool for the show.

I 100% agree that AMC (which pays for and owns the show) has the right to do this.

I just hope the cable network takes note of the moment and makes these Twitter accounts official.  They should continue the good work of their anonymous (and probably now pissed-off) fans. I can only hope that staff writers or assistants are tasked with maintaining these accounts, and they don’t have to run things through legal before each post.

Links of note:

• I am @Paul_Kinsey
• Mad Men on Twitter
• DMCA takedown notice forces Twitter to blacklist Mad Men characters (Venture Beat)

I just stumbled across something totally separate from the show: someone has created Twitter accounts for a couple of the main characters, and they’re interacting, as if from 1962, with fans from 2008 (and with each other). Brilliant.

Twittering from the Past!

So far, I’ve been able to find a couple of character Twitter accounts. Don seems to be the most active, with over 800 followers and 170 status updates. Sure, Twitter is mostly for early-adopter technophiles, much like being on Digg, but it’s a probably a smart tactic for engaging the fans most likely to blog and use online media to spread your messages…

• Don Draper: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Peggy Olson: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Pete Campbell: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Joan Holloway: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Updated: Sal Romano: Twitter
• Updated: Bud Melmen: Twitter (and LinkedIn)
• Updated: Bobbie Barrett: Twitter
• Updated: Paul Kinsey: Twitter

The most interesting part of these accounts is that the characters are responding back to questions, rants, references to post-1962 pop culture (e.g., Peggy has never heard of “A Clockwork Orange”), and furthering the fan interaction into the show. Most of their updates are replies. Official or no, this is cool.

And, probably pretty easy. All it would take is someone with a deep knowledge about the show and a program like Twitterific or twhirl, where you can have multiple Tweet windows open.

And it doesn’t stop with Mad Men. After a little more research, I found Twitter accounts for:

• Liz Lemon (Tina Fey on 30 Rock)
• Michael Scott (Steve Carell on The Office)
• Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson on The Office)
• Darth Vader
• Borat (with over 5,000 followers!)
• Norman Dale (Gene Hackman from the movie Hoosiers – seems abandoned, but you get the point)

That’s a lot of fake Twitterers! Perhaps a real fake Twitter account might bring in the right audience to kick-start your communication strategy.

It’s an interesting case to examine 90 locally-focused organizations, each with similar structure, mission, and goals, and how they organize their content, craft their brand, and reach out to both potential visitors and existing members.

From the list: Northstar Church (Frisco, TX)

The Boston Globe’s Boston.com has a three-month old blog column called “The Big Picture” and yes, it does blow your mind.

It’s a collection of amazing photography presented in a large format.  Very little commentary and captioning.  Not to get nerdy, but all the photos are all 990 pixels wide and around 600 pixels tall.  Much larger than your average web site photos.

Artistry comes both from the quality and presentation of your work, and as I think about engaging people, I can’t help but think that most web content creators are missing the boat by limiting viewership of their most important digital assets.

Example 1: Photos
Looking at two examples from my own university, the Pepperdine school of law posted tiny photos from an alumni event.  No context; just hundreds lined up in a row.  Conversely, Pepperdine’s president just went on a highly-publicized tour of Route 66, and, along the way, his team posted photos to flickr, where people can view full-sized images, as well as download and comment.

Example 2: Video
I wrote a column for TubeFilter about TNT’s new interstitial series, Lucky Chance, and not only is the series lame, but they only allow you to embed a super-small window (260 px wide) in which to post the video on your site.  Not an engaging viewing experience, even if you’re watching your favorite show.

Apply this to your own site.  Your own blog.  Your own experience.  Are you trying to “wow” clients?  Trying to make web surfers “feel” your brand?  Big presentations and crisp photography can do that.

Surely this isn’t news to you. If so, where you been?

Aside from all the great buzz being hyped about this movie, there’s been some great viral online marketing done. First, there was Why So Serious, then Commit Your Friend, and then live events covered by MTV interns (Hollywood and New York).

One thing caught my eye: a trailer recut into what it would look like if The Joker’s After-Effects-competent henchmen got a hold of it.

Ledger aside, it’s a chilling effect on the dark nature of the character and the movie. And to think, someone might say, “Hey, they’re ruining the scenes! They’re literally drawing on what WB spent millions of dollars to shoot and create!”

Let’s learn a lesson from the biggest blockbuster hit of 2008 (yes, bigger than Iron Man): no footage (and no brand) is too precious to not take a chance at telling a compelling story.

If you have trustworthy people with video-editing skills, let them mash up some footage. Let them experiment with your brand in their eyes. After all, they’re already brand ambassadors to their circle. Why not give them some slack on the leash. You might find viral gold.

What do they have in common?

They all use Ning.com to host a private social network on their sites.  They give their fans an opportunity to upload photos, make comments, and engage as a part of the brand experience.

The best part?  Ning is free.

Why wouldn’t you create a ning social network?  Barack Obama and my University want to keep their social networks close, so as to tie data back to their main databases, which makes sense.

In any case, shouldn’t you be creating a social experience for your customers or prospects?  Aren’t they expecting it?  I mean, if The ‘Hoff is doing it…

It’s a nice, personal service and allows for fast-spreading messages.

But is it really a marketing tool? I think not. I hate it when spammers try to “follow you.” They’re fishing for followers. Then again, if you have a ready stream of content to share (@cnnbrk) or you are constantly moving around the country (@BarackObama), it seems to be tailor made for you.

In thinking about Twitter and the Pepperdine community, I’ve had quite a few conversations about using it to reach out to the few Pepperdine alumni who are active on Twitter. Honestly, the numbers probably aren’t there to make it worth anyone’s time. I’m not going to post tweets 10 times a day to reach 10 people. That doesn’t scale.

I found a few links dealing with universities and Twitter; great ideas here and good discussion on the comments. I won’t replicate it. Go check these out:

• Using Twitter for Higher Ed
• Twitter as Alert System?
• Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing (.eduGuru)
• Do You Twitter? (uwebd)

An Experiment

What these links don’t cover is using Twitter simply as an RSS aggregator. Using Twitterfeed, which renders RSS entries into a twitter account’s status updates, I created a Twitter account called PepperdineFeeds.

I set up six RSS feeds to push content to the account:

1. YouTube videos with “Pepperdine” in the title or description
2. Flickr images with “Pepperdine” in the title or description
3. Google News feed looking for any article with “Pepperdine” in it
4. Technorati RSS feed looking for blog posts with “Pepperdine” in them
5. Pepperdine’s own Public Relations RSS Feed
6. Pepperdine’s own student newspaper The Graphic

Since the first tweet on April 11, 2008, I haven’t touched the account, and it’s racked up 672 updates. I like that scalability.

Great. I have a lot of posts. What’s the point, right?

I’ve used it to keep track of news and interesting things in my Twitter account (rather than bogging down my RSS reader).

I haven’t pushed it to an audience, so, sure, there are only 3 followers. I suspect that I need to apply some additional content tweaks before it could be relevant to an external audience as content.

So, check it out. What do you think of Twitter, or the PepperdineFeeds account?

The computer had a whopping 16MB of RAM and a giant 15-inch monitor. It barely ran Windows 95. Get this: it had a 500MB hard drive. There was barely enough room to load Microsoft Office, much less all the documents I had to create for class. What did I pay for this beauty? $1100.

Cut to today: I just bought an 8GB USB flash drive for $30. Sixteen times the memory for 3% of the cost.

Here’s what that means to me (and to you). I think nothing of storing and managing hundreds of gigabytes of photos, videos, music, and media. And because I have lots of photos, I expect others to have the same. There is no excuse for a brand (organization, product, service, etc.) to not have a lot of great multimedia to engage me.

What does your organization offer the casual web surfer? Videos? Hi-res photos for download? No? You are risking missing your customers’ expectations.

Case in point: look at charity:water. It’s a non-profit that sells $20 bottles of water to raise funds to build water wells around the world. And then they deliver videos, photos, and a full experience back to their donors. The instant feedback loop draws you in, doesn’t it? It’s easy to see that your donation makes a direct difference in someone’s life.

Does your brand generate enough media to fill an 8GB flash drive?

Are you worried if it doesn’t?

Don’t hide your brand experience behind the walls of your computer. Give it away as a gift to loyal customers who are excited about you.

The problem is getting enough a) clickthrough opportunities (a lot of content), and b) audience (a lot of viewers).

Non-profit software developer Participatory Culture Foundation (creators of Miro, a video player) has an awesome idea for generating revenues: their fans give them credit for all Amazon sales, regardless of where they clicked through from.

Check it out at iheartmiro.org. They simply ask you to download a FireFox plug-in that makes sure that every purchase you make at Amazon is attributed to them.

This is an ingenious move for an organization with a large number of passionate fans. This would be a perfect tactic for any non-profit with a nationwide base. I wonder if anyone else out there is doing something this slick.

“Surely, none of them can expect to compete with AppleTV, right?”

I was right. None of those brandless products will compete with Apple on style, function, or content. But today, Netflix revealed its plan to roll out a device to auto-deliver movies and TV episodes. Much like Tivo box owners guarantees the company a long run of subscription revenue, I’m sure Netflix is hoping that this device will lock down users for years.

For creators, this means that Netflix offers yet another opportunity for distribution of low-budget and independent fare. Something to be aware of as they start to sell them. Netflix could turn the corner and reinvent itself as a vertical content channel.

For those keeping track, that’s 7.6 billion streams.

Do you find yourself watching more videos online?  I feel a slow creep of noise into my online video watching experience.  The YouTube “top viewed” page used to be my first place to see “what’s going viral,” but now I tend to spread my time across Hulu, CNN, and what’s forwarded to me.

Live Video U (http://lvutv.com/) boasts 50,000 videos in their library, and seems to get permission to come on campus and stick a camera in students’ faces for quick, authentic takes on their own lives there on campus. Did a quick search for Pepperdine and didn’t find any videos. They must not be looking for UGC or else they’d have a lot more.

Looking specifically at LMU’s page, they seem to have 64 videos of individual interviews. That’s a ton of footage, but not unreasonable for one or two days of shooting. The videos are simple, short, and have nice color correction. They are all tagged (e.g., student athlete, environment, or school spirit).

The site also does a nice, quick link to all the YouTube videos tagged with LMU.

Combined with some simple “fast facts” and a link to Google Maps, Live Video U actually provides a nice template for a “one stop shop” for media for Universities.

For University marketers, your school should take a lesson from this site and embrace all the external media being created outside of your control. Flickr images, YouTube videos, and student blogs are all playing a part in the conversation around your school’s merits (and dirty little secrets).

What part does online video play in your marketing strategy? Is it a primary draw for your prospects, or does it take a backseat to other types of media? By putting video front and center, Live Video U is using it as strategic tool to bring traffic and then, interest.

That’s the number of video streams watched during the shortest month of the year: February 2008.

(I was tempted to round down to “10 billion,” but that “0.1 billion” is still a hundred million views.)

Online video is big and your target market has fully adopted it into their online lives. What does that mean to your story, message, brand, PR, etc.?

After all, if your video is on YouTube, it can be copied and posted anywhere!

Most marketers would see this a big plus, but for some reason, most Universities are a lot vested in how prestigious they are. They get scared when their content (especially academic-related) has the possibility of making it to MySpace, Facebook, or — even worse — a blog!

I therefore applaud Vancouver Film School for not just dancing around new media and YouTube, but actively using it to showcase their students’ work.

More than that, they’re using YouTube as an active tool for recruitment. A perfect fit.

Rather than writing something true or honest or compelling, I’ve thought through the navigation structure, searched for the perfect WordPress template to tweak, and even started Twittering to see what kind of cool widgets I could include on this blog site.

And in doing so, I’ve missed the point.

I am branching out on my own — focusing on my career as an online video producer and comedy writer — and using that experience, hopefully, to bring real exciting change to the marketing strategy of anyone who will listen to me. I think media has an opportunity to be authentic again. Not commercialized drivel, nor shameless plugs for advertisers.

A friend and I were talking today about how commercials are far less entertaining than they used to be, and how (like Napster-era music execs) TV executives and ad agencies bemoan viewers just Tivo-ing through their commercials. Even if we could go back to 1997 technology, would we want to? Are we satisfied by forcing our messages down viewers’ throats? There were a few creative high points — watercooler jokes — but all in all, TV commercials were distractions.

But the Internet is changing things, and there exists a real opportunity to create relevant content for a contextual audience. It’s hard work, and there is actually not much pay in it (right now), but it is the future of marketing content creation.

Seven weeks from now, I will be setting off on my own. Quitting a great job at a great University, where I have been welcomed and accepted and given great opportunity. I’m doing it because I believe that content creation (writing, shooting, printing, delivering, etc.) can be exciting again. And anyone can do it.

But not everyone can do it well. Or funny. Or have it solve a strategic marketing problem. Or feel really authentic.

These are things that I am good at. And, coincidentally, things that I want to get better at.

So this site, rather than bells and whistles (or the online equivalent: del.icio.us and twitter feeds), will be about interesting, honest content.

So, if you’re a fan of mine, or a random internet viewer who doesn’t care two cents about me or my thoughts, won’t you join my conversation?

I’m talking about online engagement. Have you seen anything online (video, typed, or otherwise) that has inspired you to come back again and again?

Perhaps you can help me add to this list. I’ve constantly come back to a few content creators (onilne or otherwise)

• Seth Godin
• NewTeeVee
• Prairie Home Companion
• Will Ferrell

Anything else?