New social media game lauched for "The Last Airbender" movie release

Last week, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies and Crunchyroll, Inc., announced the release of "Become the Avatar," a freeplay interactive social media game, based on M. Night Shyamalan's July 2nd 3D release, "The Last Airbender."

The experience includes visuals from the film and allows fans to play as any of the Four Nations in various adventures.

For your personal experience, visit http://www.thelastairbendermovie.com/ or go to their Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/becometheavatar.

Today is National Doughnut Day

Prepare to see a lot of pictures with Krispy Kreme doughnuts and their sign taking over Twitter and Facebook today. In honor of National Doughnut Day, Krispy Kreme is offering a free doughnut to customers. No purchase is necessary. All they ask is that this promotion invade Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #KrispyKreme. Once you've picked up your free doughnut, they'd like you to take a picture of yourself at their establishments with your favorite doughnut then post it to Twitter and/or Facebook. What a sweet treat or should I say sweet tweet. To monitor their promotion, be sure to follow them at www.Facebook.com/KrispyKreme and www.Twitter.com/krispy_kreme. Enjoy.

Identifying Brand Ambassadors on YouTube

One of the publicized benefits of social media for businesses is creating brand evangelists or ambassadors. However, depending on your business, you may not have to create these people or find a platform for them to congregate in order to create an affordable campaign. Just the other day, I happened to be looking for a certain type of footage on Youtube and was fascinated to discover how many “how-to” videos had been uploaded on the same topic. There were thousands and these were mostly uploaded by fans that hadn’t been paid to promote a particular brand or product.

I’ll use the hair industry to demonstrate my point. If you use search terms like wig or weave or extensions, along with the word hair, you’ll find pages of videos, both professional and amateur. Ironically, the majority of the video uploads are from amateur fans of a particular brand showing their viewers how they use the product. Some of these Youtube users have taken time to review every single product in a line. I was really amazed because it was obvious that they weren’t contracted by the company that they were endorsing, yet they had tens of thousand more views then the handful of professional company videos.

This got me to thinking. Instead of spending a ridiculous percentage of marketing budgets to hire a model, some of these companies should pick a few of these loyal customers to gift their products to along with decent camera equipment. Since most of the Youtube users were already uploading video for a hobby, most would love to be brand ambassadors. What female wouldn’t like free product of their favorite line if all they had to do was record a 5 minute video demonstration and review.

My suggestion to business owners is instead of creating separate websites with social networks to pull fans away from the most popular ones, allow the loyal customers to continue using the network that garnered the most attention and following. Use widgets to embed the most popular footage and user information onto the business’ website. Contact the Youtube users and propose an arrangement that would benefit both parties. Create campaigns and contests that the Youtube user can promote to their followers, who share the same common interest.

Think about it. Some of the most memorable advertising campaigns featured everyday people talking about the benefits of a product. Just ask Jerod, the famous spokesperson for Subway.

Below is a video by Youtube user, bunny101010, demonstrating how to use the CHI flat iron. The video has over 1.3 views.

Peddling Social Media Door to Door?

As a part of my profession, I monitor certain key words that could lead to possible business opportunities as well as any terms that will alert me to industry changes. Today, I received a Google alert about a company that was seeking social media solutions in a particular reagion. When I clicked on the link, I was surprised to see that it was a company that was hiring sales representatives. That part was not shocking but what did intrigue me was how the job ad basically told their business strategy for gaining new business. The strategy, itself, wasn't anything new or innovative. It's just that it never crossed my mind to apply this particular model to securing new social media clients.

Here is what they do. They hire field representatives and assign them to a certain territory where they will go pound the pavement, door to door, pitching social media solution packages. See, like I said, the strategy isn't new. We've all seen field representatives pushing anything from magazine subscriptions, credit card processing machines, vacuum cleaners, cutlery to printers. So it was only a matter of time before someone thought of this. Afterall, any business that sees the value in buying an ad in the yellowpages, investing in a direct mail campaign, or purchasing TV, print or radio ads, should appreciate the savings and "added value" that an effective social media presence guarantees.

Aside from basic traits that most employers expect candidates to possess, like ambition, the company only requires that you be curious about the newest trends in social media. That's it. They promise if selected, territory managers will be trained and provided with local support. The earning potential is limitless, however, the position is commission-based. This is the caveat. Regardless to the amount of hours and gas spent prospecting, when you don't sign a new client, you won't receive any compensation. That's scary in a time like this. While the listing states that you'll receive competitive benefits and an option package, this is only after you've achieved set performance goals. The company also states to get managers motivated and "quickly up to speed" commisions will begin at 80%. Although that sounds tempting, the ad also states that the packages range from $99 per month to $950 per month.

I've been preaching for a long time about how affordable social media marketing is in comparison to traditional advertising and marketing. So you won't get an argument from me that this company miscalculated their target or approach. What I can offer is words of wisdom to small business owners. It's a gamble to contract a business to handle such an integral part of your business's identity. If you don't know a lot about Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, LinkedIn or Flickr, please don't be fooled by the first well-dressed and socially articulate person that approaches you, just because they have a lot of friends, fans or followers. Studies show that the quantity of friends or followers doesn't equate to influence or a strong understanding of social media. Investigate their case studies, client roster, and the reputation of their own brand across cyberspace before hiring your strategist. The beauty of social media is the process of sharing and discovering information. It's the exchange, interaction and immediate reaction that makes social media such a vital business tool. Strategist know that the process is just as informative as the outcome.

Online Magazine strikes gold thanks to Twitter prank

You remember the show "Punk'd" and how you thought they had some of the best pranks? Or if you are little older, perhaps, you remember "Candid Camera." Well those aren't the only shows that played jokes on unsuspecting individuals and captured it all with hidden cameras. There are a host of shows that you can name.

Well this prank wasn't recorded by hidden camera but it was just as good. In the tradition of pulling pranks on brides and grooms, this one will definitely go down in the history books. And it sure to give self-proclaimed professional prankers a new batch of ideas. Recently a best man pulled the mother of all pranks and did so by allowing a newly wed couple believe the statute of limitations for executing a prank had expired. Naively, the couple entrusted the best man to house sit while they embarked on their honeymoon. Little did they know that this was the opportunity that he’d been waiting for. The best man rigged their bed to record any activity and transmit the reports via Twitter using the handle, @newlywedsontjob. The report logged weight, durations and descriptions of the activity. Before long, @newlywedsontjob had more than 22,000 followers.

In December, the prank caught the attention of Staggered, an online magazine geared towards men, that offers pre-nuptial articles and advice. Wanting to get in on the action, Staggered aggressively pursued the Twitter user, called Anon Bestman, in hopes of getting an interview. "At first he didn't want to do an interview so we asked about sponsoring the account, which he eventually agreed to," explained Andrew Shanahan, Staggered's editor. Everytime the newlyweds were on the job Staggered paid a fee. As a condition, the magazine also made him promise to give an interview when he was going to reveal the joke to the newlywed couple, which he did. When the interview went live, the best man tweeted it and traffic on the magazine's site suddenly spiked.

This was a major feat for the magazine which had only launched this past August. Once the interview link was posted to Twitter, more than 7,000 people tried to access the magazine's site simultaneously, which crashed the site. Fortunately for them, Staggered's hosting company was able to move the site to another server, which had the site back up within 10 minutes.

Thanks to Anon Bestman and the newlyweds, Staggered was able to introduce their brand to thousands of new readers. Not bad for a start-up that had only been running for 4 months, huh?

How did the newlyweds react to Anon Bestman's prank? You'll have to follow him on Twitter to find out. He plans to reveal his prank to the couple on the groom's birthday which is February 26th. So until then, you still have time to follow the action (if that's your thing). Ironically, the last tweet was Friday, Feb. 12th but I hope for their sake (of course, definitely not mine) we see some action activity today. After all, it is Valentine's Day.

Expect to see big things from Chrysler

Chrysler has tapped New Media Strategies (NMS) to spearhead their social media efforts for Chrysler, Dodge, Ram and Jeep. "Automotive social media is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic areas of consumer engagement online," said New Media Strategies founder and CEO, Pete Snyder. "Manufacturers are wisely investing because social media is having a direct impact on automotive purchasing decisions for consumers."

New Media Strategies will collaborate with each brand team and partner agency, including interactive, media and CRM (Customer Resource Management), to ensure social media initiatives are closely tied to overall marketing and business objectives.

Having a hard time sleeping? Tweet about it and win a free mattress.

Simmons Beautyrest Mattress is launching a new Twitter contest to promote the anniversary of their Beautyrest queen size mattress.

Now through April 30^th, sleepy consumers can send a Tweet that will automatically enter them in a sweepstakes to win a new Beautyrest Anniversary queen size mattress valued up to $2,000. All you have to do is is post a tweet about sleep that includes #simmonsbeautyrest and the URL http://bit.ly/beautyrest.

Winners will be randomly picked weekly during the 12-week contest. For more details, visit http://contest.simmons.com.

FEARnet Celebrates George Romero & Declares February 4th #TweetLikeAZombie Day

Today is #TweetLikeAZombie Day, as declared by FEARnet. In honor of the 70th birthday of George Romero, the director of Night of the Living Dead and proclaimed father of the modern zombie movie.