Viral Blog Campaign Success from John Easton

We recently got an email from one of our blogging clients/fans/readers, John Easton, that we thought would be valuable to share with you. Inspired by our Viral Blog Campaign program, John systematically  staged a viral challenge that paid off in increased traffic and reputation for his expertise.

John Easton's email:

To my Blogging and PR Teachers (Joan Stewart, Patsi & Denise):

I recently launched a viral blog campaign that is working pretty well.  I am sure each of you will find aspects of this campaign interesting as your direction has been influential in specific areas.

This effort did not start out as a campaign at all.  It began as an argument between me and 300 video producers about the value of blogging.  Video producers can be tough when it comes to considering business development ideas. They prefer talking about gear, gadgets and whose work is good/bad.

A forum post at an online community, The Video Business Advisor titled "to blog or not to blog" got me started.  They gave me every reason in the world why blogging does not work for businesses (no different than an online forum, no different than a frequently updated website, and on).  I argued through counter posts for several days and thought, "let me show them the value rather than continue the discussion."

I decided we would use my blog to produce a collection of tips about using video and multimedia to grow your business. The blog post bills this experiment as "The World's Greatest Guide to Exponential Business Growth."  Why not, we are taking tips from some of the nation's top commercial production shops.  So I partnered with Steve Yankee, President of the VBA.  Below are the project benefits I sold the group on:

(see post:  http://tinyurl.com/27rrxp)

1. Exposure:  Each contributor can include their company name, location and URL

2. Press:  We are sending press releases to a targeted list of media outlets and encouraging contributors to do so in their respective markets

3. WOM: [Word of Mouth] We are reaching out to bloggers who might have a connection with the project and or it's subject matter (yeah Google Alerts)

4. Contributors can publish the tips for use as an educational sales tool

The results to date have been great:

1. National press hit:  In Event DV Magazine and Event DV.net (see attached screen shot or at www.eventdv.net ) - Press campaign has not even been launched yet.

2. Blog traffic has increased over 300% (see attached screen shot) John's blog post)

3. My newsletter and feed registrations have doubled

4. Wordpress listed us as the top 20 of the top 100 growing blogs

5. Collecting some good tips

6. Contributors are getting a lot of click through traffic (collective CTR's are over 15%)

7. Steve Yankee (VBA President) has reactived his blog

8. No one I was arguing with now says blogs have no value.

John Aston
Eastonsweb Multimedia
Helping You Attract the Best Customers

This post is sponsored by http://www.viralblogcampaign.com/

Comments

[Steve Yankee]

What John said!

He certainly is a convincing and energetic kind of a guy, and I really have to thank him for getting me back on track with my own business blog, and to come up with such an interesting and worthwhile project. Coincidentally, my blog hits are skyrocketing as well, and my subscriber lists are also doing very nicely.

My next column in EventDV magazine will be on this very subject, and use our experiment as a case study for blogging.

Steve Yankee
The Video Business Advisor
www.VideoBusinessAdvisor.com