SUNOCO has figured out how to make their recent campaign go viral. The US-based fuel company has spread their brand rapidly by offering on lucky person 5,000 gallons of gas and 15,000 runners up $10 SUNOCO gift cards if their car is spotted with the SUNOCO sticker on it.

This is a brilliant marketing ploy to spread brand recognition. Just like how a link from one site to another site is an endorsement of the quality of the referred site. By having their sticker on people’s cars they are in fact getting endorsements from these people that SUNOCO gas is worth using.

Now how can this be applied to online viral marketing? Think about how you can get your sticker or badge on other people’s sites?

Several elements make up viral marketing. Not all of them need to be active in a strategy for it to be effective, but the more of them the better the results.

Six main fundamental rules that should be followed to helpy our viral campaign successful:

1. make sure there is an effortless transfer to others
2. give away products or services of value
3. make sure it can easily scale from small to large
4. take advantage of basic human behaviors and motivations
5. make good use of your existing communication networks (linkedin, face-to-face networking, social media, etc.)
6. take advantage of what’s already out there and other people’s resources

Their are 7 key secrets to any viral marketing initiative:

1. Get the headline right. Make the headline strong by putting in numbers and showing value to the reader.
2. Take advantage of buzz-worthy topics. Align your campaign to what is currently a hot topic being talked about.
3. Try and cram as much value you can into a small package. The more value that the reader/viewer can find in your campaign the more likely they are to pass it along and so on. More Value in One Place = More Impact.
4. Don’t event the rules as you go. Learn from what already works and use a proven formula.
5. Keep your viral content to the point and concise. Outline the overall value, otherwise you run the risk of having the viewer/reader moving on.
6. Links, yes, putting links into your viral content will add value and additional depth. But make sure the links are carefully chosen.
7. Finally YOU can start the chain reaction and get the word-of-mouth off the ground.

Seth Goldstein.Net — Thoughts on Social Media, Social Media Marketing and thought who call themselves experts from Seth Goldstein on Vimeo.

Conficker is just waiting out there. Calling in daily to its master… waiting for instructions on what to do next. A sleeper cell of infected computers that could cause major problems when activated. What can we do. Watch the 60 Minutes segment and find out more. Post your thoughts in the comments.

On March 24th, David Sarno in his LA Times article “There’s Twitter the companym and Twitter the Medium” highlights some important concerns with the relatively new and booming microblogging service. Technology celebrities like Leo Laporte and Dave Winer have both addressed the need and appeal of Twitter as well as their concern about the closed, non-transparent nature of the company that runs it.

“They kind of have you,” said Laporte, who now has more than 100,000 followers on the service. “The same way that Facebook has you: because you have to go where the community is.”

Still, being in thrall to Twitter hasn’t stopped Laporte from joining a conversation that’s taking hold on the service’s fringes. As this group of Web subversives sees it, the once-tiny Twitter has grown like a magic beanstalk into a full-fledged communications medium — taking its place alongside Web pages, e-mail and maybe even television. And though the 30-person, San Francisco start-up is not exactly General Electric, digital trust-busters believe the same rules apply: One company shouldn’t have a monopoly…

…on an entire medium — even if it invented it.

“Those of us who are participating are pumping value into this closed system and trusting that Twitter will do the right thing with it,” said Laporte, referring to the tweets users pour into Twitter’s databases every day by the million.

People love the convenience and reach of social media systems like Twitter, he said.  “But what they ignore is that there’s a dark side to all of that, which is that these companies have a huge amount of control over what’s going on.”

With this concern comes new innovation, open source ventures like Laconi.ca and it’s initial install Identi.ca have spawned Twitter-clones for those who want to break from the mold and grasp of the extremely commercial Twitter.

Now with these other incarnations of Twitter comes one inherent issue… lack of communication between the original and those clones. Unlike other popular clones (IBM-compatible computers and the new Hackintosh) these Laconi.ca installations talk to one another but don’t exactly communicate with the original. On Identi.ca you can send your posts from that service to your Twitter account but you can’t set it so that your Tweets on Twitter go to you Identi.ca and other Laconica installed programs.

Another issue that I see that is hindering the growth of Twitter-clones is the lack of connection and polarization. On Twitter, “everyone” is there. People from Laporte and Winer to Kevin Rose, Shaq and others. Twitter is the “IT” place to be right now. At almost ever tech event the biggest thing in the tech community (in the Valley and beyond) is your Twitter identity. People wear their @twitternames on name tags like badges of honor and look to connect with everyone they meet on a more interactive and social level. Tweetups have spawned and become a new word in our vernacular and have extended “Social Media” beyond the desk, keyboard and mouse to local pubs and meeting places.

With this in mind, the idea that one, yes one, company is the gate keeper of all this exchanging of ideas and clearly (rightfully so) is capitalizing on it is a bit worrisome. When Twitter goes down or launches a Fail Wale, that iconic image that emerges from the depths of the Twitter  ocean every time the service has a hiccup, the community is held hostage. This is a concern, with this new era of transparency, in Washington and online Twitter is an ivory castle with big thick-doors keeping peering eyes from peaking in.

The only way that Twitter as a medium can grow and truly be a medium for the people is to intertwine itself or have the clones intertwine themselves together for cross pollination between the different Twitter-like services.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you concerned? What do you think should be done to open up the system? Post your thoughts below.

Check this viral video out. It’s unbelievable.

Jesse Newhart (@jessenewhart) has posted an amazing video on YouTube on how you can get the most out of Twitter using Tweetdeck. Check it out. How do you have your Tweetdeck setup? Post your comments below.

Google’s Analytics team has put together a great video to help people fully understand the power of their analytics program. It’s worth checking out. I’d like to hear what you think and how you use analytics for your Website. Post them below.

A must watch from Gary Vaynerchuk. He makes some very good points about leveraging your brand on the Internet and how if a company isn’t they need to be.

Okay this is a bit off topic for this blog but very neat. The narrator is a little bit creepy but worth a watch. It put on YouTube by a usernamed Crazy Ass Videos. Pretty crazy if you ask me:

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This was Dugg on Digg and is an example of a video that’s gone viral. (There I related it to the overall theme of this blog)