Viral Videos Staggering Statistics

Posted on May 16, 2008 by Sam

What makes Viral Videos go “Viral?” Why do they get passed around and have so many views?

Here is a short partial list of characteristics of Viral Videos:

  1. They entertain. It isn’t an in your face BUY ME! You may laugh, cry or just enjoy yourself. They don’t have to market a product or service, but they can.
  2. They can be controversial. If it’s boring who wants to watch it and share with others. Many times they take a stand on an issue and some company or individuals strongly disagree with what is said. They also polarize people the other way by being advocates for spreading the video. Either way the video will spread because people will say the loved or hated the video.
  3. They are not slick. If the video looks like it was professionally done by Hollywood, then people tend to think there is some big marketing agency behind it working to “psychologically” manipulate you.
  4. They are simple. If you analyze what the video is about and how they produced it, you realized you could have done that in a few days.

      5. Here is an example of one Viral Video (The World’s First Bionic Burger):

      Bionic Burger viral evaluation: (1,193,293 views as of this post)

      1. Entertain- The story is easy to follow and has a recognizable of McDonalds. You are drawn to want to know what happens to the second burger. You will see web links on the video to find out more information about the burgers.
      2. Controversial- Then you find out why it is called “Bionic.” This is something that McDonalds doesn’t want you to see. The burger is made of what??
      3. Slick or not- The video isn’t crisp, but you get the main point about the burger.
      4. Simple- This video was made with one actor and the director (who also acted). The main actor was a friend of the director. This video looks like it took a day or two to make.

      This video I rate as Three Viral (out of five). It’s a good video, but there are more to come.
      ViralViral 2Viral 3

      Go Viral,
      Sam Carrara

      p.s. I’ll be analyzing different Viral Videos to help you with marketing, stay tuned.

Posted in Viral | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Save 2 Cents by Driving 2 Miles

Posted on May 16, 2008 by Sam

The average price of a gallon of gasoline for the United States of America on 5/12/08 was $3.722, that price has since increased during the week. That price is over 60 cents higher than a year ago and over 10 cents higher than one week ago. To see more about gas prices, visit:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html

What will the price look like on 5/19/2008 look like? It will probably be around $3.89 per gallon and continue to climb thru the Fourth of July weekend.

So what should we do to save a little money while the price is going up? A few options to save money include:

  1. Reduce the number of trips you need to take. Only go to the grocery store once per week and stay home to eat your meals, this will also save money other than gas usage.
  2. Ask your employer if you can work from home 1-2 days per week. Make sure to put together a work plan and report the positive results. This may allow you in the future to work more days from home, as long as you actually work.
  3. Remove any unnecessary items from your car. Additional weight in your vehicle causes more gas to be used.
  4. Car pool or take the bus to work. In the end run it may cost less and you may be able to get a little reading or work done while in transit.
  5. Don’t leave your car idling while you stop to do an errand or other tasks. Turn it off if it will sit more than a minute (some people say 30 seconds).
  6. Watch your speed, driving the speed limit rather than 5-10 miles per hour faster than the speed limit saves gas by the vehicle using the gas more efficiently.

All of these ways can save more than 2 cents from gas savings. Would you drive two miles to save two cents per gallon? If the gas station is along your route of travel then the additional drive is fine. But, if you have to go out of your way two miles, that two cents times twenty to thirty gallons (40-60 cents) is lost on the four mile round trip detour. Get started saving gas now!

Save Gas Money,
Sam Carrara

Posted in Advice | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

10th Wedding Anniversary

Posted on May 11, 2008 by Sam

On Sunday my Wife and I celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary. We met in college and took about 95% of the same classes. So between dating and being married we have been together about 13-1/2 years.

To be clear, we do have arguments from time to time. And discussions can get heated, but they get worked out. The key is to get back up, grow and move forward.

We started celebrating by having dinner at Macaroni Grill. It was an Anniversary dinner plus two. The two are our kids. It was a great Italian dinner starting with fried mozzarella, Italian sodas, a garden salad, and then some huge entrees. The 7 layer lasagna and honey balsamic chicken were delicious, but we boxed up most of them for meals later during the weekend. For dessert we had Three-Berry Tiramisu, needless to say it was good too.

Then on Saturday night we got a baby sitter and went off to the movies. We went to see Iron Man. We thought it started at 8:00 PM but found out it changed to 7:45 PM. It was ok, because it saved us 15 minutes of watching movie previews.

What’s next? I am planning an Anniversary trip and would like suggestions. We are want to go away for about seven days and flying there. Post a comment and let me know where you suggest going.

Happily Married,
Sam Carrara

Posted in Advice | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Brazil- Home in USA

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Sam

We arrived home on Saturday safely. I didn’t realize we would be out so late each night, so I have delayed writing about the rest of the trip. I will be posting pictures and continue to detail what we did in São Paulo. I’m well rested now.

Look for it Soon,
Sam Carrara

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The Secret To Blogging Success

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Sam

Guest Post by Keith Goodrum

Ask most bloggers what is the secret to blogging success and you will get many answers. Writing, posting, networking are several answers you will hear. Some even recognize that promotion is a huge factor to blogging success.

You will also hear specific tactics or strategies like commenting on other blogs, linking, deep linking, article writing, trackbacks, guest posting and many more…

Actually none of them are the secret to blogging success. And neither are any of the other answers people will come up with are the secret. OK so what is the secret? Well…

*There are no secrets!*

Yep, that’s right… nobody has any secrets squirreled away. Sure there is a period of time that a secret will remain hidden. But, eventually they all get out.

And there are a couple of reasons why.

1. There are too many blogs blogging about blogging – Hey, pretty much every method, process, tactic or strategy has been blogged about. Bloggers are so starved for original content that they will publish everything. Everybody wants to be the 1st blogger to blog about some newly discovered tip. All
the bases are covered.

2. Humans as a general rule… CAN’T keep secrets. The temptation is too great to spill the beans. Think about this; most people when they find out something new are busting at the seems to tell someone. They feel so smug that they’ve figured out a secret that it’s no fun keeping it to themselves. They have to tell someone.

3. A blogger starts to achieve great success, and people take notice. What happens next is people want to know what this particular blogger is doing. They will reverse engineer the blog to figure out the secret. It becomes a challenge to “crack the code”

*So, while some “secrets” appear to be kept*

They really aren’t kept. It’s just taking longer for that information to get spread around. Information spreads at different speeds. That’s one of the reasons why some information appears to be a secret. It’s spreading at a much slower rate.

*The real secret to blogging…*

It’s sitting right under your nose, and is come disguised as work. The key to building a blog is taking action. Stop looking around for that magic bullet. Get started today.

So, what do ya say… want to share one of your blogging secrets? Oh, wait… if you did that, then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , | 1 Comment