Sometimes the best way to understand how to work in a new industry is to reflect on how the industry has affected us in the past. Let's take a step forward in Social Media Marketing by taking a step backwards first. The most important question to ask yourself is:

What "Advertising Stunts" do I remember from social websites?

Immediately I think of a campaign that I will never forget:

Blendtech's Will it Blend?

Let's take a look at why this campaign was so successful and how you can use the same techniques to promote your product or service.

The biggest reason why Blendtech's YouTube campaign was such a success is because it fulfills the golder rule of Social Marketing:

Provide immediate value to the community

Blendtech does this by tickling our funny bone in funny videos like "Chuck Norris Will it Blend?" and "iPhone Will it Blend?"  Immediately you see the value in this video.  What you don't see, and this is really key, is the intent of this video.  At closer inspection reveals that the video is just advertising Blendtech's blenders.  Yet it's doing it in an unobtrousive way that is both informative and hilarious.  I mean, really, if Blendtech can figure out how to make a blender funny then you can figure out an interesting or humorous way to promote your product or service that will provide value to the social community.

Here are some guidelines to abide by when creating content for social networks:

1. Provide immediate value (this is especially important in Videos)
2. Do not advertise your brand (subtle advertisements like your logo will suffice)
3. Be creative
4. Focus your campaign around what's HOT (Google Trends works well for this)
5. Make it digestible (break it up into an easy and simplistic manner so people can get the jist of what you're saying at a glance)

You can learn a lot by looking at what has impacted you in the past and investigating how this was accomplished.  Let's just put it this way: I know that if I were in Walmart checking out blenders that when I saw Blendtech's blender I would laugh and buy it.

Just don't try to blend Chuck Norris -- it doesn't work.