First off, thank you to Brian for allowing me to do a guest post on Bub.  Last week I contacted Brian to solicit some advice on how I could get the word out about a little video I recently released on YouTube.

A contest video.

First, let me preface by saying that I’ve never entered a video contest before. The opportunity cost just didn’t make sense – taking time out from other work to essentially create a free commercial for someone and then shamelessly self-promote it in hopes of winning a gift certificate (?) Didn’t seem worth it.

Then I came across this contest sponsored by Lash Allure MD. There’s a $100,000 pot at stake – which, needless to say, is much larger than most other online video contest winnings. Immediately, my mind was racing about the web content I could fund with 100k. No more brand or studio pitches in 2010? I’d be in heaven.

The best part (or, in some cases, the worst)? The winner is NOT chosen based on a subjective judging process. The system is clear: the person with the most “votes” wins. Each YouTube star rating counts as one vote, and one comment, per user, per day, counts as a vote. Simple, quantifiable. And yet, a little unfair for those who don’t have massive YouTube followings.

So I decided to enter. First with my own video, and then after realizing that I would never win on my own regards, I teamed up Olga Kay, a YouTuber with about 70,000 subscribers. To incentivise people to help, we decided to offer up $10,000 of the prize money to dedicated commenters. Every day for 20 days, we pose a new question in the annotation on the video. Answer the question, and you could win $500. $500 to twenty people = $10,000 total giveaway.

Shameless.

It’s now Dec. 12th – only 8 days before the contest ends. We are currently in 2nd place, behind a witty YouTube blogger with a big following, but with the a little nudge here and there from the right people, we could definitely win the grand prize.

We’ve received several little endorsements from friends – including tweets from Ryan Higa and Dave Days – and brought on a new, third partner – Phil DeFranco.

We are asking for your help because this isn’t about making money to put in a savings account. It’s a viral contest, and as such, Olga, Phil and I want to put that money toward advancing our own web content initiatives.  Not to mention that we would still give away $10k (and a few other little surprises) to our commenters.

It’s hard for me to ask any favors of anyone, but in this case, I’m swallowing my pride.

So, please, if you have a chance today (and for the next 8 days) – rate and comment this video here —> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2_CZCfAaE – and RT if you can

Oh, and for all of you business owners out there looking to hold promotional video contests – take a cue from Lash Allure MD. By judging a video contest on ratings and comments, rather than on the video content itself, the company is benefiting from the self-promotional efforts of people like me as well as the engagement and interaction of potential customers who are rating/commenting on the videos. Smart.

Guest post by Brendan McManus, Follow him on Twitter | Read his blog

Source

You don’t need to be a big brand with a huge marketing budget to run a user-generated contest that spreads like wildfire. Non-profits and small businesses are currently running contests with Wildfire that are generating thousands of submissions and are reaching tens and, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of consumers via newsfeeds, friend invites and sharing. Why are these contests doing so well?

1) Contests that focus on topics that people feel passionate about tend to generate the greatest interest. At Wildfire, we’ve seen highly successful photo and written contests that focus on pets, children, sports (e.g. surfing, skiing, mountain biking), hobbies (e.g. cooking, travel), and affinity groups.

2) Contests that make it easy for entrants to submit their content tend to generate more submissions. Asking entrants to submit photos that they likely already have in their Facebook photo album (e.g. photos of travel, kids, pets, hobbies) or that they can easily snap using their mobile phone will tend to result in more entries. Likewise, if asking for written content its best to keep word limits reasonably low. Video contests require quite a lot of effort on the part of entrants so generally result in a much lower number of entries – but if the content is good, these can be very viral.

In the end, customers are people. They love sharing what they care about most with their friends on social media. Businesses need to cater to their customers’ interest in sharing if they want to engage more people, acquire more leads, and ultimately make more money.

by Brian Solis

Zappos boasts one of the most loyal and enthusiastic communities of customers on the Web. Prior to SXSW Interactive, Steve Rosenbaum of Magnify.net, Stephanie Agresta, and I brianstormed ways for ecstatic customers to capture and share the happiness that Tony Hsieh and the Zappos team have worked so hard to package in every box.

The idea debuted at SXSW. To kick things off, we invited several of our friends to help mark the occasion by ordering something special from Zappos. We shipped the boxes to Austin Texas where they allowed us to capture their BoxBreak on camera. Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Kevin Rose, Erica O’Grady, Frank Gruber, Erin Kotecki Vest @queenofspain, Chris Brogan, Cathy Brooks, Shira Lazar, and others shared their happiness with us and now we’re hoping you’ll do the same.

The video from the event is currently hosted on Zappos.tv

Introducing Zappos BoxBreaks…

BoxBreaks are an emerging phenomenon on the Web that features video of someone opening a box using a simple Web or Flip cam and sharing what’s inside the box with everyone on the Social Web.

In honor of the successful debut at SXSW, Magnify.net and Zappos partnered to host a BoxBreak contest for ALL Zappos customers. Just shoot a video of you opening your Zappos box and share it at Zappos.tv. The contest is already underway and ends on April 30, 2009. Results will post on May 1st.

Enter here.

Rules here.

Long live Zappos and the Zappos BoxBreak! Share your happiness with the world!

Pictures from the live BoxBreaks at SXSW in the TechSet Windws Mobile Blogger Lounge…

Chris Brogan

Guy Kawasaki

Tara Hunt

Erica O’Grady

Tony Hsieh

Additional pictures are on Flickr.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

by Michelle Lentz

I run a charity that’s extremely close to my heart. So whenever I hear of another charity doing something like this, I try to promote it. When Brian sent this to my inbox today, I was thrilled.

GasPedal is presenting the BlogWell conference on October 28 in San Jose. This particular 1-day event really dovetails with what I’m doing here in Cincinnati, so I’m interested. However, I’ll be on a plane on my way home from San Francisco on October 28. Timing is everything. In town? I encourage you to go. There will be several case studies presented on how large companies are using, successfully I would assume, social media.

But that’s not actually the really cool part. The cool part is that they are auctioning off several tickets to BlogWell on eBay. They want to raise a lot (A Lot!!) of money for a good cause and are encouraging folks to bid. Not into bidding big? Just buy a standard $200 ticket. But if you can, go ahead and go and bid big to help out various good causes. Here’s the auction / charity schedule:

100% of the proceeds goes to charity, which I find awesome. Want to know more? Check out the Blogwell charity site.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ’08 in San Jose.