If you haven’t already heard, Spandy Andy and I have been sharing free videos in a new project called the Social Media Star Formula.

It’s basically a training program that Spandy & I decided to set up because we get more and more people asking us questions on how we got so many views on YouTube and likes on Facebook.  Personally, the use of social media has been huge in launching my career as both an entertainment and internet marketing personality, and I want to show people how they can use it too to advance their careers in whatever field they’re in.

If you haven’t checked out Social Media Star Formula yet, then I suggest you get to it because we’re already on our third training video!  The videos have a lot of information in them so they’re longer than I would usually recommend for the average YouTube video, but will definitely set you on your path to social media stardom!

Under the videos is  section for you to write your questions and comments. Our latest video in the series is actually just us answering questions that were left in there.

Have fun and hope you enjoy our videos!

“Hi, I’m Bonnie Brooks, President of The Bay.“  How many times have you heard that on the radio?  Well, if you’re in Canada, probably A LOT.  The unmistakable commercials by the President of North America’s oldest department store, HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company, better known as The Bay) has been making bland, straight-to-the-point radio commercials for the company since she took over a couple years ago.  With almost 100 stores across Canada, she needs to market her company all over the country, and does simply using her voice.

Take a listen here:

As far as I can tell, the most effective part of the commercials is how they create conversation among people with how much they hate hearing them, how they change the station when they’re on, and how dull/flat/monotone/old the voice sounds.  Why no music?  Why no clever writing?  Why no… anything advertising students learn in their first class in college?

But the fact that they’re being talked about is something… and enough of a something for me to do a spoof.    Besides, how much easier can you get?  With no added music, effects, or voices added this was a no brainer for a quick turnaround.  Sticking with the theme that seems to be the most successful for me, I’ve gone ahead and gay-a-nized (ya, I just made that up) the scripting to make it more homolicious (that one might be a real word… if not, it should be).

Take a look/listen:

I was seriously shocked to find that The Bay doesn’t have a (fan) page on Facebook.  At all.  The closest thing was a page set up by someone else who herself just claims to be someone who really likes the store (with just under 550 “likes”).  And their Twitter presence is almost a joke with under 750 followers and no @replies to anyone in their timeline as far as I can see.  Don’t get me wrong, for a regular person to have 750 followers would be great, but this is a Canadian icon, a store that was actually here before Canada even was, a business that’s in most of the cities throughout the country.  I really shouldn’t have three times as many “likes” on Facebook and twice as many Twitter followers as they do.

So as much as Bonnie Brooks seems to want to bring The Bay into the 21st century and make it appealing to people my age or younger, she really needs to reconsider her yawnful radio ads and consider jumping into what I already thought was a no brainer for any corporation – social media.

In fact Bonnie, if you’re reading this (which I’m sure she isn’t since her company obviously knows little about what’s going on online) I’d be happy to help you join the mom & pop shops who are racking up “likes” on Facebook and engaging with their customers on Twitter.  I’m sure with a little effort I could make you almost as popular online as someone who makes silly YouTube videos.

I love deals.   To the point that it’s almost an obsession. I can’t buy anything for full price anymore and I buy too many things that I don’t really need just because they’re on sale.

So when I found out Groupon was coming to Vancouver I had a mix of excitement and fear.    If you don’t know, it’s a site (and app) that gives you a daily deal of 50% off or more from a business in your city (if you live in a big enough place) that’s only released when enough people sign up.  It’s a pretty awesome concept, and the deals are even more awesome (click here to check it out).

I was of course on their waiting list months in advance and then the day it went live in Vancouver I went up as the first person to have their tweets featured on the site.  On the right side of the screen (toward the bottom) is a section called “Tweets Around Town” and it’s getting the things I write on Twitter in front of a lot of local eyeballs.

How did I get this?  I asked for it!  I was proactive and contacted Groupon to ask that they include my Tweets and explain why I felt I was a good candidate to be shown on their site.  I didn’t wait for them to ask me if they could feature my tweets (wouldn’t that be nice?!?) or just hope that one day my tweets would magically start showing up on their site.

So, another way to get myself out there, get what I’m talking about seen by more people, and get more followers.  Every little bit helps because the more people who follow you on social media, the more they’re reminded about who you are and what you’re doing!

What are you going to do to get your tweets seen by more people?

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

zkyevolved has made a comment on Justin Bieber’s Secret:

If you want to get famous online then you obviously want people to notice you and talk about you.  It also helps if once in a while they’re saying something nice when they’re doing the talking.   Well, I was lucky enough to meet Alisha Mann at a Twitter networking event (yes, those actually exist — meeting Tweeters in person) and right away we connected.  She’s really outgoing and super fun with a great energy about her.

Turns out she’s also an awesome connector. She met up with me at the F5 Expo that I went to for mobile & web technology type stuff and introduced me to some great people, including Erin Ireland who I’ve since done a YouTube video with (and we’ll soon be doing more).  Alisha is one of those people who just loves to help others and introduce like minded people, which is just one many reasons that she’s such a great PR and Events person (with her own company AM Ventures).

And speaking of her company, she created a blog for it and I was lucky enough to be the first story! And what a story it is.  She interviewed me about my YouTube success, how I got to where I am now, and where I plan to go in the future (and then filled in the rest with all sorts of nice stuff).

You can read the article here on her blog.  This again emphasizes for me why it’s so important to not just stay at home and try to spread the word online about who I am and what I’m doing, but to also be sure that I’m getting out and meeting people in person, face to face. Alisha and I were following each other on Twitter already for a while, but we didn’t really have a connection or form a friendship until we were able to meet in person and have conversations that weren’t restricted to 140 characters.

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

BRANSCOMBEx has made a comment on We found the owner of the camera!:

Fuck yeah Josh. What a damn decent fella you are

Last month I wrote a blog post about putting up a video on YouTube video to find the owner of a camcorder that was lost during the Olympics.  In the video I showed some footage from the camcorder and asked viewers to share it around through Facebook & Twitter in hopes that I could somehow find the owner… and it worked.

Tons of tweets went out with a link to the video and people shared it on their Facebook walls.  The video quickly got thousands of views and one of those viewers noticed that there was a Washington license plate in the camcorder footage so sent a tip to a TV station in Seattle.  That station showed my video during their news program (which I didn’t even know) and guess who was watching – the owner of the camcorder!

The TV station contacted me for an interview which Craig & I did over skype.  They aired a follow up story again the next day on all 3 of their news programs and another station in Seattle contacted us to have us on their morning show, but we weren’t able to confirm everything and get to Seattle in time for that to happen.

Have a look at our follow up video of us meeting Bill in person (including that follow up news story that aired on TV in Seattle – which also aired in Vancouver by the way).

This really had an amazing outcome – Bill got his precious video footage back that he didn’t have a copy of and thought he had lost forever, Craig got an almost new camcorder (he kept it because he’s actually the one who saw it on the ground and he doesn’t have his own video camera), and I got a bunch of exposure for myself and my YouTube channel!  The original video now has almost 12,000 views and I got a number of new YouTube subscribers and followers on Twitter from it.

Thanks to everyone who spread the word and helped make this happen!

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

starprodigy has made a comment on We found the owner of the camera!:

I live in Vancouver where of course the 2010 Winter Olympics are happening right now.  It’s an exciting place to be with lots going on and tons of people everywhere.  During the Opening Ceremonies I tried to get into a big outdoor venue to watch the show with a few thousand of my closest friends on the big screens, but the lineup was the longest I’ve ever seen in my life – it went on for many city blocks.

I was with Craig and as we were walking back he noticed a red case on the ground.  I didn’t think much of it, but he opened it up and there was an HD video camera inside!  We decided to use my YouTube channel to help us find the owner of the camera.  By using YouTube and Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook we figured we’d have a good chance of finding the owner and a great additional benefit would of course be the exposure the video would give me and my YouTube channel.

I’ve already seen it being posted on our friend’s Facebook Walls and found it being shared on Twitter by people neither of us even know!  So it’s definitely making its rounds online – please help spread it through yours as well!

When you write something on Twitter you should be asking yourself “is this something people would want to retweet?”  If not, you might want to start thinking about that for at least some of the things you’re tweeting.

What makes a tweet more retweetable?  Well, according to Debbie Weil at Mashable, there are five things to keep in mind:  always include a link, don’t use up all 140 characters, when retweeting add something original, build credibility with your bio and url, and combine the personal with the professional. You can read her full report on it here.

And here’s my vlog about this topic:

What do you think? Do you have any other tips on ways to help get tweets retweeted?

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

satnia420 has made a comment on Father Lover (Mother Lover spoof):

It’s that time of year… the time when everyone sets New Years Resolutions.  There’s the usual losing weight, eating better, exercising more, etc., but this year my goals are all based around this blog, my YouTube videos, and Internet Marketing in general.

Up until now I’ve been posting about once a week on this blog and making a YouTube video about once every couple of months.  (Although, December was so busy for me I didn’t manage to do either.) Well, things are really going to move into overdrive on here now starting this coming week.

The first thing I’m going to be doing is writing a blog post every weekday covering the usual topic of things to do (or not to do) to get famous online.  I’m also going to be making the posts more dynamic by adding video to them.  I’ve created a second YouTube channel called JoshRimerVlog where I’ll create a short video (ie. 1 to 2 minutes) to be embedded into each blog post that I write.  In the video I’ll elaborate a bit further on the topic that I’ve written on so that my blog posts are more interesting and interactive — they’ll now have text, photos, and video.  Speaking of which, here’s the video to go with this one (although I still put it on my main channel for now)…

The second thing I’m going to do is produce another video every weekday in which I’ll be discussing the top trending topics that are being discussed online that day.  To start I’ll mostly be using Twitter’s Trending Topics as my guide, but as more and more social media sites get on the trending bandwagon and share details on what people are searching for or talking about, I’ll start to incorporate more of those as well.  I’ve created a third YouTube channel for those videos called Top Trending Topics.  I’ll also put each one into a separate blog post on this site… making for a total of two blog posts per day.

And finally, the third big change for 2010 will be to get back to creating more comedic content for my main YouTube channel.  I’m going to be collaborating with other people to be able to produce funny & entertaining comedy videos including the usual spoofs & parodies as well as other original topical sketches.  I’m really looking forward to having more people involved in those videos all the way from writing them, to acting in them, shooting them, and editing them.  I’m the organizer of a big meetup group in Vancouver for people interested in film & video so that’s where I’ll find most/all of my collaborators.

So those are some pretty lofty goals when you consider how much time is involved with each thing. It actually means going so far as to turning my main career of running my own video production company doing corporate and event videos into a part-time job so I can have enough time in the day to work on these things as well.  It’s definitely risky because this past year the video production company paid the bills, while YouTube and my blog only gave me a bit of extra spending money, but making a career out of YouTube and blogging and social media is what I really want to do… and I’m not going to be successful at it unless I take some risks and really put in the effort to make it happen!

What do you think? Am I trying to take on too much at once?  Or could I be doing even more?

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

woyworld has made a comment on Father Lover (Mother Lover spoof):

I’m a fan of John Chow.  Never heard of him?  Well, he lives in the same city as me and makes his living from his blog.  And a really good living at that.  A year and a half ago I read about his story in Entrepreneur magazine and thought it was pretty darn cool that someone in my own city had managed to make a career out of blogging.  Then I had the opportunity to hear him talk live at a meetup event that I went to a few months ago and that finally pushed me over the edge to just go ahead and take the plunge and create this blog.  My motivation was more the increased exposure it would give me, but the fact that I might be able to make money from it eventually was definitely a big bonus.

Well, I haven’t managed to that part yet, but John is now bringing in a second income through Twitter.  He was actually on the front page of The Vancouver Sun because of it.  If you want to learn more about how he does it you can read his 10 tips to make more money with sponsored tweets. I think it all just goes to show that this social media stuff isn’t just for fun or a waste of time like many people think it is.  If you use it properly it can get you both rich and famous!

What do you think? Have you managed to make money from your online endeavours?  Have you tried?

—

YouTube Comments of the Day:

FrostyFeever has made a comment on Comfortable Stick (Comfort Wipe spoof):

Have you ever noticed how many people the stars on Twitter actually follow compared to how many are following them?  There’s a huge difference… often hundreds of thousands or even millions are following them and they’re following back a few hundred at best.

So how can you get famous people to actually follow you?  The writer at NTOPIX.com thinks he’s found a way.  Essentially he suggests you follow those few people that the celebrities are following and then in turn a lot of them will likely follow you back, and you’ll basically be just one degree of separation away from a celebrity on Twitter.  And if you can manage to strike up a conversation on Twitter with one of those people, or if they retweet something that you write, the celebrity who’s following them may notice you and follow you as well if they’re interested in what you’re writing.

Seem far fetched?  Well, it might be, but it’s probably be worth a shot.  Afterall, you’ve got nothing to lose… worst case scenerio you’ll gain some more twitter followers!

What do you think? Do you care if a celebrity is following you on Twitter or not?  Do you have anyone famous following you on Twitter?

—

YouTube Comment of the Day:

brokenBDA has made a comment on Mean voicemail messages – have a listen!:

the kids who called you probably got cut tails when there parents found out they made long distance calls and the grown ups really need to get a hobby that doesn’t include hurting others. what cunts! i think you have as much right as anyone posting on you tube! you put a smile on someone’s face today and that is something to be proud of!

—