9GAG Marketing - Learnings from an image upload
Hey Warriors!
Did you know that you can use 9GAG for marketing?
Do you have kids or young audiences for your products or services? Here's a tutorial by Matthias Kamann.
Most people who use social media for marketing usually consider services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and maybe Instagram. But those are certainly not the only channels to reach a broad audience with.
When I recently had a look at 9gag I wondered whether I could create an image that would go viral and be seen by a high amount of viewers - and thereby gather some experience on how this service could potentially be used for future marketing activities and brand communication.
What makes 9gag appealing for marketers
Posting to 9gag meanst that you reach a young audience that is in a positive state of mind or mood (due to exposition of funny posts) - exposing your brand or product in that surrounding should thereby have a positive effect on your brand perception and awareness. As long as the spectators laugh with you and not at you, obviously.
What I did
I uploaded a picture of me taking out cold pizza slices from the fridge, adding some text to the image "That great feeling on a Sunday morning when you open the fridge and find this...". I titled the image "Sunday morning surprise".
In the bottom of the image I added the URL to my website matthias.nu, hoping that viewers would go to the website to look for more images, and I could see an increase of traffic as a measurement of success of this marketing activity. But things didn't turn out the way I hoped, at least not exactly...
Results of my 9gag marketing effort
after two days
over 2500 people hit 9gags own smile/like button
over 500 Facebook likes
Unfortunately 9gag doesn't show how many times it has been viewed in total, but let's make an estimation: I can imagine that not all viewer found the image funny or appealing, 50% maybe. I further assume that only 20% of those who like the image actually hit the like button or share it in some way.
Now, after doing some maths based on these assumptions: the image has been exposed to roughly 20.000 viewers - in just two days.
Cost $0
Time 30 minutes
I guess those are rather impressive figures considering the amount of time and money that I spent. However, here is a little drawback. 9gag removed the URL that I placed in the bottom of the image, simply by cropping it in a way that the URL wasn't shown anymore
At least they didn't penalize me or deleted it right away (It is obviously against their terms of use to advertise anything), but instead made the effort to put some time into the cropping of the image and let it still do it's job (entertain) - so, special thanks to 9gag for that.
Here is a screenshot of my image upload to 9gag
But who says they would delete an image where you might see a car of a particular brand in the background? Or people on the image wear a cool shirt with a certain print (for example a strawberry) on it or pattern (viewers might search for a "strawberry t-shirt" on Google and might find your business "Strawberry-T-Shirt-Store.com"). So it's up to you how you can do a successful product placement on your 9gag uploads.
Link to the 9gag image: Sunday morning surprise - 9GAG
Which experiences did you have with 9gag or similar services? Please post your comments in the comment section below...
Did you know that you can use 9GAG for marketing?
Do you have kids or young audiences for your products or services? Here's a tutorial by Matthias Kamann.
Most people who use social media for marketing usually consider services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and maybe Instagram. But those are certainly not the only channels to reach a broad audience with.
When I recently had a look at 9gag I wondered whether I could create an image that would go viral and be seen by a high amount of viewers - and thereby gather some experience on how this service could potentially be used for future marketing activities and brand communication.
What makes 9gag appealing for marketers
Posting to 9gag meanst that you reach a young audience that is in a positive state of mind or mood (due to exposition of funny posts) - exposing your brand or product in that surrounding should thereby have a positive effect on your brand perception and awareness. As long as the spectators laugh with you and not at you, obviously.
What I did
I uploaded a picture of me taking out cold pizza slices from the fridge, adding some text to the image "That great feeling on a Sunday morning when you open the fridge and find this...". I titled the image "Sunday morning surprise".
In the bottom of the image I added the URL to my website matthias.nu, hoping that viewers would go to the website to look for more images, and I could see an increase of traffic as a measurement of success of this marketing activity. But things didn't turn out the way I hoped, at least not exactly...
Results of my 9gag marketing effort
after two days
over 2500 people hit 9gags own smile/like button
over 500 Facebook likes
Unfortunately 9gag doesn't show how many times it has been viewed in total, but let's make an estimation: I can imagine that not all viewer found the image funny or appealing, 50% maybe. I further assume that only 20% of those who like the image actually hit the like button or share it in some way.
Now, after doing some maths based on these assumptions: the image has been exposed to roughly 20.000 viewers - in just two days.
Cost $0
Time 30 minutes
I guess those are rather impressive figures considering the amount of time and money that I spent. However, here is a little drawback. 9gag removed the URL that I placed in the bottom of the image, simply by cropping it in a way that the URL wasn't shown anymore
At least they didn't penalize me or deleted it right away (It is obviously against their terms of use to advertise anything), but instead made the effort to put some time into the cropping of the image and let it still do it's job (entertain) - so, special thanks to 9gag for that.
Here is a screenshot of my image upload to 9gag
But who says they would delete an image where you might see a car of a particular brand in the background? Or people on the image wear a cool shirt with a certain print (for example a strawberry) on it or pattern (viewers might search for a "strawberry t-shirt" on Google and might find your business "Strawberry-T-Shirt-Store.com"). So it's up to you how you can do a successful product placement on your 9gag uploads.
Link to the 9gag image: Sunday morning surprise - 9GAG
Which experiences did you have with 9gag or similar services? Please post your comments in the comment section below...