It’s the end of the year and you know what that means: Top ten lists and year in reviews!  What’s more is that we have survived the first decade of Y2K!  Most of the top 10 lists include new developments in technologies, and the people that created them, including Twitter, Google, Facebook, DVR, and Wii.  Whether you love or hate these advances, they have made a significant impact in our lives in 2009. Categories got as specific as top 10 YouTube videos and best Tweets of 2009.  Our nation has clearly accepted social networking and microblogging as part of mainstream life. Additionally all the major search engines have released their top 10 searches for 2009.  The topics that had people talking (and searching) include Michael Jackson, swine flu, Twilight, Lady Gaga, and cash for clunkers.  As I scroll through these lists and reflect on this year, I find myself intrigued on what the nation has picked as significant events/people/technologies and can’t wait to see how thoughts change next year.

Check out the lists below to see what made the cut!

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend WOMM-U, which is the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association’s annual education seminar. Attendees were able to meet and discuss best practices and case studies with other word-of-mouth marketers during the two day conference held in South Beach (Miami, Florida).

I learned many important things and was able engage in my own word-of mouth marketing by sharing with others information about EyeTraffic Media’s own word-of-mouth marketing service called JumpReach. Some of the most important points that were discussed include the following:

• Word-of-mouth marketing is here to stay and can be an extremely successful tactic when implemented and measured properly.
• Studies show that person-to-person recommendations have far greater impact on a consumer’s purchase decision than nearly any other form of marketing
• Best practices for campaigns include being transparent, never spamming, being authenticate and giving people something to talk about
• There is no exact formula to stay highly ranked in YouTube, but you should focus on your content and respond to comments/questions whether they are good or bad.

For more information about word-of-mouth marketing, you can visit the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association or you can request a free assessment from our JumpReach team to find out how your business can use this valuable tactic.

What do Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Windows Live, Microsoft and YouTube all have in common? According to Nielsen Online, these are the five most popular web brands in the U.S. during February based on the number of unique visitors. Each month thousands of people visit these websites, helping to make money for the companies. But, at least one of those companies, YouTube, isn’t nearly as profitable as everyone thinks. In fact, some experts predict that YouTube may actually be losing money, despite its popularity.

Several market research companies have estimated YouTube’s revenues for both 2008 and 2009. Estimates for 2008 range anywhere from $75 million to $189 million. While for 2009, the range is from $120 million to $500 million. There is a wide range between those predicted revenue numbers, but regardless of what numbers you use, predictions about YouTube’s expenses are far greater.

Analysts from Credit Suisse considered YouTube’s bandwidth costs, content licensing agreements, hardware needs and other expenses, and predicted their total expenses to be around $700 million in 2009. With YouTube likely losing a significant amount of money, how can this be corrected?

"The issue for YouTube going forward is to increase the percentage of videos that can be monetized (likely through more deals with content companies)," the analysts said. "[YouTube needs] to drive more advertiser demand through standardization of ad formats and improve ad effectiveness."

MarketingSherpa recently released the list of the top ten viral marketing campaigns for this year and inducted them into its’ hall of fame. For the fourth year in a row, the Sherpa staff evaluated the top viral campaigns and decided which ones were the best. All of the winners utilized peer-to-peer pass-along in order to reach consumers who fit into a variety of demographic groups.

As the staff analyzed the winning campaigns, it noticed several common themes. The three most prominent were an increase in the use of social media (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), an emphasis on peer-to-peer sharing and the use of great content in a campaign.

Companies who were inducted into the hall of fame include VIBE Media, General Mills, Columbia Sportswear and VeriSign. For a complete list of inductees and to see each campaign in more detail click on the link below from MarketingSherpa.