Facebook celebrated its 8th birthday this month. How much has it changed? How much has it changed us? Are we all a little more batty now that Facebook has become a prominent part of so many of our lives, giving us insights into friends and family that we never had before and offering a venue through which we can exclaim the nuances of our lives for the world (or simply our world) to see?

This fun and somewhat creepy video by Daniel Koren, a NY based musician, touches a little too close to the truth for most to bear. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Something blew my mind last night. I was discussing a product launch strategy with a friend at a local Starbucks when I said, “Sometimes, you just have to go Leeroy Jenkins-style and charge into the room.”

He was bewildered. Despite the crowded coffee shop, I let out a hearty, “You know, Leeeeeroooooooooooooooooooooooy Jenkins!”

He averted his eyes and pretended like I hadn’t just drawn the attention of the entire crowded room onto our table. Thankfully, a 20something barista saved me by replying, “At least I have chicken!”

As I scanned the room, I realized something. Most had no idea what the barista and I were quoting. I turned my friend’s computer around on the table and quickly called up the video below. A couple of people came over to hear and see the explanatory video. At the 1:28 mark, the 4 or 5 of us watching erupted in laughter, drawing more people to the table. We replayed the video with the same results, only amplified.

It earned me a free refill of my 5-shot espresso over ice.

For those who have never experienced the combination of “World of Warcraft is serious business” and the Leroy Jenkins technique, here’s the video that has over 30 million views when all of the variations are combined. If you have seen it, consider this a time to reminisce.

Now that you’ve seen it, what can we learn from it? Two things pop out as important. First, there’s always a risk with jumping in head first and not knowing what’s on the other side. Planning can go a long way but there are wildcard factors that can arise. Don’t let them sink your plan.

Second, there are times when you just have to be aggressive and apply the Leeroy Jenkins technique. Fear can lead to inaction and missed opportunities. Just because you may have been burned in the past trying an aggressive technique doesn’t mean that you should let it go altogether.

This video was staged. I’m sorry to burst any bubbles, but that doesn’t change the hilarity of it nor the underlying messages.

What would it take for you to be a Leeroy Jenkins?

Nobody.

If you check your analytics, you’ll find that an extremely small portion of your website visitors are pushing the buttons you worked so hard to position on your website’s homepage. A recent batch of data that I saw (that I, unfortunately, cannot reference yet) shows that those Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social buttons are being completely overlooked by most of your visitors.

By most, you might as well call it “all” of your visitors because it’s an activity that occurs normally after someone has already submitted a lead.

Moreover, it’s a sign of the “kiss of death” — once they click away, the chances of them visiting your site again drop dramatically.

Logic, not Alarms

Before anyone freaks out and starts removing those dreaded buttons, think about why this is happening and what it means. People who have purchased a product or submitted a lead are more likely to push those buttons than those who have not filled out a form simply because they have accomplished their mission. They found what they were looking for and are now wanting to see who they may be dealing with in the near future.

People who have not submitted a lead or bought something are still on their mission. They’ve moved on to a competitor’s website or back to search. They’re not in social-media-mode yet, so there is no reason to click on them.

Does this make the buttons worthless? Absolutely not.

Warm and Fuzzy

This data tells us that the people visiting your site and putting in a lead are looking for humanity. They’re looking for the warm and fuzzy that they hope to find on the other end of the click.

Social media is about driving traffic and forming engagements. The sheer fact that they are not going from your website to the social sites isn’t a bad thing. It simply means that the gut-instinct many of us have had for a while is correct, that social media happens away from your website and the value can be found there, not through buttons. People have seen the buttons so often on nearly every site they visit that they’ve become immune to them. The people who click on them are wanting to find them (and you) and as a result, they hope that they’re getting cuddly social stuff once they leave your site and go to the magical realms of Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Keep The Buttons, then Do More

When they want to find you on social media, they will. To be proactive, you have to give them a reason to go to your social presence, like/follow/subscribe to it, and still venture back to your site for more. Banners describing events or other benefits of liking/following/subscribing can be very effective – just make sure they open a new tab and do not take the visitors completely away from your site.

There is a book waiting to be written about the roles of social, search, and website marketing and specifically how they are an integrated function of each other rather than separate activities, but that book will not be written today. In lieu, think about how your buttons are positioned and think of new ways to be more aggressive with your social promotions on and OFF of your website.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a video gets posted to YouTube and nobody can find it to view it, does it really get played at all?

The goal of making a video for a car dealership (or any business, for that matter) is to get viewed. Using video for marketing can be an extremely beneficial practice, but so often dealers are out there making videos but not doing what it takes to get the video found on YouTube or through Google searches. The solution – optimize it.

Here are 5 ways that car dealers can optimize their videos without being search engine optimization experts. It’s part of our weekly webinar series at TK Carsites.

Companies for the last few years have tried to connect with internet trends and celebrities to give their marketing a better chance of “going viral” on social media. The more their products are associated with things that are popular online, the better-branded the companies will be.

Such is the case with Wonderful Pistachios whose 2-year-old GetCrackin campaign continues to expose the brand and raise awareness of pistachios in general.

“We knew pistachios were quietly enjoyed by everybody, and we really wanted to get them out in front of consumers,” said Marc Seguin, senior director of marketing for Paramount Farms. “We look for characters who can really amplify the fun and who have a lot of social value who inspire people to talk about them around the water cooler—and the pistachio bowl, I guess.”

They have used Snooki, Keyboard Cat, and even the wildly-popular Angry Birds game to get their brand attached to familiar pleasures. Sales increased 233% after their first batch of viral videos. The latest batch features the Winklevoss twins from Facebook lawsuit fame, Crystal from The Hangover II, and basketball star Lamar Odom with reality-TV wife Khloe Kardashian.

Check out some of their videos:

There are occasions when a specialty within a company translates into an something unexpected. Think “penicillin from moldy bread.”

That’s the case with Whiteboard Fridays, an offering by SEOMoz that gives tips to aspiring search engine optimizers as those simply wanting to help their own websites rank better. It was supposed to be a tight niche. Since its humble beginnings they have grown tremendously to the point that they are an excellent case study on how to do video marketing the right way.

This infographic by our friends at Wistia breaks down the road they took and offers ways that other video marketers can apply the techniques for their own success.

Click to enlarge.

The beta version of Google+ has been out for nearly two months now, and if you have been keeping up with the news, you know Hangouts is one of its most exciting features. A chatting tool of sorts, Hangouts allows users to communicate by video with up to 10 people at once, which makes it useful for a wide range of purposes. It also lets them view YouTube content as a group. In an interesting development, the search engine company has decided to take its video-based chatting component out of the Google+ arena by integrating it with its immensely popular web destination YouTube.

Google recently introduced an update that allows the Hangouts feature to be accessed directly from the YouTube interface. This obviously gives YouTube more appeal as a marketing tool, so let’s take a look at how the savvy video marketer can take advantage.

Find a Video to Share

The main draw to having Hangouts functionality in YouTube is convenience. No longer do you have to be on the Google+ domain to launch a session and search for video. It can now all be done from YouTube in fast and easy fashion. Simply go through the process of retrieving a video as you normally would (one of your own or another relevant to the group you want to share it with), and from there, firing up your Hangouts session is as straightforward as clicking a button. However, there is another step that must be completed first.

Invite Your Circle

Once you have the video content handy, you can then invite your friends, better known in this instance as the contacts in your designated circle, by accessing the Hangouts option underneath the “Share” button. This step requires you to confirm that you have a Google+ account and connect it with your account on YouTube. From here, you can choose up to 10 friends in your chosen circle and initiate the session by clicking the “Start a Google+ Hangout” link.

Make the Most of the Opportunity

When using the Hangouts feature in YouTube, you want to make sure you maximize its potential by getting the most from your video session. Luckily, this component has a variety of interesting features that enable you to do this, native features that carry over into the YouTube experience. For example, Hangouts allows you and your group to offer commentary on the video at hand, which could be very useful in videoconferencing sessions where dialogue is a necessity. This is just a single example of how you can take your sessions beyond group viewing.

Another “Plus” for Google’s Social Network

Leveraging the Hangouts feature on YouTube does require you to have a Google+ account, but if you’re already a member, then you can start putting it to good use. It will be interesting to see where the search company integrates this function and other components of its social platform next. Don’t be surprised if you see Hangouts incorporated into other Google products and services in the near future.

4 billion.

That’s the number of things shared on Facebook.

Daily.

Pictures, videos, links, status updates – anything and everything that can be expressed digitally is done so on Facebook at incredible (alarming?) rates.

Add Twitter, Google+, Tagged, LinkedIn, and YouTube and suddenly you have the beginning of what Summify calls, “The Impending Sharepocalypse.”

I prefer to think of it Sharemageddon.

This infographic breaks down how much we share and why it’s a bad thing. Some will say that the more we share, the better things will be. If everything is shared, can the real important things that need to be shared cut through all of the noise? That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Click to enlarge.

In one month, Facebook leaped over Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom to become the 3rd largest video site in the US according to comscore. This is all good news for the social network, but there are caveats.

Unlike other sites, Facebook does not make money directly from the videos. The lucrative video ad industry is one they’ve chosen to avoid, opting towards using video to keep people on the site longer and exposed to their other revenue-generators.

The other negative is that people aren’t watching as many videos or for the same amount of time. Much of this is natural as there are so many other options to do on Facebook versus the others which are standard video sites. Still, having an average of 17 minutes per viewer is much lower than most. Other than NBC Universal and Turner Digital, everyone else has more than twice the amount of minutes per viewer. Google sites, including YouTube, averages 353.7 minutes per month per viewer.

They are currently behind VEVO by 10.5 million unique US viewers. At the pace they’re growing, this will change in a month or two. Should Google be looking in their rear view mirror?

Every now and then, a smaller brand is able to achieve national recognition through creative use of social media. Moe’s Southwest Grill and Brandmovers were able to accomplish just that with a modest budget and an innovative concept.

Queso. Many people love it. The question that Moe’s asked was, “How much do you REALLY love it?”

“The Dance Your Queso Off video contest provided a fun and engaging way to let our guests express their love for Moe’s Queso,” said Lauren McGowen Barash, Director of PR/Corporate Communications for Moe’s. “It was as exciting to see the fans rally together to support their favorite videos as it was to watch the actual video entries! Hopefully our guests had as much fun as we did with this contest.”

It didn’t hurt that the winner received $10,000.

Here are some stats about the effectiveness of the campaign:

• 132 Video Submissions
• 154,252 Site Visits
• 636,774 Video Views
• 2,947 Facebook Shares
• 104,868 Votes

Not bad, particularly when you consider that major brands are often not able to achieve these kinds of numbers with much larger budgets. Here’s the video of everything from the process to the winner: