Ahoy hoy! Welcome to the Snowball Factory blog (aka SnowBlog), which is dedicated to helping creators of interesting online content learn how to connect with the people who will love it.

The name is a nod to Umair Haque, who now writes for HBS and popularized the concept of the Snowball Effect applied to content on his blog a couple of years ago. The basic idea is that in a world in which you can watch anything you want (like, say on the interwebs), you’re going to want to watch the content that’s most interesting to *you* — and that the most effective way to find out about this interesting content is from like-minded people as opposed to from an impersonal marketing campaign. Thus, Umair argues the abundance of content enabled by the Internet creates the conditions in which the ‘Snowball’ can be more powerful than the ‘Blockbuster.’

There are enough examples of online videos “going viral” and making their creators rich and famous (or at least Internet famous) that we now know Umair’s theory can work in practice. But although these examples of viral success exist, no one really knows how to systematically reproduce them (ya know, like a “Factory” might ). 

These successful proofs of concept, if you will, have spawned a phenomenal increase in quality online entertainment content, which in turn has drawn an even larger audience to the medium. But, it has also made standing out from the crowd and reaching the *right* audience more important than ever, which is where word-of-mouth Snowball-style marketing comes in. While the sheer amount of content out there makes it harder than ever to stumble onto a “hit” in the conventional media sense, the number of people discussing and sharing that content makes it easier more possible than ever for engaged content creators to build real relationships with passionate fans and empower those fans to become evangelists to their friends. 

Social media services like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr have become a promotional platform of sorts (the Social Web) that provides infrastructure for content creators to establish meaningful connections with the largest number of their potential fans at no cost (other than time and effort).

But, the truth is not many people have the time or inclination to be trolling the interwebs to learn about the latest social media g33kery. That’s where we come in — this blog will try to educate content producers on the promotional tools that exist across the Social Web, answer common questions on how they work, and teach best practices for using them most effectively. We’ll also take questions from the audience. So, feel free to send your vexations to asktheyeti[at]thesnowballfactory[dot]com.