If I were to ask you to wear a t-shirt that promotes my blog design business, what would your answer be if you were to ask questions first before deciding to wear the t-shirt or not? My curiosity would lead right away to 'can I see the shirt first?' , to 'it's mine to keep?', 'does it fit well?', and if I don't care that much for the shirt, 'what will you pay me to wear it?', and 'how long do I have to wear it?'.On the other hand, what if my blog design shirt looks so cool and the design really speaks to you? Now, you really like the shirt, but I didn't ask you to wear it, you found it in an online store through a social networking site and decided to buy it. The marketing of my blog customization service took place through website strategies that integrated social media into the marketing mix. Any business appreciates fans wearing their company logos and marketing messages, especially when the fans pay to wear their advertising.
Now, if you were to brand yourself, had a lot of fun developing your online and offline persona into something very engaging, you might grow a large audience, say 50K fans on facebook. And you could get paid to wear a t-shirt. For example, 'I Wear Your Shirt' is a couple guys that have 'rented' themselves out to companies by wearing their clients' t-shirts and promoting on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
It has been difficult for companies to quantify spending six figures on celebrity social sites, or Twitter's new Promoted Tweets service. Why spend six figures when a thousand bucks can practically guarantee a return on investment using relatively unknowns to promote your product with? Social media is a grass roots type of marketing strategy and harder to quantify, therefore cheaper than expensive TV production and mass market advertising. Yet, social media is proving to be effective because of the low costs. Nissan, Doritos, and Zappos have taken up 'I Wear Your Shirt' social media marketing. There certainly is less control over the conversation between the t-shirt wearers sharing their product experiences through social media. Although, it's likely to be a positive experience for all involved in the buzz over the products promoted.(source: FastCompany)
