Mozilla’s Download Day initiative is a true example of killer social media marketing. The site SpreadFireFox.com has an easy-to-navigate layout and clearly invites visitors to be part of a greater *community* initiative.  It’s not a team of employees who are making it happen; it’s an entire web community who believe in their product.

What they did right:

• Incorporated dynamic content on their main page. Successful websites today need to take on a life of their own.  This is done by the community or site visitors who act like oxygen, breathing air into a site with their content and conversation.   On sharefirefox.com, there are elements like a forum, live comments, and a photo stream that reflect this.
• Initiated and engaged in community-based conversation. The creation of a forum completely invites users to talk amongst each other as well as interact with actual peeps from FF.  Props to the Mozilla team for having the sense to be responsive to the discourse and maintain a fairly updated FAQ.
• Invited users to help. The beauty of social media marketing is that once you give users the tools, they go out and do all the legwork.  Check out all the ways Firefox users could help spread the word about download day: Host in-person download day parties, share on sites like facebook, bebo, and myspace, and post badges onto blogs via affiliate codes. They even created a Twitter account! I predict we’re totally going to set the world record as a result of these efforts.  I’m ecstatic because I am such a FF fangirl.  Some folks like IE, but every time I engage in a conversation about the better web browser, I liken the conversation to arguments I had in Middle School:

12 Year-Old Alexa’s Conversation

Me: “Nsync is so the better boyband.”

Random teenybopper: “Nu-uh. Like, Backstreet Boys ALL THE WAY!”

Me: “Who’s your favorite member?”

Random teenybopper: “Nick Carter”

Me: “We can’t be friends.”

21 Year-Old Alexa’s Conversation:

Me: “Firefox is SO the better web browser.”

Random person: “Nu-uh.  IE FTW!”

Me: “No way. What version are you running?”

Random geek: “IE6.”

Me: “We can’t be friends.”

(Seriously IE6 folk… Why?! I can’t believe I’ve evolved into this big of a geekette that I’m blogging about a web browser, even worse that I’m comparing web browsers to boy bands, but that’s me.

A few notes about the browser itself: I’ve used FF3 on both Windows (Vista and XP) and right now on my Mac.  Surfing the web is fast and friendly.  Little nuances make the entire experience better, like the way url’s are cached as well as the cute little star in the address bar that serves as a bookmark icon. All my extensions are upgraded and work fine (web developer, tiny url, piclens, bettergmail, delicious, etc.).

If you haven’t downloaded FF3 already, DO EEET!!!!  If not for the browser features, do it because Mozilla’s marketing efforts should be rewarded! Oh, and also because FF3 totally gives new meaning to the Justin Timberlake song, “SexyBack“: