Some intrepid internet abusers have realised that Obama’s Facebook updates get tons of view so and in true opportunist spammy style, have started posting comments trying to send punters off to somewhere else. Even the Haiti disaster can’t escape the ‘free designer bags’ scam, these people clearly have no shame and no class.

It’s also interesting to note that the pioneering Obama social media team seem to have adopted a completely open stance on comment moderation (ie they leave everything up) which is really progressive and respectable considering some of highly emotional and sensitive topics he needs to cover as a president.

Me personally, I’d delete the spam.



You can see the big mileage difference this creates in the two images here. So basically, if 4 people need to travel 5 miles to the store (there and back remember!) that ads up to 40 miles in total, if the delivery van delivers these 4 peoples' food instead, then the total mileage covered for the same foods to be delivered is only 16 miles.

This would also probably be a good way to drive 5 less miles a week if you are trying to keep up with the Act On CO2 campaign

Woo! Saving the planet made easy!

In this simple model the combined fuel saving is 40%

 

Nokia have been sending around a  'hacker box' to key voices in the mobile community. It is quite obviously a buzz generating gimmick for the N900 and they have nailed it! The buzz is huge on Twitter and its getting coverage on some of the top blogs and websites in the tech space.

How did they get it so right?

• It's all about the unboxing. Nokia have realised that when a new tech product comes on the market, people love to do unboxing videos and they went to great lengths to make it one of the best unboxing experiences to date.

• Spare no expense. That hacking box must have cost a fortune to a) make and b) ship because of the size and weight! It shows that they really value the opinions of the people that got one.

• Increase the N900's percieved value. Only an item of high value and much importance would demand such high quality promotion and effort. It is and it does

• Target the right people. They know that the N900 is going to taken up more by tech minded people than general consumers so they have targeted voices in that space like Techcrunch, Engadget the Nokia fan blogs and of course www.unboxings.com. Their video on Youtube here.

• Add smoke to seal the deal!

Nokia really went all out on this campaign and didn't spare# any expense thus ensuring a great viral response. Was your last campaign the highest stanard it could be?

Posted via email from Jon's posterous

Obviously, you want your company to be on Youtube. It’s a great engagement medium with a massive population.

But how? My company is boring, what will we make videos about?

Blendtec, is still the best example of this. Take a boring blending company, throw some cool gadgets into  their blenders, and blend the hell out of it and you’ve got a classic series of Youtube videos.

My first foray into Youtube for Gumtree has been to make user guides which gives us a valid reason to be on Youtube and benefit from the exposure but also more importantly, it helps educate users on using the site correctly and safely. We even set up a dedicated page on Gumtree using the Youtube API, which was fun, here: http://guide.gumtree.com

If a blending company can find an entertaining angle to make videos for Youtube, so can your company!

I’ve started Twitter accounts in a few Gumtree cities and only started tracking the results half way through October but as you can see from the graph below, its really starting to pull in quality traffic.

At this rate, we would have pulled in 350 000 hits per quarter via Twitter to which we can put a cash value, making Twitter a very valuable tool for us.

 

And time it has taken! 6 months down the line and only now am I happy to show results to my peers and my colleagues. My favourite graphs so far are the ones in this post. (Yes they are the same as the last post, apologies but it’s a good graph!)

The lesson: Social media will not show results tomorrow, you won’t have 50k fans on Tuesday and don’t chase ‘viral’. Viral is a very natural process that will happen when you consistently create and share quality content. 

One of the tactics we implemented was to engage with the community on a natural, one-to-one basis (the basics of a social media strategy) which we have been doing since around May. This in theory should create a groundswell effect online, I.E. the more we talk and engage (using best practice engagement techniques of course!) the more other people talk about us.

The only way we can measure this is to blanket measure increases in traffic from social media sources to Gumtree and the results have been surprisingly good! See the graphs below.

The lesson: Simply talking naturally to your community can bring strong results for your comms / engagement campaigns.

Posted via email from Jon's posterous

Posted via email from Jon's posterous

Posted via email from Jon's posterous