Simple Marketing Coup Triples company’s like count on Facebook

Posted in Blog

Far too many people underestimate the power of social media marketing and impact that a happy customer with a good story can have on your web traffic.

Thomas Cook is a British Travel agency behemoth (over 150k likes on their page) with the slogan. Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it.

A saavy and relatively bold college student by the name of Thomas Cook posted on the Facebook page. His request was a free trip as compensation for years of ridicule for sharing the same name with the agency.

For a post on a corporate page, it got a fair about of traffic with 45 likes. Now from a PR opportunity, the Thomas Cook should have jumped on it and sent the kid a free trip. Instead, they chose to give a 1/2 hearted response and move on.

Low Cost Holiday wins the day

Enter the marketing geniuses at Thomas Cook’s competitor Low Cost Holiday (a small competitor with only 16k likes). They saw the opportunity and jumped on it by offering the college student a free trip.

Now, we don’t know about the behind-the-scenes discussion, but they took full advantage of the situation and within a few days this post appeared on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/11mlvv/benifits_of_sharing_my_name_with_a_travel_agent/

It made it to the front page of the website with 100k+ views and into the all-time top 10 list of funny posts and finished off a beautifully planned marketing coup.

Not only did the Low Cost walk away with two happy customers, but they increased their like count on facebook by nearly 50,000 people.

Fighting Crime With Social Media

Posted in Blog

As the 4th largest city in the Central Valley of California, Stockton and its 300,000+ residents face many of the same challenges as other large urban areas. Stockton finds itself in a difficult transition stage having seen the highs and lows of the real estate bubble and its subsequent fall out. Despite its leading agricultural economy and active global port, Stockton’s crime rate is on the rise. To make matters worse, with the city tight on funds, it has been forced to cut many jobs including its police force.

Concerned with the dangers of a rising crime rate and dwindling police force, the Stockton Police Department and Police Chief Eric Jones have decided to take a page out of the social media book. Jones and the SPD know that in order to make a big impact with a small budget, social media is the answer and believe the same can be true for fighting crime.

Embracing the power of the individual the SPD have setup the groundwork to grow its crime stopping force to a city-wide department made up of its 300,000+ residents. Using its Facebook page, residents can post details about in-progress crimes, connect the police to the public, and submit anonymous tips via tipsubmit.com. The department has further embraced the power of technology by using a mobile app, website, and text message system to allow residents to alert police and send in real-time photos.

As Chief Jones explained to the Stockton Record, ”We have for some time realized the need for this technology and look forward to using these tools.” The city’s innovative thinking represents yet another example of the power of social media. It is commendable to see such technology used to empower an entire city.

To track its progress follow the Stockton Police Department Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/stocktonpolicedepartment

How to Watch March Madness Online for FREE*

Posted in Blog

After years of lagging behind the curve, sports organizations are finally getting it right. This year’s superbowl was broadcast live over the internet, MLB is offering its games online, and most importantly the NCAA will be offering all March Madness online through a sweet interface.

*ok, it’ll cost you $3.99 but 67 games for a cup of coffee is practically free.

NCAA got a couple of things perfect with this offer.

It is multi-platform. You watch live games on your computer, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and select Android phones.
It promote’s user interaction. View create your own bracket and you can view brackets by region, round and date to see what’s happening and what’s coming up in the tournament.
It has social. You can post updates to Facebook and Twitter and track social activity around the tournament.
It has a Boss Button. When the boss walks by your computer, click the and..

…this fills your screen.

It looks like you are working

So, why am I shilling for the NCAA?

Well, to highlight what you can do with a good title to a blog post and to ask you a question:

What is your company doing to participate in March Madness?

Why is this a good social media opportunity?

This is a gimme of social marketing opportunities:

It is lasting: The tournament lasts for the entire month. So, you get to a month of content to push to your screen.
It is popular: ESPN alone had 5.9 million bracket entries into its tournament.
It has to be done on the web: Nobody wants to calculate the bracket scores on paper anymore which means that your customers will already have a profile online with their entry.
It is non-denominational: The tournament is already so popular that pretty much any organization can grab on and participate. Look at the disparate sponsors from the website.
Everyone likes competition: One of the biggest barriers to getting buzz on social media is individual participation. Your staff doesn’t want to push your content to their individual friend feeds and conversation on your main feed is one directions. A little competition between staff and clients is a great way to build traffic on your Facebook page – especially since everyone will be watching the games instead of working anyways.

So, what are you doing for March Madness?

We are running the Amendment M Tournament Challenge - $50 Amazon Card to the Winner!

To participate can click on the above link and enter a bracket. The winner of group gets a $50 Amazon Gift card.

Think you can beat us?

When the Internet Attacks: What do you do when the Swarm hits your Facebook Page?

Posted in Blog

Social media has given the consumer an incredible amount of power and it never ceases to amaze me how much can be accomplished when someone stirs up the internet behive. Yesterday, I watched as concerned internet users were able to pick off half of Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers. I thought about the poor people behind the facebook pages and twitter accounts at each of these companies trying to figure what to do. Which left me thinking:

What do you do when your company has pissed off the internet?

What follows are three examples from the worst reaction to the best:

The Ostridge – eHarmony – Stick you head in the sand.

E-Harmony decided to actively delete negative posts from their wall and play as if nothing was happening.

Unfortunately, all they are doing is prolonging the controversy and creating bad feelings with the people who took the time to comment on the issue.

It looks like they don’t have the man power to stop the flow so the message is still getting out to those who visit the wall and 24hrs later they are spinning their wheels trying to stop the traffic.

One Sandbag – Oreck – Your Message Sinks in a Sea of Comments

Oreck is wrongly listed on a list of Rush Limbaugh advertisers. The web attacks. Oreck is smart and issues a statement quickly disavowing their sponsorship.

Unfortunately, they did not consider the aesthetics of the new timeline feature. Their exculpatory post is quickly hidden by the stream of commenters who still think that Oreck is a sponsor.

I saw this over and over with sponsors that pulled their advertisements – Century 21, Autozone, and Citrix. Their initial statement was drowned out by the din of angry commenters.

The results now 24hrs after pulling funding the hive is still angry.

Wall of Sandbags – LegalZoom – Redirect the Stream

A single sandbag will not stop a flood of angry comments, only a wall of sandbags will stem the tide.

In addition to making the statement that they are pulling their advertisements, LegalZoom made a very smart choice, it started responding to each post individually.

This had two effects:

1. LegalZoom flooded the comment stream and new commenters got the message.

2. LegalZoom converted some of the commenters to their side and the stream started to change from negative comments to congratulator comments.

Now, the staff running the twitter feed probably did not enjoy responding to each post individually and it took a few hours of concerted effort.

But, compare eHarmony to Legal Zoom 18 hours later. eHarmony is still using its manpower to delete posts, while LegalZoom’s stream has returned to normal and now includes positive comments.