Social Media’s Power is getting others to do YOUR work.

Today’s entry focuses on what a Swedish Chocolate Company, Aladdin, did to personalize their brand. The chocolate company came up with a social media campaign to involve the Swedish people with the chocolate company.

Save Christmas: 4ca5f27d104ff8.74949785 from BeesAwards on Vimeo.

The beauty of the campaign design was simple: have the Swedish people do most of the work. The premise of the campaign was an election. The chocolate company was going to remove one chocolate from their holiday box and the people had to generate votes to save their favorite from elimination. Aladdin created a platform for people to jump start their own campaigns and sat back to watch.

People created movies, held demonstrations, voted online, participated in online conversations, and generated tons of word of mouth.

Getting people involved directly to the brand brings a powerful connection. If you can have someone give the consideration required to generate content, you can guarantee their loyalty.

So not only is this campaign financially cheap, but it has extremely high validity. By validity, I mean, people trust third party content. If Aladdin had merely increased their media buys, then sales may have increased, but not as sharp as they did.

When people receive a message from someone they know their defenses are lowered and they will give a lot more time and thought to what they received. This is the power of viral marketing. People are more likely to share things they have personally created. Word of mouth is exponential when people are excited to share. The results of the campaign were remarkable.

Results after 4 weeks:

-          380,000 votes

-          + 15,000 campaign facebook fans

-          140,000 took facebook quiz

-          Facebook quiz application became the number 4 “fastest growing applications”

-          Sales increase of 26.5%

-          Campaign received more votes than the winner of Sweden’s Election for European Parliment

Total Campaign Reach:

+ 33,000,000

The results are clear. Put your campaign in the hands of your fans. We live in an age where everyone has the power to create creative digital content.

Give people a platform and a mission and sit back as they create, share, and participate on behalf of your company.

Online Newsrooms: Control the Narrative

Today, I’ll be discussing my views on the importance of maintaining an online newsroom. As online media gains momentum in the world of communications and journalism, no company or organization should be without an online newsroom resource.

The idea behind an online newsroom is to generate a one stop shop location for all interested journalists, stakeholders, and customers.

An online newsroom, like the American Red Cross Newsroom, is a treasure chest of prepackaged information that is easy to use. The ARC ‘s newsroom is different from their website. Their website contains training information, event information, and how to volunteer. Their newsroom is almost strictly used for must need information on the most current crisis they are aiding.

The online newsroom has news releases; facts on the current disaster, interviews, photos of the disaster, media contact points for local, regional, and national levels, broadcast quality b-roll, and completed news stories ready for print.

If you are a journalist covering and disaster, the Red Cross now has you completely taken care of in a one stop shop. You can grab a completed story which are ready for print, or download the b-roll; ready for broadcast.

Here is a perfect break down of the intent of their newsroom:

http://newsroom.redcross.org/

• Items in the left hand column are in chronological order. Pick the information as quickly as you find it, and help us spread the word.

• Items in the right hand column are in “summary” style. If you are on a deadline and just need a quick list of statistics or services, you can grab them from the category links on the right.

• “Announcements” are essentially housekeeping messages to the media. If we add a section of information, or want to designate an after-hours on-call contact, that will fall under “Announcements.”

• “Alerts” are items that we’d like shared with the public as quickly as you can. Broadcasters, or even newspapers with websites can pull this information as often as they’d like (and we’d be pleased if you did!)

• “News Releases” are traditional news releases, ready for you to clip and run with as much or little editing as you’d like.

The importance of this site to journalists cannot be down played. The American Red Cross now has, from a PR and journalistic standpoint, made themselves the ultimate resource. This means they now control the content.

The Red Cross is in the business of Crisis management, so there is a lot to be learned for those PR practioners who work for businesses who will experience a crisis (that is everyone!)

An online newsroom is something a company should have in the waiting. When a crisis hits, you can fill the newsroom with all your information. From pictures, interviews, complete stories, press releases, and b-roll.

If journalists only need to visit you for what they need, then you have the power to control the narrative. You can feed them what you like.

The idea is genius.

Control the narrative.

My vote counts!

Today’s entry pertains to the power of influence though people you know. Elections took place yesterday all across the U.S. Election Day can be a sad day for American patriotism. We live in a nation where more people vote for American Idol than political elections. In some countries, people are literally shot at on their way to the polls. The only problems most Americans face is adding twenty minutes to take advantage of an incredible right often taken for granted.

I had a very full day yesterday and was actually not going to end up having time to stop by and cast a vote. This was until my professor walked into class with a sticker on his shirt that read, “My vote counts.” This inspired me to be late to my next class and go vote.

I thought about the power of a simple sticker, a piece of recognition, had on my decision. Being from Texas, a state as red as they come, my vote was not necessarily the most important vote, but seeing my professor’s sticker did draw me to action. I wanted a sticker. I wanted to boast on campus that I had fulfilled my patriotic duty.

This idea of inciting action made me think of how social media could use “stickers” to differentiate and excite people. Once I got home, I discovered I was not the only one who thought of this idea. Facebook had made a universal change to the top of all Facebook home pages. You could let the world know you voted. When I signed on late last night, 11 million people had voted. This is the message:

Why am I seeing the Election Day message on my home page?

We show the Election Day message to all users who are accessing Facebook from a country that is currently in an election period.

I was excited to click the, “I voted button.” I soon found out, however, that tons of people lied about voting. My roommates, who just told me they didn’t vote, had said they had voted to Facebook. This made the power of the online sticker less effective.

The reason the sticker got me to do something was because the only way to get one was to go vote. If Facebook could have somehow verified who had voted, then the app could have actually gotten people to vote.

For PR professionals to get people to take up a cause I believe a differential mark, that is exclusive, can motivate people. This can be true with a simple sticker on someone’s person, or a differentiating mark on social networking sites.

If businesses could somehow reward customers with some online uniqueness, only attainable from within the store, people would potentially react the same way I did. People could display all their “rewards” to the Facebook world. It would grow as a collection. It could drive people’s will to collect.

Just talking from experience on the power of a simple sticker and thinking out loud about how to effectively use this principle on social media sites. Any other ideas on how to use this idea?

Facebook vs. Google

You would be hard struck to find many people who don’t use Google as their search engine of choice. Bing, Microsoft’s self-declared “decision engine,” is making an innovative strive to take some of Google’s search engine dominance.

Facebook and Bing are now teaming up to integrate the power of Facebook’s “like” feature and pair it with Bing to help you make decisions. Now, when you search something that can correspond to a “like,” Bing will shuffle the items “liked” by your Facebook friends to the top.

This is yet another step toward the incredible future, where the internet is completely personal. This idea, however, is creepy in some instances. Now, more than ever, the internet has invaded you and your friends. The internet can predict what you will like and can influence this by the use of your friends.

Anyone who knows a thing about PR will tell you the absolute best way to influence someone is through a friend. Word of mouth is more influential than billboards or TV ads, because the receiver of the message has their defenses down. More influencial than word of mouth, is word of mouth from your friends. If a friend recommends anything to you, you give it a ton more consideration than from any other source.

Well now, when you inquire about anything via Bing, your friends will literally pop-up and suggest your attention to certain links.

The PR implications are amazingly big here. As far as the internet is concerned, staying relevant is about casting the biggest net you can throw. You can influence your place in search engines from starting blogs, adding tags to pictures and videos, and spreading out your affiliates. Now, you can drive this from Facebook “likes.” Plus, you now have the power to get people’s friends, without their consent, to recommend your product.

An effect of this new integration would be the amount of thought people will start to give to what they “like.” Before when you would just “like” whatever, now could pop up when your Mom searches something.

The potential for this integration to influence people’s decisions is enormous. The personal recommendation from friends is now completely online. The defenses of innocent “searchers” will be down and you will be recommending personally the things you “like” to them.

Review apps force transparency.

                When people make decisions many factors come into play. Many people can make decisions based off the ads a company shows them, but any PR professional knows that word of mouth is still one of the most powerful ways to influence someone. Word of mouth lowers a person’s message defense. People can be leery of messages straight from a company, but all ears when it comes from their best friend.

                This principle is the reason why sites like yelp and yellow pages exist. These review sites give people a chance to read honest to goodness, unbiased, reviews of different hotels, restaurants, and products.

                As PR professionals, it can be controversial how you can influence these reviews. Some companies log on to these sites and generate false positive reviews. The key being; transparency is needed.

Consumer Reports just released a smart phone application that can scan barcodes and bring up reviews and details about the product. The application, Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper, can also do side-by-side product comparisons. The application is so brutally honest. The application does not even recommend the Iphone 4, because of an antenna failure that is common in the phone.

For PR professionals, this is just another step in people’s new ability to gain knowledge fast. Potentially, any and everyone will be able to voice their opinion. You can no longer trick the masses with fancy media messages and well thought out strategies.

The app even has a place for “Brand Reliability.” I see this affecting the world of PR because of the speed and the inability to influence the reviews.  I could see at some point, an app that contains company profiles. Sections on what the company does for the community, how they treat their employees, scandals, CEO blogs, reviews and thoughts.

Completely honest and transparent views of all companies as people try to make decisions on where to spend their money.

Corona Light: Please "like" us

Corona, the Mexican beer company, just launched a new social media campaign. The campaign is centered around Facebook. Corona has set out to become the most “liked” light beer in America. The idea is not only very clever, but original. As far as I know, no other company has set out to take advantage of Facebook’s “like” feature. Getting as many of the 500 million Facebook users to take a minute to click “like” and stumble across their page has huge potential for the campaign to go viral.

                Beyond getting people to just “like” their page Corona has taken another major step toward increasing social media’s most flattering aspect, involvement. Corona has purchased ad space in Times Square from November 6^th to December 8^th. They will use this ad space to completely integrate their customers into an ad campaigned centered on one of the world’s most prominent advertising mediums, Times Square billboards.

                Once you like Corona Lights’ Facebook page, you can submit a photo of yourself (500x500) and Corona will place your picture in Times Square for all to see. On top of that, Corona is taking pictures of all the faces they show. So, you, from wherever you are, can see a picture of yourself in a Corona ad above the thousands of daily Times Square travelers.

                The idea of getting people to jump on board with making Corona Light the most “liked” beer in America was original and pitched in a way that will encourage spread. Then Corona gave young Americans a greater reason to go out of their way and interact with their brand, Times Square ad featuring you!

                The Times Square ad is genius for two other reasons: associating yourself with Times Square generates media coverage, and people are guaranteed to share the pictures of them over Times Square with everyone they know.

                You will have people sending Corona advertisements all over the web for free. People’s defenses will be down when they see their friend in an advertisement and it will build familiarity and involvement with the Corona brand name.

Social Media saves lives.

University of Texas Tower

By now we all know what took place last week on the University of Texas’s Austin campus. In fact, thanks to the power of social media, we knew what had happened in a matter of seconds. The event was a worst nightmare situation for millions of students and teachers across the world, a shooter on campus. The grim reality that someone could enter a school campus armed with the intent to kill is something all schools are prepared to deal with. 

Social media played a ground breaking roll in the crises. The key in a situation like shooter on campus is getting information to those who need it fast. The shootings started at approximately 8:15 a.m.  The Austin Statesman, the local Austin newspaper, has a twitter account and broke the news at 8:30.

Just in: We are getting reports of an "active shooter" on the UT campus. More to come. 8:30 AM Sep 28th via TweetDeck.

The UT emergency system actually broke Word first at 8:23. Major news networks did not start breaking news till around 9:30.

So, if you were a UT student where do you turn to get vital information in a crisis situation? The internet. Social Media got the first scoop on the story. The #utshooting went viral in a matter of minutes. Six minutes after the Statesman reported the shooting on their twitter, the Daily Texan, UT’s school newspaper, tweeted:

Just in: We are getting reports of an "active shooter" on the UT campus. More to come. 

The Statesman tweeted eight times in a matter of 43 minutes. By 9:13 they had asked for pictures and information and let everyone know the shooter had in fact killed himself on the sixth floor of the library and that UT was still on lock down.

                By this time, CNN and FOX had not picked up full coverage. Here is CNN’s first tweet on the incident at 9:29:

                Shooting reported at University of #Texas at Austin. http://on.cnn.com/dviadh 9:29 AM Sep 28th via web

                At 10:21 CNN had broke the story on their website.

T.V news used to be the only way to get breaking news as it happens, but as of September 28, 2010 I would say the best place to get late breaking news is twitter or facebook, weird sounding, but true. T.V. crews cannot compete with the thousands of students with phones that are sending texts and updating statuses.

If you twitter #utshootings, the common tweet right now is:

RT @besafetexas: If you have pertinent information about yesterday's incident and have not been interviewed, please call 512-232-9614. #utshooting #utaustinIf you have pertinent information about yesterday's incident and have not been interviewed, please call 512-232-9614. #utshooting #utaustin      

Twitter is a great place to harvest information. #utshooting is full of eye witnesses giving their accounts and people reporting from within the situation.

People all over twitter were passing the information on the shooting around last week. People used twitter to scoop the story before major T.V news crew could start their up to the second coverage. The power of social media to pass messages is incredible. Students quickly started live blogs on the situation and twitters harsh feature allows people to type #utshooting and watch tweet after live tweet to stay informed.

Thousands of students, journalism majors of not, took up citizen journalism last week. The power of social media has become a very fast, influential source that people can trust.

PR implications are relevant to the speed information can spread. Good or bad. If any organization has a social media presence, you help encourage the spread and dissemination of messages. As well as, dispute rumors and personally address people. Two-way communication is absolutely the reason behind the popularity and success of social media. So take advantage of it.