Facttactic

Corporate and technical writers

Social media

NZ’s ‘first ever’ international social media conference

In April, Wellington hosts a training and education event on social media and online marketing. Leading international experts will take workshops on topics including social media, SEO, online communities and content marketing.

The two-day event is to be held at Te Papa on April 15 – 16. Attendees will leave with “actionable strategies” to implement to their businesses, says the blurb for the event.

Find out more at Marketing Now.

Watch out for Chris Brogan and David Meerman-Scott in Wellington next month.

great event, poor IT back-up, bad press

A couple of weeks back we posted about the world’s best job – a hugely successful social media competition that had spanned the world and gained vast positive publicity for its tourism cause.

Recently the press has been pretty negative: the competition is still a great success but the IT systems to run it have not been up to scratch causing the website to crash under the weight of people wanting to submit entries.

I guess the impetus of the campaign will carry organisers past this, but it’s an unnecessary stain on an otherwise creative success. A good example, if ever there was one, that you gotta have your systems sorted if you’re online.

10 essential tips for a social media launch

Some good tips here (thanks Social Computing Magazine) on how to launch a social media campaign, keep it real and keep it tied into and integrated with the rest of your PR and marketing efforts.

There’s explanations of some good dos and don’ts, including — don’t let your social media strategy be an orphan; don’t stand in a corner, get out there and dance; don’t get distracted by those fireworks; don’t go it alone, Cowboy.

    But wait, there’s more! No, not a free Ginzu knife, but they also offer some basic but sound advice on five ways to integrate social media with public relations.

    social media takes ‘best job in the world’ global

    Following on from yesterday’s post on a political social media campaign gone global, have a look at this tourism campaign featuring a competition to win ‘the best job in the world’.

    Around 20,000 people from over 180 countries have so far applied! The Australian promotion has been going since last month but it is still so strong that this week the organiser’s reported that their website fell over due to the high number of visitors.

    The winner of the competition gets to be ‘Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef’ and will be paid to live in a luxury villa for six months, and explore, swim, snorkel and also blog about their experiences.

    Applicants’ 60-second video clip entries have been uploaded to the competition’s website, driving huge numbers of visitors to the site to check them out.  (By the way, the competition closes Monday!)

    Once again, a brilliant example of social media well-executed and showing its power to reach and engage global audiences, and posted here to show social media’s potential for powerful PR.

    Stephen Fry helps NZ social media campaign go worldwide

    It’s been fun this week to observe some NZ political campaigners getting huge global visibility with their innovative social media take on the mass protest.

    Instead of gathering hundreds of people with placards in a street march, the organisers of a campaign against government proposals for internet regulation have asked people to blackout their photos on their personal Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, et al, social media accounts.

    Thousands have done do: high profile actor Stephen Fry amongst them on his very widely read Twitter account (the third most popular in the world behind Barack Obama and CNN, apparently).

    The online campaign has been prominent in articles in highly regarded media outlets around the world – both online (ReadWriteWeb and boingboing) and traditional (here’s a story in The Guardian).

    It’s a great example of an online campaign gone viral very quickly. Emails have done the rounds in offices around New Zealand alerting people to the campaign; organisers have ben spreading the word on social media sites; and a topic that may have been of little interest, and even unknown, to many people has caught their imagination.

    It shows very clearly the effect that some creative thinking to develop a simple and quirky idea can have when teamed with the power of social media to organise and galvanise people and an easy-to-participate-in campaign.

    Ah, yes, what exactly is the campaign about: the legislation requires ISPs to have a policy to disconnect users after repeated accusations of copyright infringement … here’s the proposed legislation and here’s the protest’s main web page.

    how social media is taking off at a U.S airline

    A good new article details how U.S airline South West uses social media tools in its PR work: from employee-writen blogs to Twitter accounts, podcasts, video and a social networking site.

    Each tool is overseen by a single team member and is geared to reach a slightly different audience.

    South West recommends keeping social media channels distinct. It has used its employee-written blogs to look at issues, Twitter to break or tease news (South West also uses it to share photos, highlight competitions and job opportunities) and its Facebook account to highlight promotional events.

    The article says that the airline’s Flickr group pool is for customers interested in posting or viewing photos of trips on the airline; the YouTube channel is for people wanting information about destinations or South West trivia; and South West’s Facebook fan site is for people wanting to know about airline-related events and news.

    (Better read the article promptly! The guys at Ragan, who have published this article, only leave things up for a few days. You can register on their site, though, to read all their back copies. It’s well worth the effort to register.)