How much would you pay for million subscribed fans? How much time would you invest to build such a huge audience? Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes — just set up the right execution with some real insight.
The “Mom, mom, mommy, ma, mom, mom, ma, ma, mommy, mommy… WHAT!!… hi! (endquote sic) Facebook fan page has crossed 5 million fans, with no content whatsoever; it’s powered solely by the social currency traded amongst friends as they fan this page with a nudge and a wink.
It’s hard to describe the insight this fan page creator has leveraged – only a parent can fully understand the experience of moving from ceiling-clawing annoyance to cheek-squeezing adoration as their child vies for their attention…
Now, the page creator sits on a gold mine of news feed access… which begs the question, should brands change the topic?
50 new Nissan Cubes are driving off Canadian cubes dealer lots this month. Each one’s being driven by a brand advocate you only wish you had hired to tout your brand.
The new cars are the reward for months of creation and promotion by these musicians, DJs, dancers, programmers, designers, bloggers, podcasters, poets, writers and artists, and all kinds of creative thinkers; the cream of the crop of 500 competing “auditions” broadcast online over the last three months via social channels. Nissan openly called The Hypercube a social media marketing experiment, choosing to invest only in this channel, and is now pleased to announce (or tweet, perhaps) the successful proof of their thesis.
Nissan Canada’s creative agency, Capital C, went beyond the boilerplate hey-make-us-a-video and please-retweet-our-propaganda “campaigns” that are all too common these days, by offering prizes on which creative minds could really envision spending time and effort.
The Contest
Of 7000 applicants, 500 elite were given Hypercube canvases to audition for the mass public, stumping for daily votes with photos and animation, video, poetry and song. Competitors even took their campaigning offline, including Telma “TSwizz” Costa, who created and distributed pins to drive traffic, and Sean “Cube Man” Williams who literally drove offline traffic in his homemade cardboard Cube costume.
The cream rose quickly, as canvasses brought out the best from these competitors. And believe me, if you followed or friended any of them, you were hearing about it.
Over the course of the contest, so much exceptional content was created, it’s difficult to “highlight” the best stuff. Here are pieces of just three of the intense and daily updated canvasses:
You can view all of the winning canvasses at thehypercube.ca
The Platforms
The Hypercube site was just the town hall of this experience, though, as competitors created videos on YouTube…
Posted images to Flickr…
Tweeted (like crazy)…
built web pages and blogs, and invoked social graphs from their other communities. For example, contestant Andre Molnar looked to leverage the passionate Drupal community, by promising to create the “Drupliconcube,” a Nissan cube “decked out in Druplicons, spreading the Drupal love to the streets.
Deeper Interactions
More than just pleas for votes, these daily updates became meaningful interactions between the competitors. Williams sent out a YouTube dance-off challenge to his fellow participants, and created this mashup:
Some social media users voiced disapproval of the campaign, including Shawn Micallef, who questioned the quality of the engagement suggests a line had been crossed, from daily updates from friends and outright spam. I disagree, as social media users are constantly pushing out posts and tweets that may annoy some, but be useful to others. This is the very nature of Social Currency, and one can, in fact, “Unfollow.” Furthermore, this type of repetition occurs with non-marketing events even more than with campaigns. When Michael Jackson died, or during the Obama campaign, the tidal wave of repetitious posts seemed to drown most other conversation. The Hypercube campaign wasn’t perfect, but neither is Facebook, nor Twitter, themselves.
The Finale
Such a momentous story had to end with an explosive climax, and on June 24, it did just that. Contestants gathered with friends at events simulcast in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. (Small-town contestants got together on their own in other provinces, too.) Contestants performed live between DJ sets, mingled over drinks, and sat in the highly-coveted Cubes on display. Winners were announced across the country via big screen video and some tight computer graphics. The dance floor of CiRCA in Toronto was like a minefield as groups of friends exploded in cheers when the local winners were listed off. It seemed like an endless supply of car keys were handed out, and many of the winners were ironically rendered speechless.
One can’t argue the level of quality and vastly disparate creative skillsets with which the Cube brand has been aligned.
The Outcome
Now, Nissan Canada has tons of authentic content to work with, generated by skilled creatives at a low cost. The winners are required to update their canvasses twice a month for the next year, but the brand will get a lot more than that, I predict, as these content generators are eager to share their experiences on the road. And they’ve also got promises to keep with their fans. Singer/Cube-winner Curtis Santiago promised to drive to a voter’s house in his cube, anywhere in Canada, to play a house party. No doubt he’ll be blogging and vlogging the whole trip.
I’ll admit, at first glance, I assumed Nissan Canada and Capital C’s campaign was a huge gamble. All too often, big brands create deep connections with new communities, but then drop these connections as soon as their campaign is over. Nissan has demonstrated how to think and plan long term; find–no, create passionate advocates who themselves created a plethora of content and awareness; and build a brand in partnership with their customers.
The Community
Moreover, this campaign was just the spark, a great success already, but the story of the Nissan Cube and the CubeCommunity is just beginning. Cubecommunity.ca teases us with a “coming soon” page, but the long-term strategy is obvious, as the community has all of the core requirements, starting with deeply invested and passionate community leaders. I look forward to following this community, and, in many ways, the hard work for Nissan and Capital C has just begun.
I’m happy to admit, the bar’s just been raised for “social media marketing.”
Back in May, I tweeted eight “Web Strategy Reminders” that got some great responses. Here they are altogether, with two bonus reminders to allow people to laugh like Count von Count when they’re done.
Web Strategy reminder No. 1: If you’re just adding a “Community” tab to your web site, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 2: If you’re pushing Content out through banners, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 3: If everything you build has a unique interface, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 4: If you start with a tactical gimmick on a platform your market doesn’t use, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 5: If your platform doesn’t separate form from function, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 6: If you’re ignoring the fact that Search is the number one way that users find you, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 7: If you’re not considering how your experience will change over time, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 8: If you’re not implementing a holistic measurement strategy beyond clickstream analysis, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 9: If you’re ignoring the fact that your employees are telling the story of your brand (good or bad) better than your corporate web site, You’re doing it wrong.
Web Strategy reminder No. 10: If you’re excited about your new banner ad pushing to your new television ad on your new Flash web site, You’re doing it wrong.
My 1,700+ followers on Twitter may have caught a few of my tweets recently about my frustration with Twitter’s 2,000 follow limit. That is, one can only follow up to 2,000 people until one’s own followers has caught up to that number.
As it turns out, one’s followers only have to reach 1,850 before one can add more follows. (For those of you that don’t really understand what I’m talking about, please join twitter and follow me, and I’ll be happy to explain further. Or, watch Commoncraft’s ‘Twitter In Plain English’.)
I learned this new information last night, as I saw that I had surpassed 1,800 followers and was also now following 2,013 tweeters. This ratio had apparently been “approved” by the twitter code and database, allowing me to continue to find more great people to tweet with. I understand that Twitter needs some type of processs or security against spammers, who generally follow hundreds of tweeters without reciprocal follows using scripts and other techniques. For this reason, new twitter users soon learn the value of gauging the ratio of follows to followers, filtering for spammers. Basically, if you don’t “earn” the followers, you’ll be limited to 2,000 people…
Also last night, the Twitter team chose to eliminate accounts they judged as spam accounts. I woke up to about 90 less “followers” and was only now following about 1,975. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to follow or be followed by spammers, but this couldn’t have happened at a worse time for me. I’m now once again struggling with the 2K barrier designed to thwart spammers — and only because all the spammers were removed.
Every community needs spam and abuse measures. However, Twitter’s 2K barrier is an over-simplistic measure that should have other checks and balances that don’t limit power users like me. If followers see that my follow-to-follower ratio is suspect, they can choose not to follow me. This is allowing the community and users to self-police.
I should be back up to 1,850 soon enough, but a little more thought should have been put into this measure. Say, once a user has passed the 1,850 mark, dropping under again no longer applies; or, before the Twitter team hits the big trapdoor lever to dump spammers, they could have thought about how this would affect their user types… With such “simple and elegant” functionality, one would think that this wouldn’t be too long a conversation.
Oh YEAH! The community of programmers at the recent Drupalcon in Boston was a passionate mob of some of the best minds in web creation. They’ve built a great product, and it’s about to hit the mainstream — in a torrential flood of mass adoption.
What sites should run Drupal?
Yours.
What is Drupal? A content and community management system. In a nutshell, everything your CMS does, Drupal does it better.
The key point for the hundreds of Drupal developers in Boston? From the creator of Drupal himself, Dries Buytaert, “Release the Killer App.”
Buytaert outlined a few key improvements to meet this ambitious goal that are in the works for Drupal version 7, due in a few months. Future killer app release aside, the features and benefits of Drupal are already very apparent in the latest implementations.
Drupal shops demonstrated several impressive case studies in Boston, with a wide range of product goals and technological implementations. The key point? It’s not just “Freaks and geeks” that are using Drupal for their World of Warcraft blogs.*
* Note: This is no insult, the Drupal community was empowered by the labels “Freaks and geeks” when applied by keynote speaker Chris DiBona, Google’s Open Source champion. Also, World of Warcraft is a powerful online community any corporation should only be jealous of.
So what can one create with Drupal?
Drupal boasts over 3,400 “modules.” These code sets bolt on to one’s Core Drupal site in minutes — or as fast as your server can accept file transfers… With these modules, some Drupal rockstar developers and themers and some great team leaders, these are six examples of the amazing creations that are possible.
“We wanted to practice what we preach.” – The PopSci Team.
Pingvision, one of the newish self-described ‘Drupal shops’ worked with the PopSci Interactive team to produce the online presence of the famous print magazine devoted to innovation. You can read the full case study here.
Pingvision developed a blog-style interface with publishing and workflow managment for the content creators. To meet some of the specifications, Pingvision’s developers created new modules, and is currently making them available for all Drupal users.
“IBM endorses and implements Drupal.” — Oliver Siodmak, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services
Zuda is DC Comics’ foray into online community for comic readers — a market that is nowhere near the size of the 90s equivalent, but one that is even more passionate than ever. Zuda attempts to find the next Superman, 300 or 30 days of night, comic books-turned movies that have built cash-raking brands for DC.
Comic creators can submit their work to the community for rating. Popular work can earn these artists and writers huge opportunity in the form of a contract with DC.
IBM produced the site, executing a brilliant theme and interface for reading and rating comics on screen. The full case study is here.
“We spent a lot of money on that, and now it’s yours.” — Ed Sussman, Fast Company Team Lead on sharing a customized module with the Drupal community.
At the Boston Drupalcon, the hybrid team of multiple companies presenting new Fast Company online community seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. The 120-pages of information architecture proved to be a challenge to Drupalize; the 500K strong existing community from Fast Company’s legacy site was obviously a task to integrate; and the hard launch date required to unveil at the Inc500 conference was unforgiving, but the outcome is impressive.
See the case study here.
Fast Company 2.0-ifyed it’s community with new tools, a new interface and a new spike in engagement. The team reports acceleration in traffic and time-on-site. If you join one site on this list, make it this one.
Warner Bros. Records Artists’ Communities
“The web site is the centre of the company.” — Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros. Head of Technology
Warner Bros. has fully embraced Drupal as their solution-of-choice for all of their artists’ web sites. Fans of Britney (whoops, Britney.com’s been Drupalized, but she ain’t on Warner Bros., she’s on Sony BMG, so I dunno, let’s go with) Ashley Tisdale, Josh Groban, Avenged Sevenfold, Michael Buble and My Chemical Romance are enjoying new communities built around their respective and unique needs and wants.
The Warner Bros. web team boasted speed to market as one Drupal’s main benefits — they have launched more than 50 web communities in the past year, with unique databases, modules and themes (wild and crazy pink for Britney’s young fans; sparkling head shots and big type for Josh Groban’s more mature audience). The sites’ retention, according to the technical lead, easily quadruples when they switch from the one-way flash sites to Drupal’s user-empowering engine.
Developer and business teams around the world worked together to produce the new Amnesty International web site. This implementation features Drupal’s highly-scalable localization (translation) module, including RTL (right-to-left for Arabic). CivicActions developed the site to add future languages with ease. Read the full case study here.
I don’t know if you’re experiencing it too, but if 2007 saw a social explosion online, the first quarter of 2008 is witness to the fallout. As Facebook adoption slows, Twitter is exploding with new users, LinkedIn’s engagement seems to be soaring, and niche social media sites are finding their stride among an empowered prosumer population. I’ve spent the last few months using a multitude of tools, and finding new life outside of Facebook.
The fallout is everywhere, and new, real growth from that fallout is happening thanks to users spanning beyond the early adopters and tech-savvy teens. So, ‘Hi’ to the grandmothers and other “late adopters” (CEOs?) out there joining the conversation. It’s richer now, and we’re all benefiting.
The multitude of new social networks – Facebook, MySpace and Dogster alike – are complaining that users no longer have any loyalty. They arrive, create profiles, upload some photos, and stumble on to (upon?) a new tool or community and move on, sometimes never to be seen again.
(Consequently, marketers are very worried about what this foreshadows for their brands. That’s another blog post, however, and more suited to my new (shameless plug alert) blog, Badvocates.com.)
To build a strategy that prepares for this, each community should consider focusing on the five ‘I’s of online community. They aren’t rocket science, but they address the common mistake that site and tool builders are making: focusing on the hip and nifty 2.0 technology at the expense of defining the true value of that tech and the community one hopes it will foster.
Take twitter for example — launched in June of 2006, and the favourite of the elite when trying to sound in the know. Half a million users and a thousand copy cats. But most non-twitterers, and even many twitterers themselves, still question the value of the tool.
Twitter, and the designers of your online community (social network, blog, fan page, online brand presence, or twitter rip-off) must consider the five ‘I’s of online communities:
1. Investment
I’m not referring to your VC. But rather your users’ investment, and how you design your community to allow them to invest their time, energy and effort in to your community. The more a user feels they have invested in a community, and the more that community is able to interact with them, the less likely they are to move on to the competition.
2. Incentives
What incentive is there to join? To tell a friend? To stop lurking and really start contibuting to the community?
… And how difficult is it? It’s certainly not enough to say “everyone else is using it” — The public may come, but this fact won’t make them stay… It’s a self-defeating strategy.
3. Information
Arm your users with the info to understand the ever-increasing value of your product. Netvibes does this well — inserting a bright banner on my personal homepage whenever they improve their toolset. (Which I accept and close at my leisure.) Furthermore, arm your users with the ability to advocate your service. Twitter could benefit greatly from this. People are constantly questioning the value of the service, and it’s a difficult concept to sell, unless you’ve tried it.
4. Interaction
Ah yes, the most difficult element to conceive, capture and champion. How do your users interact with each other? How do they even find each other? How do they interact with you? How do you braodcast new improvements? This is the core of Facebook’s value . Members most find out about new applications when friends choose to use them, creating easy access and viral adoption.
5. Innovation
What are you doing better than before? Better than the competition? What’s the next improvement you’re launching? Can your users evangelize it in- and outside of the community?
Ultimately, a successful online community doesn’t come from the tool, it comes from the adoption of that tool and its continued use.
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Oh YEAH! The community of programmers at the recent