The Ideas Campaign Uses Crowdsourcing the Old Fashioned Way: behind closed doors

Kim Vallee — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:45:39 +0000

When I first read about The Ideas Campaign I was excited. An Irish businesswoman launched the campaign two weeks ago. The goal is to ask Irish citizens what can be done to stimulate the economy. My deception comes from the lack of proper social networking skills. As I researched the story, this post transformed into “What a great idea” to “What NOT to do”.

The Great Idea

Forget the long public meetings all over the country. In these days of age, a social networking Web site can serve that purpose more rapidly and more effectively. The fact that you can give your opinions 24 hours a day over a few weeks means that more people can participate than with the traditional ways. This is another example of how the Web improves our life.

Besides the reported popularity of the site, lessons can be learned about how The Idea Campaign missed the target on different fronts. I believe that they could be more popular if they done things right. And it would not have cost more.

A Need for a True Social Networking Site

First of all, I wonder why they did not use a proper social networking application to build their Web site. They are many free open source tools to build such a site. You will need some customizations but it is still inexpensive if you stick to basic needs. Take Pligg for example. Citizens could submit their ideas and anyone could browse them. People could write a comment or vote a la Digg on the ideas.

Building a true community site stimulates people who submitted their ideas to spread the word about your project since they want to reach the Top Ideas status. Moreover, people could develop their ideas on their blogs, which spread the word further and build you page rank.

If you wish to build something like this, you must use the right tools for the job. They are no excuses for not using social networking software. It will be easier for you to manage and more engaging for your users.

My Two cents

How does The Idea Campaign perform on using social media for marketing? Let say that they still have a few things to learn on the art of using social media. They need a skilled Community manager to better promote their brand.

Use the above pointers to create awareness about your personal or corporate brand on Twitter or Facebook. First, start by following more people on Twitter. It is beyond me why any organization does not follow back most of their followers.

To be successful on Twitter, you need to engage in conversations. Do not rely on predictable marketing pitches like “Visit http://www.IdeasCampaign.ie today to submit your ideas that will help rebuild the Irish economy!”.

Instead, stimulate the discussions in your tweets. You could:

summarize an idea and ask for comments to refine the idea (would be easy to do if they had a social networking site)
provide external links to economic news happening in Ireland, the European Community and the World
request people to contribute in a category where you are missing fresh ideas
Retweet (RT) stories of members of your community that are on Twitter
these are only the tips of the iceberg.

I would not even start on how they mismanage their Facebook presence since they created a user profile instead of a Facebook page for their campaign. Even a group would have been better. The fact that they need to approve me as a friend is against marketing 101 for any organization.

Even with these drawbacks, over 2500 ideas were submitted in the first two weeks (but we cannot verify these numbers since we do not see most submitted ideas). The appeal for crowdsourcing on economical issues is there. If you wish to send your ideas, you have until March 31, 2009 to do it.

+ Via Springwise

Using Facebook Fan Page to Promote Your Blog

Kim Vallee — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:21:34 +0000

A few weeks ago I talked about the Quickest and Easiest Way to Promote Your Blog on Facebook. This was based on my own experience and it is still valid. In fact, it may still be the best solution for many bloggers. If you wish to build a brand around your blog, it is another question. The latest changes to the Facebook Fan Pages eliminated my top objection to use them.

With the fan pages behaving almost as user profiles, you can use the same easy techniques I talked about earlier. Moreover, the Fan pages provides statistics on your fan demographics and visits. You can send updates to all your fans (or a target group defined with demographic filters) but you won’t be able to send individual message. Another fact to know is that the owner of a Facebook page stays anonymous.

Having a Facebook page looks more and more appealing. I see the added challenge to build an active community but I also see new opportunities. For example, I answer many viewer’s email behind closed doors. Now I could answer them publicly for the benefit of the group. I am planning to host events to connect with my readers this year. I could report more details on the AHWKV page than on my blog. I feel that over time, it may be better for my brand to promote it via a Fan page – one page per blog.

What do you think? Do you use a Facebook page? If so, do you have any tips to share?

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