20/80 split because paid and earned media are best friends!


There are some great social media campaigns flying under the radar at the moment. There one common theme I can see amongst them is that they are not getting any support from paid media.

Paid media is earned media's best friend, They work really well together. I think if you are looking to carve up a digital budget you should put at least 20% aside for paid media to help support the idea/content, this will then drive earned media results.

Where the idea lives = Advertising Model
Facebook Page = Facebook Advertising
Youtube Video = StumpleUpon, Facebook Advertising or Youtube ‘Supported Ad Model’ (I haven’t used this yet, has anyone had any results with this?)
Twitter = No efficient advertising model

Image via Brown Cardigan bros

Top 50 Youtube LOLs of 2009

Looking at the number of RTs and how much I like the clip, this is the Top 50 Youtube Gold clips of 2009. Congratulations to Ask Propecia, which even my mum and dad are fans of.

1. Ask Propecia the crack ho


2. Bangs will take you to da movies via his green screen


3. Boy gets bacon taken away so he moves out of home


4. Best Keyboard Cat in a long time


5. Every single Kramer entrance, in chronological order


6. Pinata accidents montage
7. Urinate in your golf club
8. The 100 greatest quotes from The Wire
9. Dating video goes really wrong
10. The best commercial ever! Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental
11. Amazing wheelbarrow race
12. It's a cat. With a box.
13. Bill Dance Fishin Blooper No.3
14. Pole dance ruins wedding
15. No need to wipe your bum anymore!
16. Morbidly obese woman + mechanical bull = WIN
17. Drugs to do on a first date
18. The @bag_raiders do the best cover ever of Bangs 'Take U to Da Movies'
19. Top 60 ghetto names
20. The worlds best dancer evah!
21. Old man breaks it down
22. Internet for kidz!
23. A really weird trip to the doctor
24. Best 80s fight scene
25. Massive gymnastic fail, includes good groin shot
26. Giant Seagull attack on Nine News
27. Barrier jump FAIL
28. Top Ten Seinfeld moments
29. We are douchebags
30. Unnecessary censoring of Sesame Street!
31. Hands up who has been shagged by a rare parrot?
32. Arthur the weather man memefied with Spiderman!
33. 100 greatest hits of Youtube in 4mins!
34. Courtship vs Dating- Christian Bad Acting
35. We need weather men like this in Australia
36. Horse kicks moron in the face
37. The perfect valentines gift for that special girl in your life
38. Worst acting of all time! There going to eat me! via Troll 2
39. An introduction: To Making Out
40. Top 10 Best Talk Show fights
41. Old man taking down the robber
42. Little dancing Ranga vs. MJ
43. Emplastro, Master Videobomber!
44. Auto-tune cats song awesomeness
45. The Pug head tilt
46. Best Death Scene Ever
47. The 1991 AFL Grand Final Halftime Show
48. 1987 Dating videos found
49. 80s Swazye on the philosophy of dancin

And my very first piece of Youtube Gold!
50. 'The best fight scene EVER!'


Background
The Youtube Golden Hour

Every Friday at 4pm on Twitter I post all the best clips of that week in a segment I like to call Youtube Gold. It has now clocked over the 3 month mark so I thought it would be a good idea to create the best of YTGold in the form of the ‘Top 50 Video Lols of 2009’. If you ever find any funny videos please pass em on!

McCann's Birthday
At the moment my good mates Mark Pollard and Age Conte are cooking up a great present for Advertising Agency McCann’s 50tth. They are hosting an internet party where every hour, staff are putting out new content that is related to the number 50th.They are giving punters the chance to get involved by giving people $50 if they create something constructive in the honour of 50.

Facebook Tattoo Calendar

Just in case you forgot you can still purchase from me the amazing Christmas present of the 2010 Facebook Tattoo Calendar, only $20! All proceeds will be going to Bowel Cancer Research. Which is also where the $50 from McCann’s will be going.

Social Media is not all about long term relationships


I used to think that Social Media Marketing was all about the long term relationships, the campaign model was the devil's work!

How I was wrong.

Luke Slattery founder of Movember flipped this whole idea of long term relationship on its head. Movember only speak to people 3 months a year (October to December). They realised that people have got a lot of other charities to support and that they do not want to be taking everyone’s time up.

I tend to agree, especially if you are a part of another active social platform. If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter then people are not going to be shocked when you stop talking, they understand why you have stopped. It is not going to affect them either because they have a number of other people who are part of their newsfeed. However if you had created a branded destination community and you abandon it, then that is another story.

We are currently looking after The Contender Australia Facebook Page, it is going great guns and has clocked over 22,000 fans in less than 8 weeks (case study in the works). We plan on stopping communication a few weeks after the conclusion of the show. We will then pick up the conversation again in 12 months time when the second season comes online.

Picture thanks to the best site on the Internet Brown Cardigan

Case Study: Seek Volunteering Unplugged

Problem: Seek had aligned with Volunteer Australia to provide the back engine to help volunteers connect with NFP jobs required Seek Volunteer. There has long been a myth that volunteering is what old grannies did in Op Shops. Seek wanted to help dispel this myth.

We (Naked Communications + The Population) were set the task of getting more people to use the Seek site to look for Volunteering roles.

Strategy: Create a site that shared the stories of people who had volunteered, focusing on the stories of influential Australian bloggers.

Insight: People who read blogs were probably some of the most advanced online users. They would most likely perform a number of tasks online (banking, looking for jobs, buying products). These would be the type of users who would use Seek Volunteer to find a volunteer job.

Execution: We looked to get ten of the most influential Australian bloggers to go and volunteer at an organization of their choice. Seek Volunteer would then donate $500 to that organisation on behalf of the blogger.

We isolated a list of 20 bloggers who we believed were influential and were relevant to talk about volunteering. We used the Top 100 Australian Bloggers as a starting point. We then went out with an email to these ten.

We created a site which would allowed people to read all the stories in one place as well as share their own story.

The site was supported with Banners on SEEK homepage, SEEK Volunteer homepage, Ninemsn and the Nuffnang blogging network.

Volunteering Unplugged was launched on May 11th 2009 at the start of National Volunteer Week. With the launch we did another outreach to the broader community and got the number 1 subscribed Australian Youtuber Natalie Tran (Community Channel) to talk about the site and industry support from NFP websites Third Sector and Go Volunteer and marketing site Mumbrella.

Result
We ended up with a site which had 57 volunteering stories, of the people that visited the site 25% of them checked out the Seek Volunteering website afterwards. Seek Volunteer were really happy with the project and are looking to extend on it in 2010.

Learnings
Blogger Outreach is really really tough
We ended up getting ten bloggers but we had to look beyond the original list of 20 and it was really tough. I think we underestimated how busy most bloggers were and giving up a whole day to volunteer at an organization was a massive commitment. In my experience there is probably only a handful of Australian bloggers (20 people?) who make enough money not to have to work full time.

This required us to change tact, what we found out was that most bloggers had volunteered in the past so instead of getting them to volunteer again we got them to share their previous stories.

Man Week
Olivia Whitty who worked on the Seek volunteer project went onto run a similar project, Man Week for Outreach. Man Week worked on the same principle of getting male bloggers to share stories about what it means to be a man. They were lucky enough to get the support of two influential bloggers in Mark Pollard and Gavin Heaton who went over and above and shared amazing stories that lead to a number of other people sharing stories.

Blogging in general
Blogging in Australia is still small. When you look at the Top 100 Australian Bloggers the content quality and readership drop dramatically once you go below the Top 45. In America you could run a whole campaign on Blogger Outreach, in Australia that is just not possible.

Blogger Outreach will only work here if you are targeting a global audience (Dosh Wallets) or you are also targeting writers at major online content and news portals.

The science of a great Youtube video - The Station and OralB


Making content for Youtube is a science and when you understand the formula it becomes quite easy to replicate.

Recently a number of the top Youtubers created a new channel together, The Station. They used all the tricks that had gotten them so far (boobs in the thumbnails, fast editing, weblebrity appearances, and annotations asking for favouriting and rating).

In my opinion, The script and filming is average but that just helps to confirm that with the right formula you can turn any dog into a hero. The channel is now the 15th most subscribed of all time! The show is also acting as a great tactic to get great exposure to the actor’s personal Youtube channels.


OralB have done a great job at creating what I see as the first ad that has been specifically made for Youtube. It uses a lot of the editing tricks that many of the top Youtubers employ.

Edit: Andy brought to my attention that the brand is not OralB but OraBrush

List of Music Festivals using Social Media well


We are well and truly into the Music Festival season. Promoters have always been great at using social media so I thought I would take a look at some of the better examples of music festivals using social media.

1. Stereosonic

Their twitter account is run by the general manager of the festival which gives the inside scoop on the happenings of the festival. This is also used to gauge feedback of certain ideas.

They have created a competition on Facebook, where punters have to take photos of the Stereosonic advertising, they then go in the draw to win tickets. Here is an example of a fan going over and above to get the ticket (action kicks off at 30secs)


2. Defqon.1 Maximum Exposure
One of the best competitions this year was run through dance site Inthemix
Defqon the competition asked people to get the Defqon logo out to the most people. The prize was to win a trip to Holland for music festival Defqon.1


Check out some of the other great efforts


3. Outside Lands (USA)

Looking abroad, this is a great example of what could is possible. Attedees at Outside Lands could use kiosks so you could upload your own photos and videos of the shows Then share them online with friends on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. They also streamed all the festival live on Youtube. Read the full case study on InsideFacebook.


4. Lollapoolza (USA)
An amazing case study on measuring the effectiveness of Social Media for ticket sales to Lollapoolza. Clever use of tracking tags and google analytics, read here.

5. Seeding a Green Festival (UK)
A case study from the London Green Festival, which gave the chance for a band to open the festival. Really nice simple case study to read.

6. One Movement Festival
If you didn't live in Perth there was a good chance you may have missed out on what was happening at the One Movement festival/conference. However Andrew McMillen was able to inform everyone with what they missed out with live blogging/twittering/facebook coverage of the festival.

7. BDO and Splendour Forums
FasterLouder are now looking after the forums for Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival, and Big Day Out. If you are interested in music and digital media Neil Ackland's (founder of Sound Alliance) blog is a must read

BONUS
Although not a music festival, I thought I would add this one. The Facebook Admins have been taking photos of bikes around Syndey and if your bike was featured you would win tickets to the festival, nice idea. The festival kicking off on Wednesday night, go here for more info and tickets!


I am looking to build this list out. Let me know what festival has done something different in the social space and I will add them to the list.

How to get an internship! Got any tips?

With all this chatter about graduates getting jobs at the moment. I thought I would throw my two cents in about how to land an internship.

1. Know where you want to go
I think the first thing to do is suss out the situation and find out who is doing kick arse work in the area you are interested in. Make a list and go for the top of the pile.

2. Volunteering is not enough
Having an intern is a lot hassle for employees these days. You have to always find them small tasks to do. So instead of just asking for an internship find something that you can do for the company that can add value. Social Media offers a great opportunity for Gen Y looking to get an internship. A number of marketers don’t get it and want someone young to explain it for them. If I was looking for an internship at the moment in a marketing organisation, I would tell them that I would like to compile a report for them, on what people are saying about their brand online and what are competitor brands doing in social media?

3. Something different

Have a talking point. My next door neighbour, Josh Clement sent me this great video he created to help him find an internship. Awesome.

4. Contacts
When I was at University, my mum knew a lot of people in advertising so she kept on trying to introduce me to people working in Advertising. It shitted me to tears, I wanted to make it on my own. That was until she helped me get my first break with Sputnik. Do not be stubborn like I was, take all the help you can get. Most people in this world will try to help you out and will enjoy seeing someone succeed.

What other tips do you have for graduates looking for jobs/internships?