Archive for the 'Web Strategy' Category

Sweepstakes and Contests are Hot on Wildfire

Published by Brian Wesolowski on August 10, 2010 in Digital Content, Web Strategy and social media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

ictQATAR Marketing Manager Julia Astashkina explores the booming world of online marketing and how new applications are making it easier than ever to find creative and affordable marketing solutions.

Consumers in Doha have already embraced traditional contests and sweepstakes – who hasn’t received a paper entry ticket to win a car at MegaMart or been tempted to switch banks by generous sweepstakes offers to win your salary times twelve? I know someone who flew to Singapore for free, thanks to a bank promotion. As businesses move their marketing efforts onto sites like Facebook and Twitter, promotions like contests and sweepstakes are becoming even more relevant and easier to manage.

According to Forrester Research, brands that run contests have twice as many fans as those that don’t. The entire notion of social media is built upon interaction and two-way communication. But simply creating a fan page for the sake of just having it in place isn’t going to land results. Online marketing efforts must be social, simple and highly engaging to succeed.

And what could be more engaging than a chance to win something special? There’s a whole industry developing around social media marketing applications, geared to handle online promotions. Some of the best application I have found are Wildfire, Simkl Promo Manager and Flowtown.  For me, Wildfire is on top of the list. It makes it easy for marketers to create professional looking, branded social media marketing campaigns and to simultaneously publish them on social media platforms.

The things I like most about Wildfire are:

  1. Scalable — you can run promotions small or big
  2. Multiple options — sweepstakes, coupons, photo and essay contests, and giveaways
  3. Affordable — starting at $0.99 per day suitable for the smallest blogger or the largest corporation alike
  4. Easy integration with Facebook fan pages, Twitter, or a company website
  5. Make promotions fun, engaging and interactive

It's easy to create a promotion through Wildfire

Managing promotions on Wildfire is easy. Once you create an account and connect the application to Facebook, just provide the dates of the contest, the types of prizes, the fields for the entry form, specific parameters about contest entry and rules, and upload any additional artwork you want to include.

One example of a highly successful campaign through Wildfire was by KLM’s in flight iFly magazine, which ran a premium sweepstakes using and offered its readers a chance to win a meet and greet with DJ Tiësto in Amsterdam. Over the month long campaign they received tens of thousands of sweepstakes entries from Facebook and Twitter, as well as a sharp growth in Facebook fans.

KLM's successful promotion

There are many more Wildfire success stories, with organizations ranging large corporations, like Pepsi, to small businesses and non-profits. One of the most successful campaigns was for an animal rescue organization in the U.S.  It was based around people uploading stories about their pets and why they love animals. The campaign received over 10,000 entries. In traditional marketing, you would have to spend a lot of money to get similar results.

Bottom line – online promotions are not intimidating to manage at all and with applications such as Wildfire it is much easier to execute a successful campaign You don’t have to be an expert in marketing to do what the most successful brands do to get your target audience’s attention.  Perhaps you can offer a coupon on your company’s Facebook page and collect new emails while you are at it. Or let people know about a sweepstakes for a free chocolate cake for your child’s school fundraiser. The possibilities are endless.

A Move to Open Source Software

Published by Brian Wesolowski on June 15, 2010 in Design, Digital Content, Technology and Web Strategy. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Thanks to the kindness of my boss, I am soon going to become very educated in Open Source Software. I just received approval to go to OSCON 2010, the leading open source software event. So what is open source software? It’s essentially computer software where the source code is made available to the public (most importantly the community of developers) to be altered, revised or tweaked to improve the software. Unlike a lot of software products where the source code is copyrighted, open source software is available with flexible licenses, such as a Creative Commons license.

So why is Open Source Software so interesting to me? Besides the high-level thoughts about how it can spur innovation and all that, it’s mostly because I hate feeling locked in – locked into a room because of the weather, locked into a service agreement on my mobile phone, or locked into a vendor because they created the software. For a long-term web development project, my company was locked into a proprietary Content Management System (CMS). When it was developed many years back, it was innovative and served us well, but like many proprietary software it became outdated. There were updates to it, but it wasn’t keeping pace with new products hitting the market. Whenever we wanted something new not in the original CMS, we had to pay for development of it.  We stuck with the product because of the time, work and cost it would take to move to a new CMS.

Well all that is changing. We have decided that the long term cost of sticking with a propriety CMS will be more than switching to a new, more sophisticated CMS – and we are switching to an Open Source Software solution. So why Open Source? We believe it will allow us greater flexibility for the future. Open Source Software – especially if you choose a mainstream one with a large community of developers behind it – can generally be easily updated, is constantly being revamped and innovative plug-ins are regularly developed. And more than one vendor/developer will know how to work with it. This means you aren’t locked into a vendor, you can add-in new features fairly easily, and you also aren’t paying licensing fees.

There are certainly potential concerns about a move to Open Source for management of our website. Many people raise security concerns, especially in terms of hacking. Also there is the question of the type of guaranteed support and service you can get compared to a licensed software.  But at the same time, many prominent organizations have shifted to Open Source Software for their websites such as the White House and Sony Music.

I’m not sure Open Source Software is right in every circumstance, but it is certainly something I believe should be considered when making software decisions. I’m excited about our upcoming migration to an open source software for our corporate website and I look forward to hearing the latest thinking and developments in it open source at OSCON.  I will certainly be posting multiple times from there. Let me know if you have any experiences with Open Source Software!

Google Apps for Education

Published by Brian Wesolowski on May 6, 2010 in Technology and Web Strategy. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

There was a big splash in the international media last week when Oregon became the first state in the US to announce plans to use Google Apps for Education statewide. There are approximately 400,000 students in Oregon’s education system (more than double the number in Qatar) and the estimated cost-savings by adopting Google Apps is $1.5 million per year – yes, per year!

What is Google Apps in Education? It’s a FREE bundle of ICT resources for schools that offer cloud-based communications, collaboration and security tools. Schools can set up their email system, use interactive chat features, tap-into collaboration tools and take advantage of multimedia streaming services. This means students can access their school emails through the most popular web-based email service – Gmail. It also means they can create blogs and videos, share documents, analyze data, and work with classmates even when not in the same room. These are real world skills.

Schools that have adopted Google Apps are loving the results. Greg Ferenstein of Mashable interviewed numerous Google Apps developers and users and found that the main reasons schools love it are: they save money, they boost student performance, and they prepare students for the real world. So often with ICT in education solutions, it is hard to measure the benefits, both in terms of cost and student performance. This is proving not to be the case with Google Apps. There are many schools, both k-12 and higher education, that can share concrete data in both.  Check out the Frontline Digital Nation video that highlights one such success story.

I recently attended the ICT in Education Conference in Qatar, and sadly I didn’t hear Google Apps for Education discussed once (I may have missed it). There was certainly a lot of quality discussion on how ICT could help in education, including some free online Web 2.0 tools that could be used, but too much conversation still seemed to center on the cost of technology and “quick wins,” not strategy. Google Apps in education means schools don’t need to invest large amounts in customized, closed IT tools for internal collaboration and communication. They can jump into a more open source solution, saving IT costs, and tapping into one of the biggest, most reliable brands out there. Oh, and remember, it is producing measurable results.

And let us not forget the last point – Google Apps is teaching students real world skills. The skills they are learning by using these cloud based apps – digital writing, editing, analyzing, collaboration – are all increasingly essential to today’s workforce. Adults are forced to use applications like these to excel, so why shouldn’t kids be using them in schools. And I don’t want to hear the argument that letting kids have internet access during class will stop them from focusing. So what if they check their Facebook pages? I check mine constantly throughout the workday, but I still deliver results, and kids will too. We all live in a multitasking world – accept it, and let kids live (and learn) the way they know how in the classroom as well.

I definitely believe Google Apps for Education is something all schools – and school systems – should take a look into as they are developing not only their ICT strategy, but their overall vision and plan. There is tons of potential here – and it’s free!

Leveraging Your Organization with Facebook Fan Pages

Published by mhackner on April 26, 2010 in Web Strategy and social media. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

International Red Cross Red Crescent Society Facebook Fan Page

For many organizations, Facebook is a key element of an effective social media. Over the past six months Facebook Fan pages have grown rapidly in popularity, and have helped many groups more effectively share their messages, and better engage with their constituents. This is not a surprise.  Facebook has 350 million active users and half log-in on a daily basis. Instead of trying to create a space where your constituents will engage with you, go to a place and create a presence to join them!

Large companies like Dell, Microsoft, and Coca Cola use Fan pages to connect with their customers, solicit feedback on products, and build more brand loyalty. Non profit organizations also find great value in Facebook Fan pages. They are a free and easy way to engage in a dialogue with constituents, conduct fundraising, and recruit volunteers.  Some examples of great non profit Facebook Fan pages are the One Campaign, the Livestrong Campaign, and UNICEF.  Regardless of what type of organization you work for, Facebook Fan pages really excel in helping groups “listen” to what their stakeholders have to say. This feature not only adds value to the people your organization is  serving (because their voices are being heard), but it helps your organization be smarter about how it conducts its work.

Is your organization ready for a Facebook Fan Page? Here are several reasons why you might want to consider a foray into the most popular social network:

1. Extending your organization’s presence
Most organizations have web sites, but Facebook provides a great platform for your constituents to “Fan” the work that you do, keep up-to-date on the latest news, sign-up for events, and let their friends know they support your work.  Your audience might not visit your web site everyday, but they probably are logging into Facebook to connect with their friends. This is a great opportunity to catch their attention and stay on their mind.

2. Hosting conversations
By far, this is the most important part of social media and Web 2.0, and Facebook Fan Pages really excels at this!  Where Web 1.0 was read-only, Web 2.0 is a read-write web. This means you should be using social media to engage your audience in a conversation about what matters most to your organization. With a Facebook Fan Page, you can ask people their opinions, highlight other thought leaders and ask people to comment, and allow users to freely post their thoughts about your work and the issues that are important to your organization.  Make sure your Facebook settings allow people to post content to your page!

3. Viral sharing of interesting/unusual items
One of the greatest assets of social media is the fact that it’s really easy to share.  Posting interesting items on your Facebook Fan page will encourage your Fans to not only read your content, but share it with their friends. Also, any time they comment on your Facebook Fan Page or “Like” one of the items in your feed, that behavior will appear in their Facebook profile feed, where all of their friends can see. The more often they engage with your Fan page, the more often you’ll be visible to their friends.

4. Extending thought leaders’ personal networks
Many organizations work hard to raise the visibility of their leaders.  Facebook Fan Pages are a great place to highlight your organization’s thought leadership and promote events that your organization’s leaders are involved in.

5. Targeting and communicating with users by demographics, interests, geography
Creating a Facebook Fan Page lets you better target your audience with communications. When people become your “Fan” on Facebook, you can then send out emails to several at once. You can segment your fans by demographics, interests and geography, and send different messages to different types of users. It can come in handy when you’re trying to connect with a specific group of people around a specific topic or event.

If you’d like to learn more about Facebook Fan pages and how to set one up for your organization, here are some great links to get you started: