What happens in 2 hours online!?!

So, exactly what does happen in 2 hours on the internet?

Petra Neiger, a Cisco employee and blogger, spent 2 hours travelling from San Jose to the San Francisco International Airport last week. The journey was so painful she felt inspired to find out what happens on social media - and not surprisingly, reported some enormous findings...

So, in just 120 minutes: 396,000 million searches on google were done! 5.4 million fresh tweets and 5 million new status published on Facebook published. 1.6 million Facebook applications were installed, and 25,000 new users joined Twitter. Not to mention the 167 million videos on Youtube were viewed. Oh, and itunes sold ONLY 334,000 tunes!

So, the real point to these findings is... how do companies cut through the noise - and get the right communication messages to the right audiences. Here the clear distinct winning strategy is to be creative and encourage interaction from consumers.

Anyone in marketing knows simply, how subjective the word 'creative' is. So, here are a few of my favourite campaigns and tactics that I feel have been creative in capturing and engaging their audience.

LaSenza and it's cup size choir combined musical notes, with busty beautys. An interactive viral campaign grew accross social media and even transcended across both genders!

Ikea with its facebook tagging to promote its new store in Malmo. Simply, the store manager had a profile created, and uploaded pictures of 12 showrooms. Whoever was tagged first on a product, won it for free. The pictures (and Ikea) spread like wildfire accross profiles once tagging and word of it spread. You can see below how it worked...

Finally, a mention for American Express. This highlights that social media isn't just about young products, but can just as effectively reach high end consumers. In launching the Open Forum that focused on business needs and tips, renowned bloggers were left responsible for content on the site. This created a win-win-win. Minimal cost as bloggers updated and generated content, and directed traffic via their existing blogs. It was targetted at the target audience and again, the correct audience was directed from related blogs. Finally, the content (being business focused) reinforced the brand image of American Express.

The key all of these examples focus on it clear identification of the target segment. Who they wanted to communicate to, and what the objective was. LaSenza wanted to increase awareness and promote a new range. Ikea wanted to promote a new store launch. American Express wanted to strengthen its image within the business community and engage potential new customers. All of these were achieved, with the additional benefit of reaching a global audience.

Another important factor that should be considered is, how do companies keep track of all the various touchpoints of possible 3rd party consumer communications about them! Well, quite simply they can't! I think i'll save this topic for another post, another day ;)