Two Auburn students harness the power of social media

This past week, Taylor Swift made a visit to the Auburn campus. She was stopping by to give Ryan Leander and Matthew Mahaffey a hug. In January, they set out with a goal to get a hug from Taylor Swift. By harnessing the power of Facebook, Twitter, a webpage, YouTube and a little bit of word of mouth marketing, they won fans over, and reached Taylor herself. She then issued them three challenges through YouTube. Each challenge was accepted and Leander and Mahaffey created a video with their responses integrated with their fans videos.

Through these videos, they engaged their audience, inspired collaboration and built buzz to achieve their goal. What can you take from their social media marketing campaign and use it to engage your audience? Visit their webpage for the full story.

Here is the video inspired from their second challenge:



Source: Washington Post

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The interactivity on your webpage

Shane Richmond adds his views to a current debate currently happening in the UK: How much commenting and interaction should take place with the community when it comes to online newspapers? The article points out that the majority of those who contribute are a small segment of angry readers. There also needs to be a way for users to interact beyond the small comment box typically found at the bottom of the article.

What do you think of these points? Is this part of the reason your company is having trouble diving into social media? While one or two boisterous readers may dominate your comments, how can you join them in the conversation? Is there a way to promote interaction from your other readers who may be content to just read your articles? How can we learn from this debate that is taking place and apply it to our own online communities?

Women showing more enthusiasm in online networks

A new study at USC shows that many males are showing social networking fatigue. A study recently showed that 67% of women under 40 stated that their online interactions were just as important as their offline. Only 38% of men felt the same. In 2007, the opposite was found as 69% of men found their online interactions more important compared to 35% of women.

In addition, the article also looks at how men are often the early adapters, and eventually lose interest. But it's the women, who are slower to adopt, who end up being more loyal to certain products and communities.

Read the full article here.

Number of Registered Twitter Users Surpass 100 Million

According to this post from Adam Ostrow of Mashable, twitter finally revealed their big number at the Chirp Conference. 105 million! Can you say shocking? Twitter continues to grow adding about 300,000 new users everyday. It is still behind Facebook with numbers boasting 400 million, but the gap is becoming smaller by the day. What does mean for communities?

Conan O'Brien uses web tools to continue entertaining millions

With his final night of the Tonight Show taking place earlier this year, Conan O'Brien has continued his presence in the American public successfully using online community tools. Through a network of Twitter (@ConanObrien), blogs, and fan communities, Conan O'Brien has sold out the majority of his comedy tour that will be kicking off this week. Read the full article here.

Farmers Become "Agvocates" with AgChat Foundation

Almost one year ago, AgChat was formed on Twitter to serve farmers interested in connecting and sharing their world with one another. The chat takes place every Tuesday night from 8-10EST. Because of AgChat's success, a whole crop (excuse the pun) of farmers have created their own social network, AgChat Foundation. The space provides farmers with a medium to advocate for their profession and for other farmers in the United States.

This farmer led group “is designed to empower more farmers to leverage social media as a tool to tell agriculture’s story. The Foundation will educate and equip farmers and ranchers with the skill set needed to effectively engage on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, Linkedin and other social media services. It will give them knowledge to unlock new tools to effectively tell their story. Research shows that social media is a growing opportunity for farmers to have a stronger voice in educating people about the business of growing food, fuel, feed and fiber.”

For more information on AgChat Foundation, please visit their website.