Blue Helm

Activate the masses through social media

It’s been a busy few months for us here at Blue Helm. We’ve worked with some exciting new clients –from leading financial advisors at Northwestern Mutual to community education experts at Utah Valley University to the ambitious health food company, SunDrenchers. By far the group we’ve collaborated with the most over the past several months, however, are the folks over at America’s Freedom Festival at Provo, who work tirelessly to organize and promote year-round patriotic celebrations throughout the state of Utah.

The Freedom Festival sponsors one the nation’s largest (if not the largest) Independence Day extravaganza every year called the Stadium of Fire, located in LaVell Edwards Stadium on the campus of BYU. Last year they invited the Jonas Brothers, SHeDAISY and Glenn Beck to perform. And the year before that was Miley Cyrus and Blue Man Group. Big stars like that, in addition to thousands of other dancers, singers, volunteer performers and a trillion pounds of fireworks, make this quite a show. Needless to say, this is no humdrum July 4th celebration, and the Freedom Festival needed a social media campaign to match this colossal patriotic performance.

We strategized here at Blue Helm for a while and decided that the Freedom Festival needed an online campaign that not only energized its thousands of fans, but activated them. How could we use the Freedom Festival’s existing social media platforms to galvanize its fan base into doing something, thus enhancing the admiration, loyalty and passion they have for the organization? What could we do to attract other members of the community to its cause? How could be grow its social media fan base, all the while galvanizing and motivating its existing fans into taking positive action?

To make a long story short, we organized Vote the Voice—a three-part campaign that invited people to vote for a future Stadium of Fire performer. You can read more about the campaign (and the viral stir it caused) here. We promoted the campaign extensively, utilizing Facebook, Twitter and the local media. But the response to Vote the Voice was more than we could have ever anticipated. Over 75,000 votes were cast, some from as far away as New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. Blogs and news sites from across the United States picked up on the story, and we were overwhelmed with thousands of comments, links and wall posts on the Freedom Festival’s social networks. Even now that the campaign has officially ended, fans continue to send us votes and comments saying who they want to see perform this summer.

Moral of the story: Choose a social media campaign that mobilizes your fans and prompts them to do something. The Freedom Festival’s fans are now expert lobbyists, motivating (sometimes begging) other fans to vote for their pick. And it turned out to be a PR coup for the Freedom Festival as well.

Activate your Facebook, Twitter and blog fans. Posting random updates that don’t ask your fans to do anything will result in a lower level of fan participation, thus undermining the point of using social media.

Bill O'Reilly

I was watching The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News last week and heard the controversial host say something unusually distressing. One of his guests mentioned Facebook and Bill immediately rolled his eyes said something to the extent of: “I don’t even know what Facebook and Twitter are, and I don’t care.” (I have searched tirelessly on the Internet for a video or written transcript of the segment, but couldn’t find anything. I’ll keep searching.)

This sounds very bad coming from the highest-rated cable news host. Bill O’Reilly, a seasoned reporter known for his opinions and analyses of current events, doesn’t know or care about social media? Bill, if you’re reading, please accept my humble advice and change your mind about the biggest phenomenon to change the way we communicate since the mobile phone. Here’s why you should think twice about your ambivalence toward social media:

1. Social media changes the world every day, for better or worse. Barack Obama’s campaign arguably won the 2008 presidential election through its consistent participation and interaction with younger voters on social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube. Sarah Palin and other potential candidates currently drive their grassroots political movements through social media. And perhaps most stunningly, the recent protests in Iran over alleged election fraud was largely organized and broadcast through Twitter.

2. Social media is changing the dynamics of our modern media. Once-powerful newspapers are succumbing to bankruptcy at alarming rates. Why? The emergence of cable news is one possible explanation. But blogs and citizen journalists are attracting more and more Americans, undermining traditional media outlets and forcing them to evolve. No one could have envisioned such drastic times for newspapers and the mainstream media. Who’s to say social media won’t dramatically change the potency of Fox News or other cable news outlets within the next decade in a similarly unpredictable way?

3. Social media isn’t going away. It may change over time, but like other communication megatrends of the past few decades (the internet, personal computers, cell phones, etc.), social media is a powerful networking and conversation tool that unites friends, strangers, businesses and families. It won’t be abandoned any time soon.

4. Hundreds of millions of people use social media every day. As a news anchor, someone who reports on the prevailing trends of our society, shouldn’t you care? You alienate your viewers and listeners by saying you don’t know what Facebook is. Roughly one third of Americans actively use Facebook. This is an astonishing statistic. Many of these Facebook users undoubtedly listen to you and trust your judgement of what’s important news. How should they interpret your utter lack of interest or knowledge concerning something so revolutionary, so innovative, so vital?

Do you twitter or text in the middle of a meeting? Do you answer the phone on a date with your spouse? Do you even think about other people in public before you plug-in?

The other week I was in an important meeting where a government official was giving a presentation. He had just started and I was giving him my undivided attention when I was distracted by the guy sitting next to me. He had just pulled out his Blackberry and was typing away. I could easily see that he was tweeting something random. Not only was this guy distracting me, he wasn’t paying attention to the presentation. If this were an isolated incident I wouldn’t care, but it’s something I see almost every day. What has our constant connectivity done to our manners?

Are we so plugged-in now that we can’t be away from phones, Twitter, Facebook or any other communication device for even a few minutes?

Don’t get me wrong. I love smart phones, the internet, social media and all of the other things technology brings. In fact, I love technology so much I started a business that is totally focused around it. That being said, I don’t like how some people just can’t understand when it’s inappropriate to be using said technology.

There are plenty of articles that talk about cell phone or texting etiquette. These articles are great, but I want to make one thing clear: Texting or updating your Twitter account in the middle of a meeting, church, class, movie theater or any other similar venue is distracting and rude.

Don’t be like this guy—cell phone/texting/tweeting karma is real:

What do you think? Do you think it’s okay to text or tweet in settings I’ve mentioned? If so, I would love to hear from you.

The Jonas Brothers performed in 2009's Stadium of Fire.

Blue Helm is proud to work with America’s Freedom Festival at Provo, a nonprofit group that dedicates itself to promoting family, freedom, God and country. One of the Freedom Festival’s great annual events is the Stadium of Fire, an awesome celebration every 4th of July featuring past performers like the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, the Beach Boys, Blue Man Group and the Osmonds. This year, Blue Helm has sponsored the festival’s successful Vote the Voice campaign—an opportunity for Facebook and Twitter fans to recommend who they would like to see perform in a future Stadium of Fire event. Here’s the most recent press release we sent out to Utah’s media about the campaign:

Provo, Utah – November 17, 2009 - America’s Freedom Festival at Provo, in partnership with Blue Helm Communications, officially released today the final online poll for the Stadium of Fire’s Vote the Voice event. After aggressive grassroots and viral lobbying among thousands of fans, the community may now choose between David Archuleta, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Bon Jovi and Eric Dodge to become a potential performer in a future Stadium of Fire celebration.

Fans must visit the Freedom Festival’s Facebook page to access a link to the new online ballot. Over 15,000 votes have been cast since October 15 to narrow the list of favorite contenders to five. The new online poll of five names is comprised of leading nominees from the last two phases of the Freedom Festival’s Vote the Voice campaign—an energetic and ongoing vote held since September on the festival’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

A unique example of how Vote the Voice has influenced the Freedom Festival’s consideration of future performers is the inclusion of southern Utah country singer Eric Dodge in the final five. The Freedom Festival was unaware of his enormous popularity among many Utah residents before Vote the Voice began. Through Facebook, Twitter and Eric Dodge’s website, fans have coordinated and lobbied to vote in strong numbers, thus securing his name among other, better-known contenders in the final five.

In another distinctive use of social media campaigning, David Archuleta’s fans dominated Twitter discussions about Vote the Voice. Their lobbying for the American Idol runner-up was so relentless, one of the largest David Archuleta fan pages on Twitter took notice and encouraged its thousands of followers to get involved.

Members of the community are encouraged to visit the Freedom Festival’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/freedomfestival to learn more about how to vote for their favorite performers. Fans can also stay up to date with Vote the Voice on Twitter at www.twitter.com/freedmfestprovo.

When the Freedom Festival tallies all the votes at the end of the year, it will do its very best to book its fans’ favorite performer for a future Stadium of Fire event. No guarantee of any future performer, despite the outcome of the vote, can be made.

“I love getting Latino pop sensation RickyMartin’s tweets! Oh wait…or is it Ricky_Martin?  This Twitter thing is just so confusing!” Okay, here’s a quick Twitter IQ test. Look at both of these Twitter pages and try to guess which one is the real Ricky Martin:

Here’s username RickyMartin

Here’s username Ricky_Martin

If you guessed that RickyMartin is the real superstar, you should go hang your head in Twitter shame.

It just so happens that I am friends with the owner of the RickyMartin username. And no, my friend is not actually Ricky Martin. My good friend Michelle Burnett, who is quite the jokester, signed up for Twitter about nine months ago and made her user name RickyMartin. Why? Because she’s hilarious. When the real Ricky Martin decided to get on Twitter he tried to get the name from her, but ended up using Ricky_Martin instead. Michelle has never tried to pretend that she is the real Ricky Martin, her name says she is Michelle Burnett, her profile picture is of herself, and her tweets are definitely her own. Here are a few samples:

“Loved your work on Hannah Montana @donnyosmond!”

“Got my hair did. I feel totally fab.”

“short hair is sad hair.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve had a nose job.”

“After sitting in the library for about 30 minutes, I noticed that someone in the area smelled a lot like breath. And not the good kind.”

If you took even a moment to look at her profile, it is very obvious she is not Ricky Martin. Yet somehow, hundreds of Ricky Martin fans are following her, and actually believe she is Ricky Martin. In the past week alone, over 28 people have mentioned @rickymartin in their tweets, most of which are re-tweets from the real Ricky Martin. Multiple people have sent messages to Michelle in Spanish hoping to connect with the real Ricky Martin. Someone even nominated Michelle for “Mr. Twitter Puerto Rico” and she subsequently received hundreds of supporting votes.

So what does all of this mean? It means there are still a lot of people out there who are confused about how Twitter works. Or they just don’t care enough to look carefully at the people they follow or re-tweet. I can’t count how many people I’ve talked to who have signed up for Twitter and just give up because they can’t figure it out or see no value in tweeting. The average person isn’t going to search Mashable or other blogs for ‘How-To Twitter’ instructions, not to mention researching why Twitter is valuable.

I’ve always thought Twitter could do a much better job at introducing people to their product. When a new user signs up for Twitter, there should be helpful videos and instructions available on how-to use it. They should have links to articles that explain how to use Twitter for a business, individual, professional, music lover, etc. Don’t make the customer search for this stuff. Give it to them when they sign up.

What do you think? Why are there so many people who don’t know how to use Twitter? Why are there so many people who sign up for Twitter, but stop using it? And why do Ricky Martin fans have a hard time distinguishing a male pop icon in Puerto Rico from a female college student in Utah?