Everybodysagenius’s Weblog

Here is a hilarious video on Twitter and Twitter users. Check it out here.

Hey Everybody,

I have been gone for a while, but now I am back. I just saw this video. I liked it a lot. It is a little creepy and I definitely don’t buy the whole Second Life thing. But I definitely agree in the prosumer idea and the selling of experience. I think that will happen.

What did you think? Were you creeped out? Let me know.

Best,
Will Flavell

Obama Facebook Page,
originally uploaded by swept14.

Hey Everybody,

I have been reading a lot online about how the Obama campaign is going to be the new standard for social media campaigns. And well, it was pretty amazing. Just the fact that they could maintain a constant feel and message across so many mediums with so many different user experiences is nothing short of astounding. Who in the corporate world could even pull that off? Nike? McDonalds? That’s probably about it.

Anyway, I wanted to share some stats about the Obama campaign social media presences. So first, here are the numbers:

-5 million supporters on 15 different SNS
-More than 1 billion e-mails sent to supporters
-More than 1 million signed up for text message alerts
-180,000 followers on Twitter

YouTube Stats:
-139,000 Obama related videos
-1,800 official videos
-The Famous “Yes We Can” received 14.2 million views
-15 videos in their channel with more than 1 million views

Like any good viral campaign, the Obama campaign gave people a reason to engage and share content by regularly disseminating interesting information across many networks and mediums. This campaign also gave people something to do, donate, tell a friend, vote. Pushing for active participation is another important element of social media that the Obama campaign

Results:
3 million online donors contributed more than $6.5 million
And 1 presidency

Best Wishes,
Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

If you like stats on change and digital culture as much as me (that is, freakishly). Than you have undoubtedly seen and love Shift Happens. I thought that before ‘09 hits that I would share the 2008 updated of this video so that we can all prepare for 2009.

Enjoy,

Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

I work as a pr and new media guy for an Midwest advertising agency called Bozell. I recently finished a blogging coverage project for the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder’s Weekend. Our client on the project with Borsheims, a Berkshire-owned jewelry store. It as a fantastic project and a huge success.

I was the one who did all the writing, photography, video and posting for this project. My buddy Max (also of Bozell) built the blog site in textpattern.

I got great stats and I wanted to share it with you as a case study for selling blogs to your clients.

Enjoy:

Borsheims Blog Case Study:

The Development

Berkshire Hathaway is well known for having the most expensive stock price on the market. In Omaha, NE the company is also well known for its annual shareholders meeting, held this year from May 2-4. Of course, this meeting is a lot more than just a shareholders meeting; it has become a destination event for thousands of shareholders and Warren Buffett fans throughout the world. This year, 31,000 people came to Omaha to listen to the World’s Richest Man (Buffett) and to attend the variety of exciting and high profile events that surround the meeting.

Every year, the Borsheims store is one of the most popular destinations for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Borsheims is one of the nation’s largest independent jewelry stores. Owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the store sponsors several events during the weekend. Throughout the Berkshire Hathaway weekend, shareholders receive special discounts at Borsheims, and thus, the weekend is one of the most important sales times of the year for Borsheims. As the agency of record, Bozell has helped Borsheims with a variety of campaigns and advertising mediums, including e-mail campaigns, print advertising, media relations and more.

When Bozell first approached Borsheims regarding their largest event of the year, the shareholder’s weekend, Borsheims expressed an interest in creating a storehouse of information for attendees in the form of an online presence. Bozell proposed the creation of a blog devoted to the providing a real-time experience of the Berkshire Shareholder Weekend. Like many successful companies, Borsheims initially viewed a blog with some skepticism due to its open nature and interactive capabilities.

The Success

The blog idea, originally proposed as an online information outlet, changed its focus to entertaining shareholders and acting as a surrogate experience for those shareholders who could not attend the event. The blog ended up becoming a two-way communication channel between the company and the shareholders and among the shareholders themselves.

Bozell provided a full-time blogger for all of the events. This blogger also took photography and video of the event. Adjacent to the blog site, Borsheims hosted a YouTube account and a Flickr account. This allowed them to quickly store the photos and video taken from the event and to add it to their blog at will. Before it was launched, the blog was promoted with an e-mail that went to attendees from previous years and through press materials that Bozell developed.

The blog, www.borsheimsbrk.com, went live on April 28, 2008. In the course of one week, the blog was updated with nearly 50 posts, six videos and more than 500 high resolution photos. Most of this content was produced and updated in real time as the events happened. In that same week, the blog experienced a tremendous amount of Web traffic. From the morning of April 28 to the following Monday, May 5, the following traffic results were enjoyed.

6,974 Visits blog site visits

5,801 Unique visitors

24,677 Page views

3.54 Pages per visit

2:58 minutes Average amount of time on site per visit, compared to the usual 30 seconds to 1 minute.

27% of traffic came directly to the blog

*Special note: This is especially high for direct traffic. The site also experienced 45% of traffic from referring sites and 31% of traffic came from search engines.

Visitors to the site came from 55 different countries or territories.

The following pages enjoyed the highest traffic in descending order:

1. The home page, which featured the blog

2. The calendar page

3. The vendor page

4. The blog page, which provides more of an archive to past posts

5. The restaurants page

The blog also proved to be a valuable source of feedback to Borsheims. It received many comments and was used to answer shareholder questions in a quick and in-depth way. It also provided an effective outlet to promote and profile some of the merchandise. It will continue to be a medium to disseminate information and interact with Borsheims’ key audience for years to come. The Bozell blogger continues to respond to comments on a daily basis.

The Additional Reach

The Borsheims Flickr page became a popular area as well. In that same week, the Borsheims Flickr Account received a little more than 5,000 views. The Borsheims YouTube account also did well. The top-rated video received slightly fewer than 500 views in that same week.

The traditional media also mentioned the blog in some high profile stories, and used photos from the Flickr account. The traditional media regularly uses blogs as a source of story inspiration and background information. This blog had some very positive public relations effects.

In the end, Borsheims was completely overjoyed with the amount of traffic and communication that they received via the blog site. They were also impressed by the amount of high quality content that produced in such a short time. Their skepticism concerning open interactivity with their audience was replaced with interest when blog comments were moderated easily and without incident. Overall, they were more than impressed with the tremendous amount of reach that this relatively inexpensive medium provided.

Hope that was helpful,

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

I rarely put personal posts up. But something very sad happened about a year ago and I just wanted to put up a quick post about it. Last April 11, 2007 one of my heroes passed on. Kurt Vonnegut, was more than just a writer. He was an eloquent speaker, a great humanitarian and a smart man. He gave me reasons and ideas, at times when no one else did.

He lived from 1922 to 2007. He wrote 14 novels and a large variety of other stories, collections and plays. I have read everything that he wrote. My personal favorite is Bluebeard for its beauty. Learn more about his life and work at Vonnegut.com.

Here is the best tribute that I have seen to him.

I just wanna leave this post with what I think he would call the best possible review:

Thank you Mr. Vonnegut, You always made me think.

Hey Everybody,

This was just sent to me and I would agree with the message it came with, this is the greatest iPod hack ever. At least the coolest.

Read more about it on HackaDay.