This wonderful gem showed up in my Gmail box the other day:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, what isn’t?

For starters: “selukasavitz” is not my name. It’s my Gmail ID, which is the combination of my first two initials plus my last name.

Secondly, WHAT KIND OF A SUBJECT LINE IS THAT?! “Hello ___, buy some products” … um, what kind of products? Peanut products? Electronics? Rolex watches? Your subject line must not be a command (“buy my stuff” is equivalent to “click my junk“) and should be at least somewhat descriptive as to what you’re talking about. The only reason I opened it was because I thought, “Who has the audacity to send such a P.O.S. marketing piece?”

Thirdly, the copy made me suspicious that it was a phishing scam, malware, or something equally skeezy. The lack of punctuation, poor grammar and sentence structure, and lack of any real description or even graphics does not make me want to buy from them at all.  I was hesitant to even click the link but I took my chances, and yes, it looks like a legit company trying (desperately) to sell their hard drive disk recovery software. I don’t know if it is legit because I didn’t click anywhere on the site, which is why I just said it looks like it. That’s one reason why I’m not linking them here. The other is that they just don’t deserve the traffic. (If you want to check it out, type it in your address bar yourself.)

Fourthly, the signature. I can’t decide which is worse — that “peter miles” didn’t capitalize his own name, that there’s no real information about the company, or that it says he’s with the HR department. Is he trying to sell products or recruit employees? Maybe “peter miles” is attempting to be the e e cummings of the email marketing world, I have no idea. But this crap doesn’t work. None of it does. I’m surprised this didn’t fall in my spam folder, truthfully.

If your email marketing pieces look like this, it’s time for a real intervention. Chances are, they’re not being opened because they are falling in the spam folder. Even if they’re evading it, “Hi screenname, buy some products” is not a way to get people to open your messages.

I’m not really a “how to” blogger (enough people cover that kind of thing), but I do subscribe to a very informative newsletter from eMarketing and Commerce magazine that I highly recommend if you want to know more about that.

I can honestly say that this is one of the worst pieces of eMarketing I’ve ever seen. What I want to know is if you guys have seen worse. Do you get any gawd-awful attempts at eMarketing in your inbox that is just so bad you have to share? Air out that laundry in the comments, it’s time to play show and tell.

Recently on Facebook, I posted the story about how Michael Arrington over at TechCruch quit the iPhone. In a nutshell, Arrington loves Google Voice but doesn’t like having two numbers, which is understandable because changing your number is a pain when everybody already has one for you. Soon Google will be introducing number portability, meaning that you can keep your number and transfer it to Google Voice. Well, it turns out that Apple and AT&T are blocking the iPhone app that makes using your one Google Voice number much more seamless between the two.  Says Arrington:

Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

I have Google Voice now and so far I like it, but I’ll admit that yes, having two numbers is inconvenient.  However, I do not have an iPhone, because my brand loyalty was with Verizon long before it was with Apple. When I posted the story on Facebook, I prefaced it with my own commentary, which was:

I won’t get an iPhone because I refuse to leave Verizon, and I knew that a LOT of iPhone users weren’t happy with AT&T, but whoah … had no idea people were all-out abandoning theirs. I have Google Voice, a different number than my usual one, and now I’m wondering how long it’ll be before I can just transfer my usual number to it.

I had no idea that that little post on Facebook would spark such a conversation among my friends. I know a lot of people who share the same I-love-Apple-but-I-love-Verizon-you-can’t-make-me-switch sentiment as me, but I wasn’t prepared for the comments of some of my friends. Here’s a sampling:

I know, my husband and I just recently had this conversation, and iPhone is cool but I know I cannot beat Verizon! They have proved over and over and over again that they take care of the customers, not to mention the service is great! - Leah McChesney

[My fiancé] & I both have Verizon (LGenV2′s) and we LOVE it. He’s been working in NYC for about 5 years & in that time, we had tried at least 3 different carriers. Verizon is the ONLY company that we didn’t get dropped calls with every five minutes (or less!) I’m sorry, but AT&T SUCKS. I have several friends with iPhones — our calls drop randomly — it’s always THEIR phones dropping the calls, not mine! Even out here in the Poconos, we have friends come to visit & the only company that has a signal consistently out here is Verizon. I’m with them for the long run … I have my iPod Touch … it’s the best of all worlds w/o the pain in the ass service you HAVE to take with the iPhone… – Marilyn

Will have to pry my Verizon service from my cold clammy hands. ATT is the worst. – Michael Spleet

Verizon, are you listening to all this? People love you. People are refusing to get the “Jesus Phone” because they don’t want to give up your service. What are you doing with your marketing to tout this?

I had to Google what Verizon was doing as far as social media. Whaddya know, they have a social media hub that links to their presences elsewhere. Except, I had no idea any of it existed, and I keep up on this kind of stuff. So I decided to take a look at what Verizon was doing on the social web.

The Good News

Verizon has an active community forum where staff and consumers help each other out and discuss things like FAQ, plans, devices, and other products and services. That’s great.

Also, Verizon is blogging. Every day on their PolicyBlog, and at their Verizon At Home blog. Entries look pretty interesting and helpful.

The Bad News

Most entries on the PolicyBlog have zero comments, and they were almost as sparse on the At Home blog. One entry I saw had 24 comments, but the next most popular one had 5, and it went downhill from there.

Nobody is reading them, because nobody knows about them. Here’s why:

Twitter

As of this writing, Verizon Newsroom has 693 followers on Twitter, FiOSFans have 118 followers (I didn’t know what FiOS was, I had to look that up. It’s only available in New York and New Jersey, apparently), VCast Music has 33 followers. Eric Rabe, the SVP of Verizon Communications – “internet, FiOS TV, all that” is on Twitter with 149 followers.

Facebook

The Verizon Facebook page has 160,000+ fans, but if you think about it, for the nation’s largest network, that’s pretty sad. Even sadder, the Verizon Newsroom Facebook page has 51 fans.

YouTube

There’s a YouTube channel with 10 videos, and it’s been a month since anybody signed in. There is some video on MediaSeed.tv that I stumbled upon accidentally, but if I didn’t know it was there, most people don’t either.

Come on, Verizon. You’re the nation’s largest network. You can do better than this. Here are a few suggestions, from me to you:

Ditch the “Verizon Newsroom”

When I found this a few minutes ago, I was expecting to see a social media newsroom about all things Verizon. [Note: I eventually did find the Verizon Newscenter, which isn't bad for a SMNR, but it wasn't where I expected to find it.]  Instead, I saw this page that looks like it’s trying to compete with Yahoo, MSN, and other portals. That’s not your game. You do cell phones and wireless service. Don’t try to compete where you can’t compete. Nobody is going to go to Verizon for news, they’re going to go to get a new phone or change their plan. If I want to change my wireless plan, I don’t go to the Huffington Post, do I?

Don’t call it “PolicyBlog”

That’s misleading and confusing. I was hard pressed to find anything about Verizon policies on the PolicyBlog at all. Call it something Verizon-relevant, but don’t call it something it’s not. Call it “Can you hear us now?” or something. There are 9 authors on that blog, together you can come up with something a little more accurate, I’m sure of it.

Don’t make us register to comment

As a general rule, if people have to take extra steps in order to comment on a blog, they won’t.  Oddly, though, the Verizon At Home blog requires registration and the PolicyBlog doesn’t, yet the At Home blog has more comments (though they’re both sparse). Just think of the interaction you’d get on the more popular blog if you didn’t make people jump through that extra hoop.

Please do something about your Twitter problem.

To be fair, Eric Rabe is doing pretty well interacting with people on Twitter. He pimps his blog quite a bit but overall he’s not doing bad. But he could do better if he were listening and responding to when “Verizon” is mentioned, and gain many more followers that way. I also suggest that somebody please do something about http://www.twitter.com/verizon. Is the brand jacked or does someone at Verizon actually have that handle and isn’t doing anything with it? Either way, it’s orphaned and it needs some love.

Integrate online and offline

OK maybe Verizon already does this, I don’t know because I don’t watch TV and I’m not very observant when I go to the Verizon store. But something just as simple as saying “Follow @EricRabe on Twitter” at the end of a commercial will call enough people to action to take notice of other Verizon online stuff. Integrating your marketing campaigns even further can have pretty awesome results.

Listen.

I save for last what you should be doing first. I already suggested the simple act of following a keyword on Twitter. Set up an RSS feed for it. That’s easy. But there are other ways to listen, ways as simple as setting up Google Alerts, blog searches, and stuff like SocialMention to monitor the social web. Since Verizon is ginormous and has the budget, I strongly suggest a professional social search like Radian6 because it’s better and more comprehensive. If you were doing these things, you’d be much more visible on the social web, more people would be commenting on your blogs (hell, more people would know about your blogs), you’d be responding to any concerns people may have with your products and services, and the great customer service I know you have would be bleeding over to your web presence.

If you really were listening, you’d know how awesome you are to people like me who sacrifice having the most kickass phone just because we don’t want to leave you, and you’d be using that to your advantage in your marketing efforts. And you’d be reading this blog post.

So, Verizon, can you hear me now?

Back in February I did a two-part case study series on WildEarth.tv, a online wildlife channel that broadcasts live from the Djuma Game Reserve in South Africa. Not only is this concept unique in and of itself, but what fascinated me the most was (and still is) their vast and incredibly cohesive social ecosystem. In my not-so-humble opinion, WildEarth.tv and its community are among the most awesome things on the internet, right up there with LOLcats, Twitter, and instant rimshot. It’s hard to imagine that the WE community and all it encompasses was built in less than two years, but it’s true.

Tomorrow, April 27th, 2009, marks the 2nd anniversary of WildEarth.tv.  It was exactly two years ago that they first broadcast their live, 24 hour “window into Africa.” I am so, so happy for them and so, so happy for their existence. April 27th is also Freedom Day, the day South Africa commemorates their first democratic elections, 15 years ago.

So Happy Birthday to both WildEarth.tv and South Africa! You’ve both come a long way, baby!

To celebrate, WE are having a special fireside chat at 19:00 CAT (which translates to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time), just go on over to the site and tune in, even chat. Better yet, join their official Ning so you can join the  chat there and see all the amazing photos and videos the community have contributed, and enjoy all the features of a Ning community. (I’m a big fan of Ning.)  I hear there’s a “planned surprise that you won’t want to miss” at the fireside chat, too.

Have you checked out WildEarth.tv yet? What do you think?

I was off the grid for most of the day yesterday because I was in Ann Arbor for the Annual Meeting of the Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan, for which social networking was its theme. I was glad I finally got to meet Laurie Laurent Smith, a Twitter pal and fellow social media geek in my area* that I kept missing at Tweetups. My buds Shauna & Kevin from Biznet were also there, which means the kickass factor was significantly higher.

While I was away from the internet, however, it seems that the people behind the ThisAin’tFlint campaign fiasco (see the previous post) issued a public apology to the mayor and citizens of Flint. . . sorta. I’m not going to copy and paste it here on this blog, you can go read it for yourself at their gaudy site with the irrelevent creepy doll. What you will read is a very verbose, vague non-admission to any wrongdoings a la [insert least favorite politician], with backpedaling about how they meant to start a conversation all along.

The campaign is a local radio/outdoor initiative (and not a “viral” campaign as many “experts” have suggested) and was not targeted nor meant to include the citizens of Flint . . . We are sorry that some people have been offended by the campaign. That was never our intent. We chose controversial images and content because our experience indicates that this is what is required in order to get meaningful conversations started. Just because someone hears or sees something they don’t like, however, doesn’t justify putting an end to the conversation.

It is our hope that the positive conversations will continue now on both sides of the border.

Uh huh, sure. “We didn’t mean to offend or denigrate you in any way, we just wanted start a dialogue! Yeah, that’s it! But it wasn’t intended to be ‘viral,’ just an outdoor campaign . . .”

An outdoor campaign of posters sending people to a website that didn’t exist until 6 days after telling folks to go there. Sending people to a website, with a video, with links to a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, et. al. thinking that word would not spread online, only face-to-face by the people waiting at the bus stop that see the poster . . . yet somehow have conversations going back and forth across the border sans internet.

What kind of fantasy world do these people live in?

I’ve been to Canada. I’ve also been to Disney World. In fact, I lived and worked at Disney World — I know the difference. Disney’s idea of Canada in the World Showcase at Epcot is very stereotypical and highly innacurate. Yet, it is miles more on target (or should I say kilometers?) than these few Canadians’ idea of Flint.

The Flint Journal issued an editorial reaction yesterday regarding the “apology” in which they call it “a kick in the gut” and call for the creators of the campaign fiasco, Newcap Radio and Alphabet Creative, to take the video off the internet, as if people like me haven’t already ripped it off their site for whatever-our-motives-may-be. Furthermore, The Journal is encouraging citizens to spam Newcap & Alphabet with more than just email until the video is removed — they also published the companies’ phone/fax numbers and street addresses.

“Let’s continue to show them our strength — our community mettle — by continuing to write, call or e-mail to share our complete story.”

While the letter-writing campaign tactic is considered an “old stand-by,” other than the satisfaction of thinking/believing that your voice is heard if you get what you’re calling for, what good is this going to do? They already know Flintstones are upset with them, and in their minds, issuing this insincere apology was enough for them to think everything is all puppies and rainbows.

Leave it up!

While that may or may not be true, I say leave it up. Leave the site up. Leave the video up. Leave it all online. Why? Because as I commented on Matt Bach’s Facebook profile, ”

The quality of that “apology” is equal to the quality of that “campaign.” Those people don’t know the difference between “obtuse” and “obscure,” nor the difference between “capital” and “capitol.” How can we expect them to know the difference between sincerity and patronization?

My point being — why call for the removal of a video/website/”campaign” that caused so much dissonance, when there is so much to be learned from its very existence on the web?

This is a perfect case study of how NOT to do a campaign, whether outdoor or online (as I hoped to have outlined a bit in the previous post), that students of many disciplines can learn from, by many facets.

English majors — take note of the horrible copy and poor grasp of the language. How can you improve it?

Marketing/Advertising majors — take note of the lack of strategy. . . what would you do? How would you approach the concept and make it fly?

PR majors – use this as an opportunity to expound on what was done and what could have been done, from both sides of the border. What would you have done?

All majors — take a look at the ethics in this case. How would you approach a Potter Box in this case?

The lessons to be learned from this are endless. To call for its existence to cease online only increases the chances of similar disgraces (or far worse)  to happen by future professionals. I don’t want any other city to have to deal with this kind of thing, and I don’t want Newcap Radio & Alphabet Creative to NOT have this as a stain on their SEO.

Sure, the blogs and other conversations will be indexed, but calling for the video to be taken down is helping these two companies sweep the whole situation under their brands’ (and the internet’s) rugs, making it easier for them to all but expunge it from their professional records and pretend like nothing ever happened. . . until somebody else hires them for their “proven media formula.”

Is that what we really want? For these kind of practices to continue? Or do we want to help educate others and ensure that this doesn’t happen again?

I say leave it up. What do you think?

Epcot Canada picture by WDWinfo.com.

*By “area” I mean Ann Arbor/Metro Detroit. The vast majority of Greater Flint/Genesee County has yet to discover Twitter . . . but that will change if I have any say in it.

(Warning: This is a long post, but it goes by quickly.)

In Michael Moore’s 1995 fictitious movie Canadian Bacon, the U.S. economy was in a rut and the president, whose low approval rating is not unlike that of our former president, decided that what was needed to boost both his popularity and the country’s morale was a good war.  Naturally, war was declared on a country that didn’t do anything to us — Canada. (This scenario sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?)

Well, imagine my surprise when it was brought to my attention last week that the exact opposite situation was actually happening — our economy is in the dumps, but our president has a high approval rating and somebody in Ottawa, Ontario, decided to (inadvertently?) pick on us. No, not “us” as in the United States of America, but “us” as in the running backdrop to many of Michael Moore’s films — Flint, Michigan.

(Disclaimer: This is a tad awkward for me to write, as Flint is where I was born and grew up. However, I’m taking as objective as an approach to this as I can, analyzing from a campaign standpoint, not as a Flintstone but as a professional.)

Here’s the deal:

For about a week, citizens all over Ottawa were seeing outdoor advertising of a fuchsia square with a creepy doll  in the foreground, with the words simply “THIS AIN’T FLINT .CA” displayed prominently in white. However, people were being directed to a website that wasn’t even ready to be launched.

Finally, when it was launched on April 5th, people whose curiosity from the outdoor campaign turned into conversion went to thisaintflint.ca, where they were greeted with a gaudy site with a video in the middle. Said video is a 3 minute, 19 second poor attempt at  . . . well, that’s just it. You as a viewer aren’t really sure what the video is trying to accomplish, other than to compare footage of Michael Moore’s first film, Roger & Me (1989), to modern-day stock footage of Ottawa, while telling you that Ottawa “ain’t Flint,” it’s immune to the recession, it’s the best on earth to live, and blah blah blah you get the picture.

Here’s the video if you don’t really want to go to the site:

There are so many things wrong with this campaign that I don’t even know where to begin. First, let’s clear this up right now:

Said campaign was NOT issued by the Canadian government. Under the “Who” section on the site, it says:

The “THIS AINT FLINT” campaign has been executed exclusively by Newcap Radio – using the creative inspiration of the team at Alphabet Creative.

This same combination of resources is largely responsible for the dramatic, yet consistent growth of LiVE 88.5 and HOT 89.9 in the very competitive Ottawa-Gatineau radio marketplace (see chart – up to 400%* increase in market share over the past six years!)

Needless to say, word has spread around, from the Flint Expats to MLive.com (home of The Flint Journal), which has 46 comments on the article as I type this (unfortunately, most commenters there are trolls).

In an article from the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Tourism has come to Flint’s defense, as well as issuing a joint statement with the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (said joint statement is not on FACVB’s site at the time I write this, however).

Ottawa blogger Audra Williams did a pretty good job of dissecting this horrible campaign on her blog, pointing out the bad copy, typos, and (my favorite) misuse of the word “obtuse” (they meant obscure), but I’d like to emphasize a few things she beat me to but should be worth reiterating nonetheless.

I am not going to incorporate the actual politics of Flint involved in my analysis. Most of those who are jumping to Flint’s defense on this are talking about how wrong the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign has it, how great Flint actually is, how far we’ve come, “why does everybody pick on us?”, “stop kicking our dead horse,” and I’m not going to go there. I will, however, say this:

No matter what, before you decide to launch a campaign, ask yourself this one simple question: “Is the potential for backlash greater than the potential benefit?” If the answer is yes, start over.

Or, more bluntly, “Am I taking a crap on somebody else in order to make myself look good?” If the answer is yes, start over.

What’s this aboot, eh?

As I touched upon earlier, a big issue with this campaign is the fact that it’s unclear who exactly they’re targeting and what exactly they want them to do. Is to brag about how Ottawa is the best place on earth to live? Is it to pick on Flint even more than they have been the past 20 years? Is it supposed to evoke community pride?

The ThisAin’tFlint site says under the “Who” page:

This same combination of resources is largely responsible for the dramatic, yet consistent growth of LiVE 88.5 and HOT 89.9 in the very competitive Ottawa-Gatineau radio marketplace (see chart – up to 400%* increase in market share over the past six years!)

(ugly bar graph)

Our Clients Are The Real Winners

Our increased influence has paid off for a number of Ottawa businesses. These winning business owners include…(blah blah blah)

Um . . . so . . . wait . . . there’s a “If You Own a Business” page . . . let’s see what that says:

If You Own A Business

If you own a business and would like to grow your market share by putting our ideas and proven strategies to work for you, please email us here thisaintflint@magma.ca

We got you this far, let’s see how far we can take you.

What ideas? What proven strategies? So far all this is proving is that these guys are jerks. Ian Capstick, Ottawa-based PR/Communications firm owner, decided to send the creator of the campaign, Tony Lyons of Alphabet Creative, a few questions.

Question: What are the overall objectives of the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign for Alphabet Creative?

Answer: The impetus of the campaign comes from a basic frustration that we feel exists amongst a lot of local businesses – that – although we are clearly in a recession, there’s no denying it – the level of doom portrayed by the media is not commensurate with the actual level of contraction – locally.

“Locally” is the key word here. We are incredibly fortunate to live in a community that is somewhat insulated from all this, not entirely, but somewhat. Our objective, as a communications firm, is to show that we can move a message using a proven media formula – outdoor and radio advertising – delivered in a unique way.
That’s it – pretty straightforward really.

Really.

Obviously they need to work on their social media and overall online strategies, because it’s backfiring big time.

On This Ain’t Flint’s “Spread The Word” page, they really want to know what you think:

If you have your own success story to share, or even if you think we’re completely out of our minds! Let us know – and we’ll post your story on the site.

Click here to tell us what you think >

Click here to forward this >

How bad do you want to know?

One of the first rules of spreading the word online, as I’m sure David Meerman Scott will agree, is make it easy for people to spread your message. What they have here are two “click here” links (bad enough) that are both “href=”mailto:?subject”, meaning that if you use gmail or yahoo (a.k.a. “cloud emailing”) like most of us, that ain’t gonna work. Given what I’ve seen so far, they’d have to be out of their minds to publish the reactions to this campaign on their site.

Next, we have:

You can also join the conversation on our Facebook Group

Follow us on Twitter and we’ll keep you updated

This is why Facebook should have “Not a Fan” pages

The majority of the people who are “fans” of “This Ain’t Flint” (which is a fan page, not a group, there’s a difference), are Flint natives and Canadians in the right mind who are NOT cool with the entire concept. (Personally I am not a fan, because I’m not going to BECOME a “fan” of something I’m not a fan of just to tell them how much I’m not a fan, because even writing that makes my head hurt, but you get the idea.) Take a look at the fan site, the comments, the pictures submitted, and you’ll see that most people are NOT fans that are “fans”.

The Twitter profile is a joke in itself. As I type this, there are 26 followers and the last update was April 9th.

They forgot a couple things

Also, it’s worth noting that if they want people to spread their “message” (which is still unclear even after Ian Capstick’s interview), then there should be an “Add To Any” or “Share/Save” button on every page (like at the bottom of each post here), and fer crissakes, THE VIDEO SHOULD BE EASILY EMBEDDABLE. Not everybody knows how to rip it from source code and tweak it like I did above to get it here.

You really want to spread your story? MAKE IT EASY TO SHARE. And why not just have a form to email you, if you REALLY want to know what we think? I’ve got one, and if I can do it, so can this professional

“. . . advertising, design, and new media creative consultancy. [Whose] focus is communication. Clear, concise messages delivered from a unique angle. [Whose] commitment is to help clients succeed by creating the right message targeted to the right person, at the right time.”

I just had to retype that from their website because it was all in flash. I’m sure they’re SEO experts, too.

Proven media formula indeed.

Proven to backfire.

Which it has.

Matt Bach, PR guy for the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, mentioned on his Facebook profile earlier that the station manager of the Ottawa radio station behind the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign said he’s going to issue an apology to the Flint Mayor. According to Matt,

“The manager said he’s been bombarded by e-mails from Flint and Ottawa people who are upset over the ad campaign. He said he didn’t realize there was so many Flint people so passionate about our community.”

But that ain’t social media

Matt said he thinks this is the work of social media, because he made pleas on his Facebook and his Twitter profiles to basically spam the email addresses provided.

I have to disagree.

Being bombarded with emails isn’t social media working — email existed long before social media. While a few consider email “social media,” I do not, and while it is a type of correspondence, it is largely regarded as separate from the tools that comprise social media. In fact, social networks have recently been proven more popular than email as a whole by Nielson, thus differentiating the two.

Some of his friends claimed that it was “good PR” and “definitely social media,” because they “would not have known about it otherwise.” But the truth is that it’s the work of an email spam campaign, in which social media was a conduit, but not a necessary factor.

Think about this:

If this campaign were to still have launched in a Web 1.0 world, where Facebook and Twitter did not exist, how would others have probably found out about it? Email.

How did they bombard the station manager? Email.

How did I find out about it? Email.

The only case here where “social media was at work” was the existence of a Facebook fan page (mislabeled as a “group”) on the site and a lame Twitter account which may as well have not existed in the first place. However, those who were “fans” (but not really fans) of the campaign were complaining about it on the fan page, and posting pictures of that Calvin kid peeing on the logo of the campaign, which is all fine and dandy except . . . there has been no response from the creator of the page, the campaign, nothing whatsoever.

Therein lies the rub

That does not make it social media at work — it makes it a sounding board for complaints of like-minded people, which might as well be a guest book a la Web 1.0. Yes, they object to the campaign, but unless whoever behind it actually interacts with them, says “I hear you, I am here, and I acknowledge your complaints online and I’m making myself visible and accessible” . . . it’s basically a BBS. Actually, a BBS has more capabilities than a Facebook fan page. Nevermind.

You could say blogs were a factor, however as I type this Google indexes four unique blogs talking about “This Ain’t Flint”. Most of which have a lot of comments, whose commenters had never been there before, except when they either a) Googled “This Ain’t Flint” or b) were sent links to them via . . . email, like I was.

Overall, it was a poorly planned, poorly executed “campaign” in every aspect, online and off.

What could’ve been better?

The role of social media could have been greater given a few factors:

• the Twitter account could have been more aggressive with its message, conversational (if not defensive), and A REAL PERSON, therefore having more followers, regardless of the content of the message of itself
• the Facebook page needed a) more content, and b) actual interaction between the “brand” and the “fans”, therefore allowing the fans to have the piece of mind that their concerns were acknowledged
• there should have been “Add To Any” or “Share/Save” buttons on every page of the site
• the video on the site needed to have an embed option and a URL option
• the email links needed to be either popups (like CNN has) or forms
• better copy, a shorter video, and should have been much clearer about the message and the target audience

I know I could add to the list “just don’t be an asshole,” but it’s hard to get through to someone like the creator of the campaign who, when asked if he thought it would offend, said

“We don’t intend to offend anyone, and I don’t think the campaign could be seen to be in any way offensive, except maybe to doll enthusiasts.”

Um . . . what?

So now I ask (and apologize for the length of this post) — what do you think? Am I wrong? Was social media at work here any more than as a conduit? What would you add? How would you have handled it, either as the pitcher or the catcher? What would you change?

(This is cross-posted from my other, more local blog, Regeneration Genesee, but I thought it was applicable over here, too.)

I love my alma mater, University of Michigan – Flint. It’s a great school, a great value, and its mere presence, especially with dorms now in downtown Flint, are doing wonders for the city. I still subscribe to the e-edition of their newspaper, The Michigan Times because it’s nice to know what’s going on at the school. (I was never a fan of the paper when I went there but it’s improved a lot since then.)

Being the web geek that I am, imagine my delight when I saw a headline yesterday in the email edition of M-Times that said, “SGC tells students to ‘Blog or Shut-up’: Student Government’s mobile efforts aim to raise awareness, get responses.”

This was a great idea from the Student Government Council for a campaign that unfortunately was only half-planned and half-executed. You may not be able to read the article because their platform may make you register or something (that’s a whole ‘nother post), but in a nutshell, SGC decided that in order to raise awareness on campus of their existence and get students to voice their concerns about different issues, they’d set up a “Mobile SGC” station in a busy part of campus and bribe them with pizza to fill out a “Student Concern Form” . . .

After filling out the form, students received a t-shirt voucher, to be redeemed at the SGC office, also on the third floor in the UCEN. The t-shirts are black, and read, “Shut up or Blog,” like the maize shirts for SGC members. They are attempting to draw students to the “Student Concerns” blog connected to the SGC homepage to give students a place to voice his or her issues. LeMay said she would probably use the blog.

There are two big issues with this:

They forgot something

1) Nowhere on this article was a link to said “Student Concerns Blog.” I literally had to go to the school’s homepage, search for “student government” in the search box, and then find it on the left column of the student government page. If you are going to write about a blog or some other kind of site, you need to include a link in the article. Nobody is going to do this kind of searching. It’s your responsibility as a writer to provide appropriate links for your readers.

Since my comment M-Times redeemed themselves and added a link to the blog at the end of the article, which is good, but somebody pointed out in a comment after mine that “The printed article has the info graphic that gives a direct link to the Web site…” and I couldn’t believe that I had to remind somebody that print and internet are two different media and there is no such thing as a “direct link” in print. Can I click on a newspaper and suddenly be brought to a web site? I just tried it — all I got was ink on my fingers.

What is written for print does not always translate to the internet and vice versa. Many a print-editor-turned-internet-news-editor discovers this every day, this which is common sense to those of us in my generation that grew up knowing and being able to understand the difference.

They more than “forgot something”

2) The second is the bigger issue, which is not M-Times, it’s SGC. If you follow the link to the student concerns blog, you will see that it hasn’t been updated since November 12, 2008. (I included a screen shot because I have a feeling this will change after somebody reads this… at least I hope they will.) The very blog they’re sending students to in order to voice their concerns hasn’t been updated in four months.

SGC giving students an ultimatum to “Blog or Shut Up” when they haven’t updated their own blog in four months? Do I need to say “pot, meet kettle” here?

As I commented on the article:

[Student Government] . . . can’t raise awareness and get responses if they themselves aren’t regularly updating their content. Having a campaign to send people to a blog with its latest content at least 4 months old is a waste of energy and makes SGC look bad. Send people to a landing page with a post about the event itself, or talking about SGC in general, thanking the visitor and then asking for feedback would be more productive. Instead, they’re raising awareness of SGC how? By showing them how they’ve been slacking on not updating the very blog they want the students to read.

I thought that it was common knowledge in the blogosphere that in order to engage and keep your readers, you must keep content fresh. Nobody likes an orphaned blog. And I thought it would be common sense that if you’re going to have a campaign to raise awareness of your group (whatever it may be, not necessarily in an academic setting, mind you) and purposely send them to your blog, you would have something a little more recent than four months old, preferably something relating to the campaign that got them there in the first place.

I can’t believe that for four months SGC has had NOTHING to blog about. They’re the biggest university in Flint, they have a new chancellor, new dorms, the mayor  FINALLY stepped down, they’re getting their own sports teams, etc. Downtown Flint is in the middle of an exciting Renaissance, largely in part to the existence of the new dorms, and they can’t find anything to blog about? SGC, if you’re reading this and you need help, Problogger has a new post on “7 Ways to Keep Fresh Content Flowing“, and here’s a good one from Copyblogger on “5 Ways to Keep Your Blog Content Fresh.” There are a gazillion resources out here to help you on this vast medium called the Internet, those are just a couple.

Honestly, if Student Government wants students to go somewhere online to voice their  concerns, then a blog really isn’t the way to go, especially if it isn’t going to be regularly updated. Installing a bulletin board would be more appropriate, then students could raise their own topics and it would be more conversational. They will probably have more concerns irrelevant to whatever blog post is current … if there is one, that is. PhpBBs are easy to use and easy to moderate, I’ve used them for years and moderated many communities.

So what are the lessons learned here?

1) Writing online is not the same as writing for print. If you write online about a website, or something on a site, a link is not only appropriate but expected.

2) Keep content fresh.

3) Know your needs and which social media tools are best for them.

4) No matter how good an idea it may be, if you launch a campaign that’s only half-planned and half-executed, it comes off as looking half-assed.

What do YOU think?

Photo 1 by numstead, photo 2 by sarrazak6881.

(Below is Part 2 of the WildEarth.tv case study, an interview with founder Graham Wallington. The first part of the WildEarth.tv case study can be found here.)

In a webinar last week with Hubspot and on their Inbound Marketing Blog, David Meerman Scott emphasized, among other points, the importance of giving up control of your message if you want your ideas to spread. It’s no coincidence that Graham stresses the very same — I think these guys are onto something here. (Any bold emphasis below is mine.)

Your web site says that you came up with the concept of WildEarth.tv ten years ago at the Djuma Game Reserve. Tell us a little about your background and what your connection was to the Djuma Reserve at that time.

Yes, in 1998 I decided to try and set up a LIVE webcam at a waterhole in the African wilderness and with the help of Paul Clifford and the permission of my good friends Jurie and Pippa Moolman (the owners of Djuma), we installed a 30 second refreshing JPEG webcam at Djuma. We called the company AfriCam and this was the beginning of a phenomenon that just grew and grew. From the very early days, the viewers of this LIVE wildlife content wanted to communicate with each other, but in those early days the only social tools available were message boards and chat rooms. To this day there are still people following our broadcasts that were there on the very first day back in September 1998.

According to the “About” page on your site, you started the infrastructure at the camp in September 2006 and first broadcast on 27 April 2007 (South African Freedom Day). What kind of preparation were you doing between then and when the concept first came to you ten years ago?

So much has happened between 1998 and now … in fact a book was written about it by another great friend of mine Peter Armitage (www.africambook.com). I also made several TV productions for various local broadcasters and international broadcasters, this period was very useful as it taught me all about how to make TV programming. On a production for National Geographic in the Serengeti I met my wife, and soon after the series was complete we began work on WildEarth.TV.

It took a little while to raise the capital necessary and once ready WE began preparing for broadcast. From September 2006 until April 2007 WE built crew accommodation at Vuyatela camp, WE purchased the now famous ‘Tank’ (our first LIVE safari vehicle) and had to kit it out with all the transmission gear. WE built and raised three masts to receive the microwave signal from the tank as well as to connect the waterholes back to our final control, which also had to be built from scratch. During this period, while welding at one of the mast sites, WE accidentally started a bush fire which swept across the northern Sabi Sands. Thankfully no body was hurt, but I did think that WE had lost one of our presenters, Pieter Pretorius, to the flames.

WE also had to arrange for a large Internet connection in a very remote location and this took a long time, but eventually everything was done in April and WE went LIVE, but with only enough capacity for a maximum of 80 simultaneous ‘slots’ on our video server. This fact ‘choked’ our traffic for the first year of operations.

What impressed me the most with WE is your use of different social media outlets, what you call your “social ecosystem”: your Ning, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, blog, twitter, Amazee . . . and the incredibly cohesive online community. Did you go into this having any kind of social media strategy, and if so, where did you begin and how did you expand/promote?

This ‘strategy’ was born out of necessity rather than a grand wisdom. WE simply did not, and still do not, have the resources to build our own infrastructure. It was the idea of Glenn van Loggerenberg (one of the WE partners) to use some of the new Web 2.0 services like Blogger, YouTube and Flickr to start creating a web presence.

Thankfully there was already a large community of LIVE wildlife addicts out there who were ready to get involved with our social network. The content from the other LIVE wildlife broadcasters had hardly moved forward in years, and there was this glaring opportunity to come back into this space, that I love, and provide a LIVE safari, which no one else was doing … and still isn’t doing.

Of course the whole point about a safari as opposed to a waterhole cam is the fact that it is conducted by an experienced professional guide. This means that suddenly LIVE wildlife broadcasting was social … it was now as much about animals as it is about people. Much of the social ecosystem that defines WildEarth was, and is, created by our viewers and much of it was born of the fact that WE did not try to control all the activity on our website. So to summarise I would say that an ecosystem develops when there is strong regular content with a human element that binds a common interest group and when the content creator does not try to control the interaction of that community. It is also critical to remember that a defining element of an ecosystem is that it is never static and must remain in a state of constant change and flux in order to be healthy.

Were there any social media tools/outlets that you tried and they didn’t quite work out? Have you ever had to reassess WE.tv’s presence and/or use of any outlets online?

These are quite difficult questions to answer, because they imply that I am somehow in control of this process and am making decisions against some kind of grand plan, which is simply not true. There have certainly been many ideas that have not ‘taken off’ and many services that have not been popular with the majority … yet. But I am not sure that anything is ever lost. A good example of this is the mashing of our video.

From the very beginning our viewers would rip the LIVE stream, mash it on their computers and then upload their finished creation to sites like YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, our social network, etc. WE just loved this and saw it as a great way to create a kind of highlights system for WildEarth. So Emily and I started a weekly plan to get the crew to shoot a bunch of behind the scenes stuff and play it out before the afternoon safari on a Friday afternoon with a LIVE explanation, and then asked one of the presenters to discuss the weeks highlights for about 10 minutes before the safari. The plan was for the audience to rip this material and then mash it into a polished package and WE would select the one we thought was the best and call it the official highlights package. Well this just didn’t work. Our audience would rip the material, but then simply add music, cut in some of the sightings from the week and upload it. The problem was that WE were approaching this mashing thing from a traditional TV production perspective and just failing to see that this was not what our audience wanted or knew.

Today WE approach this slightly differently … our crew make a short show called WE-BiTS (WildEarth – Behind The Scenes) and we upload that to our YouTube channel. The audience rip the scenes they like, when they like and do with this exactly what they wish, under a Creative Commons 2.5 license and then upload their creations where ever they want. Emily trawls around the web every week, finds the mashups that grab her attention and then writes a blog that highlights them.

The lesson was that you should not try to control the creativity of your audience, but rather provide an environment that people are free to create.

Your online “family” seems very dedicated and die-hard. Did you know any of them online prior to WE or did they come after your launch?

Many of the WEfamily have been watching my broadcasts from the first day. Many of them are, however, silent. What I mean by this is that only a relatively small percentage of our WEfamily communicate with us. There are a great many ‘lurkers’ that just love watching the streams, reading what others write, snap and mash, but are not necessarily comfortable or interested in interacting directly … they are, however, no less a part of WE. Many have been like this for a decade and will stay that way. They often live in the US physically, but there whole lives revolve around WildEarth … they sleep when WE sleep and drive and walk when WE do.

Do you pay much attention to your analytics on WildEarth.tv? What kind of traffic do you get, and from where? Are some days/times more popular for viewing than others?

By far the majority of our traffic comes from North America. However, Germany (because of our partnership with Zaplive), the UK and other European countries are growing fast. Our traffic is still relatively low at about 50,000 unique viewers per month and about 450,000 stream starts. WE do serve about 120,000 hours of streaming video and this is a testament to how ‘sticky’ our content is.

The reason that WE are not more popular than we are is because of a few factors. Firstly, WildEarth has never done any marketing, and the days of a ‘build it and they will come’ strategy on the Internet are long gone. In 1998 when I launched AfriCam the flood of instant traffic was massive, but in 2009 there are billions more websites to compete against. Secondly, our prime content is between 05h30 and 08h30 CAT and then again between 16h30 and 19h30 CAT, which equates to 22h30 and 01h30 EST and then again 09h30 and 12h30 EST, which are not great TV or entertainment viewing times. This will be resolved by expanding our content offerings by investing capital into further vehicles, shows and locations, something which will hopefully become possible as WE slowly grow.

I noticed that some members of your online communities/territories are moderators, did some of them initiate your presence in various places online?

Absolutely, our admin/moderator team are the core of our community. Karen, Colleen and Valorie are three of the hardest working volunteers you will encounter anywhere. Without them I would be totally lost and frankly would be too scared to get out of bed. Not only do they manage and maintain the social network on Ning, the WildEarth Myspace presence, the Facebook group and pages, the WEtwits social network, the WildEarth Intranet on Google Apps and the WildEarth.TV website, but their eyes and ears are everywhere. If a problem begins to brew somewhere in the far away reaches of the network, they know about it, why it is happening, and usually by the time the sun is coming up in Africa they have it under control. It would be completely impossible for such an ecosystem to flourish if it was not for an alert and focused pride of lions and that is what they are … the WE lionesses.

I’m sure this has probably happened, but have any of your online community members actually visited the Djuma Reserve because of WE? What was it like?

Many, many of our audience members have visited Djuma, and I am sure that many more will as well. WE have an arrangement with Djuma whereby if guests come to stay at Vuyatela (the Djuma lodge), they are brought to our camp by their ranger and get to have a tour of our camp, meet the crew, sit in the director’s seat and then if they wish one or more of our crew will often join them for dinner at Vuyatela. There have been times when large groups of fans have come through while touring various African webcams. Essentially our community is really a community of wildlife cam addicts that watch several LIVE wildlife broadcasts … WildEarth’s is just the best of the bunch!

You mentioned that you have a team that tweets when there’s something interesting going on live. So this is an online team, or is it people at final control, or both? How do you do that?

The WEtwits team is a relatively new team and very much still in its infancy. Basically WE called on our community for volunteers to help us build a powerful Twitter service. When folks volunteer they are issued with a @wildearth.tv email account which gives them access to our Intranet on Google Apps. Additionally they receive a detailed mail explaining how it all works and invited to join the official WEtwits social network (which was built by the admin team on the Ning platform). Here WE explain, develop and share all the various details about how to Tweet, access info for the @wildearth Twitter account, the do’s and dont’s, etc. Then when the volunteer is ready to take on a shift they log a time in the WEtwits calendar on the Intranet (which is not public) and then they monitor the LIVE activity during their shift and Tweet the action as they see it.

This is a great service to those of our followers who are maybe not at their PCs or TVs. Many of our followers receive our Tweets on either their iPhones or via SMS (text message). I love this service as I am able to stay abreast of every sighting on all cams, while I go about doing all the other things that need to be done.

Whenever there are camera difficulties or anything, your crew is sure to inform the various community areas about it. How many people usually are responsible for this?

When Djuma goes offline or there is a technical difficulty that means a change in our schedule, WE work very hard to get back on air ASAP and also make sure that our community are kept abreast of what is going on. If it is a smallish issue that has not taken Djuma offline, the crew announce our status and progress on air regularly. If Djuma has been forced off air, or if it is a big issue that may take 12 hours or more to resolve I will Blog the situation and keep updating this. Whichever it is, our admins will then take the info and make sure it spreads fast through the ecosystem.

In addition, there are many viewers that are members of our official network and or read the blog, who will then carry this info to the message boards and chat rooms that are not part of the official network, but still form part of the ecosystem. The news travels fast and people really appreciate strong honest and open communication. Also, our crew work incredibly hard to fix problems and this strong communication makes sure that their hard work is known and appreciated by the audience … it helps strengthen the WEfamily.

Do you have your own in-house web-team aside from your online community?

No, WildEarth has no full time web-team. All web development on our website, www.wildearth.tv, is undertaken by the phenomenal, talented and creative team at Zaplive.tv in Germany. Under the leadership of Christian Steiger, they have managed to build a platform that promises to forever change the world of LIVE broadcasting. With amazing achievements like the ‘seekpoint’, which promises to make cloud editing a reality in the very near future, and a system for the inclusion, control and dissemination of LIVE wildlife broadcasts which will allow us to help those who wish to show the world wildlife to finally be profitable and let them focus on the content and not on the technology. I can not say enough how important it is to build an ecosystem of partnerships with people who know what they are doing and are driven passionately to do it.

WildEarth.TV runs on a flat management structure that allows all the various individuals to work around the clock on any and all aspects of what WE do without having to clear every decision or communication through a top structure. As a result WE run more and sleep less …

Tell us more about the WEangels. How did they come about, what have they done and what kind of things do they have planned?

The WEangels came about as a result of realising that wildlife conservation is far more about people than it is about animals. This is often hard for people from 1st world countries to understand, but the reality is that unless the impoverished communities that live around the ‘islands’ of wilderness left on our planet, benefit directly from the wildlife, they will harvest it in order to survive. WE appreciate that there are many non-governmental organisations that are much bigger than us, that do far more than WE ever can, but we wanted to do our bit to save the planet. WE decided that the best way to do this would be to do small things for the people of a small village near Djuma called Dixie. With a population of about 450 people, few of whom have jobs and all of whom live close to or below the bread line, their needs are vast.

To begin with WE decided to raise the money from our audience to take the very youngest kids to see Beverley Hills Chihuahua in Nelspruit some 3 hours drive from Dixie. The money literally poured in and WE had raised enough within about a week or two to rent a few buses and drive all the kids, plus several adults, to Nelspruit. Few of the kids had ever seen a paved (tarred) road, or a double story building, let alone been in a city. Then they each got popcorn, sodas, etc. and went in to see a movie, which none of them had ever done. Afterwards, they all went for a hamburger lunch and made the long journey home, singing all the way.

Those of our viewers that donated and helped became known as WEangels, because they were like angels far from away making a difference in the lives of those that were forgotten.

Since then WE have raised enough money to buy 146 kids Christmas presents and lay on a Christmas lunch for 600 people … all broadcast LIVE. Now WE are working on an ambitious plan to provide fresh running water to all the residents of Dixie. Already WE have raised $5,000 from a competition called the Amazee Bucket, where our community managed to win 2nd and 3rd place by joining our projects. The next step is to fully cost this project, raise the remaining money and get water to these people. Much of the coordinating and admin is done by Stacy Manfredi and the WildEarth Admin team.

I noticed you use Amazee for your WEangels fundraising projects. I’m not that familiar with that platform (yet). Could you explain how it works? How’s it working out for you?

Amazee is a social collaboration system, and in my opinion the best example out there. The concept is simple, you create a project and build a network of members that either contribute financially or otherwise depending on the objectives of your project. Amazee provides the tools that bring like minded folk together and allow them to coordinate their efforts.

The key factors about Amazee that got my attention are the fact that it is run by a very hard working team that genuinley want to build a network that helps other people change the world. They know what they are doing and do it all day. There is really no point in trying to create a better system because you won’t and using Amazee you are standing on the shoulders of giants. Secondly they have a very international membership and I think that this is important. It is too easy to get into a very US focused ecosystem, and while the majority of our traffic is from the US, I think it is valuable to all concerned to have a very international flavour to our network. Again, diversity is healthy. Finally, Amazee actually offers money in the form of the Bucket competition or the Facebook Rally that is running now. This allows our community to get involved to raise money for a just cause without having to reach into their pockets, this is obviously great in these economic times, but also a very strong bonding force in a community. The community that competes together, stays together.

You mentioned you’re soon launching a TV channel in the UK. How soon will WE.tv be available on TV in the US?

Hopefully soon! WildEarth is now LIVE on SomethingTV 24/7, which is actually a historic moment for this concept. It has been a dream for many many years. WE are looking for broadcasters and pay TV operators that have the vision and foresight to carry our channel on their platforms. The US is obviously a big and important market and WE hope to be on TV set near you soon …

What’s this I hear about adding broadcasters from other networks soon?

It has already happened. Hancock Wildlife Foundation have already gone LIVE on the WildEarth Network with two of their bald eagle cams, and by the time many read this interview two more will be LIVE, with several more in the immediate pipeline.

The concept is really a very simple one … it has been difficult, and usually impossible, for small companies trying to broadcast wildlife LIVE to even cover their costs let alone make a profit. The problem is that the better your content, the more traffic you get, which means that your distribution costs go up. Effectivley you can be so succesful you go out of business, which is exactly what happened to me before. The key is to reduce your distribution costs and make a revenue consistently through the viewing session. So what WE have done is put several in-stream advertising deals in place so that WE can monetise that video streaming, and now WE are offering other LIVE wildlife broadcasters the opportunity to stream to our head end in Holland.

As long as their content meets our approval WE will insert ads into the stream, allow them to embed the stream into their websites and WE will cover the distribution bandwidth costs out of the in-stream advertising revenue. If there is a profit WE will share that 50/50 with the broadcaster. The more video WE serve through this system the cheaper per stream it gets and therefore the more profitable. This system allows us to band together and reduce the costs by working cooperatively.

Whats important to remember is that the broadcasters do not loose their identity, do not loose their websites and do not have to send their audience and traffic to WildEarth. They just embed their streams, like you would with a YouTube video, and away you go. The broadcaster makes the same money whether the viewer watches the stream on WildEarth or whether they watch it on their own site or anywhere else in the web.

This will hopefully encourage more people to take the ‘risk’ of entering our young industry and help those that have been around a while expand their content offerings. This new ecosystem of broadcasters will hopefully be seen as a way for us all to work on the principle that a rising tide should lift all ships.

If someone were interested in sponsoring WE through advertising, whom should they contact? What kind of advertising do you offer?

If they are in the US, they should contact www.scanscout.com as they are handling all our US in-stream traffic. If a company outside of the US wishes to advertise or if you are a broadcaster looking to be a part of the WE network get hold of me on graham[AT]wildearth.tv

What’s next for WE.tv? Do you have any other new developments in the works?

There are several new developments in the works, but they all build on what WE already do and have. We hope to get our channel distributed onto more TV platforms and hopefully more broadcasters will join our network. There is a massive content expansion plan in the works, but the exact date and time of this is still being worked out. There are also several other channels coming, based on some very very exciting technology that we have been working on for years. As well as very ambitious plan to build a social network of animals … for wildlife, by people.

What is your ultimate vision for WE.tv?

Ultimately I see WildEarth as a critical undertaking … more of a mission … to tell the truth about nature. Not to overhype it, make it all about dangerous animals that kill each other and people, but to create a whole new genre of natural history television that is about an honest portrayal of the animals that WE share this planet with. At the same time it would be good to make a difference to the planet by connecting people, with a shared interest in wildlife, for the purpose of helping other people conserve that wildlife.

Thank you very very much for bothering to learn more about what WE do. You have not only helped others to understand us, but you have forced us all to take a harder look at what WE have created. This has been most interesting and most encouraging.

All the best,

Graham

All photographs used with permission. For those interested in learning more about WE and its involvement with Amazee, there is a short interview with Graham at Amazee.com.

(This is Part 1 of a 2 part series. The second part, and interview with Graham Wallington, founder of WildEarth.tv can be found here.)

Day in and day out, all over the interwebs, social media freaks like myself are pointing out companies engaging in social media, either making case studies of what not to do or showcasing those companies that seem to be doing it “right” (a subjective term, perhaps). Ford is one of those falling into the latter category, thanks largely in part to one Mr. Scott Monty, who we in the Detroit social media scene are proud to call one of our own. Of course, it’s not just businesses that are embracing social media, as exemplified by Beth Kanter, the most prominent voice in social media for nonprofits. I could go on.

Personally, one of my deepest interests is how social media is applied (or can be applied) on a much broader spectrum. Consider the pope on YouTube. While I’m not going to sit there and watch the pope’s YouTube channel, I still think it’s pretty cool how even the Vatican is utilizing the new tools to spread its message.

Not long ago, I was followed on Twitter by @wildearth, whom I followed back without thinking much more than, “Oooh, big pretty kitty!” upon seeing their Twitter page. I never paid much attention, until one day I saw this in my tweetstream:

I couldn’t resist clicking the link, and indeed, there was a leopard, live on steaming video. I’m a sucker for wildlife, so I sat there, and I watched. Then I started poking around WildEarth.tv, curious as to what it’s all about.

It’s amazing.

WildEarth.tv is an online-only wildlife channel that broadcasts LIVE every single day from the Djuma Game Reserve in South Africa, a vacation destination for those wanting to go on African safaris. While you watch, there is also a live chat on the side of the video so you can talk about the wildlife with other viewers. There is a counter to see how many other viewers are watching at any given time, and every time I watch there are at least 100, sometimes more than 500. All footage is archived, so that you can visit the best moments caught on video, like the one below, which is the very first time these leopard cubs were seen by the crew. (Warning: cute overdose ahead.)

Find more videos like this on WildEarth.TV

The most incredible part about it is that it’s not even on TV. This is 100% web-based, and has been for since first broadcasting in April 2007. Only recently have they been picked up as a premium channel by UK-based digital distributor MoMediaTV, but their reach does not include the Americas . . . yet.

But this isn’t just a wildlife channel. How did I discover this? Through Twitter. When important sightings occur, the crew from WildEarth.tv tweets it. They have around 2,500 followers, and they joined in May 2008. What’s impressive is that they also have a very active Ning community with about 1,500 members, a regularly updated blog, a forum, a Facebook group of over 800 members, a YouTube group, a Flickr group, a MySpace page, and an 800+ member presence on Amazee, which is a social collaboration network (in beta) that allows for organization, promotion, fundraising for projects of any size or type.

Supporters of WildEarth.tv, viewers known as “WEangels,” have their own Facebook group, MySpace page, and projects on Amazee where they raise money to improve the quality of life in Dixie, a village nearby the Djuma Reserve. They’ve raised money to buy Christmas presents for the kids,  taken them to the movies, and are currently planning a project to provide the village with running water.

What do they call all this? Their social ecosystem.

I, for one, love that term. Think about it. By definition, an ecosystem is “a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.”

WildEarth.tv, since first broadcasting almost 2 years ago, has been quietly raising a very healthy social ecosystem. I checked out each of their “territories” online and indeed, there is much interaction by fans of the channel and the crew on every outlet, many of which overlap. The environment is online, the organisims interact, forming a community and a system.

This, my friends, is not easy. Most companies and nonprofits would kill for an online presence and fan base of this magnitude. (Well, not literally.)

There are many businesses, nonprofits, etc. that think they can stake their claim on every social media tool they can find and expect them all to “work” for them. When Company X can’t understand why Tool A isn’t working, many times they throw in the towel and say social media is a waste of time.  But what the Company Xs don’t understand is that no tools will just “work” for you — you have to put work into them.

WildEarth.tv has no doubt put a lot of work into their social media efforts. Their online presence is a collaboration of many people on both sides — the company and the viewers.

Someone’s doin’ social media right in South Africa . . . what do you think?

Are there others who have completely flown under most of our radars that are crafting healthy “social ecosystems”? I’d love to discover more.

(Stay tuned, I’m in contact with the folks at WildEarth.tv and will soon be putting up an interview with Graham Wallington, the founder and mastermind behind it all. I’m very excited about this!)