RATM Saves Christmas - Facebook Campaign Leads to Surprise Viral Victory
The ageless metal-rap rockers, Rage Against the Machine, are making noise again, and this time it’s by pure accident. The political-driven rock group hasn’t released an album since retiring back in 2000, however, they surfaced last week on the UK’s biggest radio station, BBC Radio One, to talk about how they suddenly emerged on the UK pop music charts for the much fought over “Christmas Number One” title for 2009.
The UK “Christmas Number One” title has normally been held by the UK series, X Factor, winner - a version of American Idol produced in the UK. For four straight years, the “Christmas Number One” winner has been held by the X Factor winner, and this year it was Joe Mcelderry, who was expected to win the title for singing the Miley Cyrus song “The Climb.”
However, a Facebook inspired campaign that was launched by UK resident Jon Morter as an entertaining (joke) protest against the mainstream pop that in most ways does dominate music charts across the globe these days. Morter’s Facebook group “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1″ quickly grew to 800,000 fans, and was overspread with users who pledged to buy the track to help push the band to the top of the charts. The Facebook Group currently has more than 970,000 members as of Dec. 20.
The mainstream news picked up the story after the first two weeks of December when the Facebook group, which launched in the beginning of December began to grow quickly, and while going offline many times during the beginning days of December, prompted some to make several claims of foul play - however it didn’t slow the Rage Against the Machine victory.
And once Joe McElderry’s track was released in a hard copy on CD, unlike Rage Against the Machine, the X Factor winner from the UK began to close the gap on the suddenly popular American rock band and their 1992 produced single “Killing in the Name Of.”
On December 20, BBC Radio One announced the final winner, and thanks to a surge of downloads via blog posts, Facebook comments, and Twitter tweets - the infectious campaign influenced social media channels and led to a Rage Against the Machine victory.
Analysis Breakdown
Starting in the beginning of December, from Dec. 1 - Dec. 11; while the Facebook Group was going on and offline sporadically, the number of social media mentions among Twitter, Blogs and Facebook were small in numbers of original posts to users’ profiles. However, after December 11 when the group went back up live, it kicked over dominoes that sent tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates soaring in numbers.
The mainstream news did not pick up the story until December 14; with social media leading the majority of the charge based on the following data:
**The charts above include only a limited set of data, due to a number of other keywords that could have been used in Twitter, Facebook Updates and Blogs; keywords like “Rage”; which were too broad to analyze more specifically at the time of this posting. The above posts do however represent the trending to their exact details.Conclusion
It is really nice to see the effect a viral marketing campaign that had no direction, but was more led by a crowdsourcing effort to push a final result -putting RATM at the top of the charts. It normally takes many dollars to create such a buzz in the matter of a few weeks, and this was done with nothing but spirit and passion for the push to the top - led by users with little outside influence, and all with the help of social media!
**This blog was first published by Nick Cifuentes on the Overdrive Interactive Marketing Blog
How to Improve Traffic & Enhance Your Brand With Flickr
When considering social media applications, and those that are effective to not only drive leads, but also generate conversions – you have to consider the magic of Flickr.
Flickr is a social photography website that allows you to upload and share your pictures with friends, family and other registered Flickr users; as well as the general Internet audience.
Similar to Photobucket, Flickr functions as an image host – but its strength lies in the social sharing of the images with a massive community of users. Photographers use Flickr to showcase their art, computer bloggers use it to save on bandwidth and keep their own servers empty by dumping massive photo files on Flickr.
One thing very new, yet very effective, in terms of marketing this social media showcase – is to build traffic to your website using this creative tool.
Let’s look at few things about Flickr:
- It is the #2 rated photography website in the U.S., UK, and Australia, while holding a near 40 percent market share in the U.S. While Photobucket is still the leader in all three markets, - Flickr’s global presence could still be greater.
- And with Yahoo! acquiring the image giant in 2005 – it has been optimized with the Yahoo! Image Search tool.
- Flickr’s photos are listed in the Google, Technorati, personalized and start pages, as well as various other portals, websites and blogs which pull in and display Flickr pictures through RSS feeds.
- All of these direct sources can be funneled back to your website, and at least make others aware of your brand and/or product.
Flickr – Getting Started
Flickr allows you to create a profile, using a buddy icon, screen name, profile where you can place relevant links and information about yourself or business. And then, you can create your own Flickr address – meaning http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholascifuentes
Flickr also offers two options when signing up, a free and paid version. The free version allows you a bandwidth limit of 100mb per month. This is reasonable if you don’t’ have too much traffic or photos that are limited sizes – but to be honest; the Pro Account (paid version) is the best way to go. They charge you only $24.95 for the year, but you get an unlimited number of bandwidth, and you are able to upload not only pictures, but video as well. You are also able to setup an unlimited number of photo sets, as compared to only three for the free version.