How to go from 80 thousand to 8.7 million Facebook fans in one day
The Icelandic government’s appeal to it’s 360,000 population to use social media yesterday to promote the country as an ash free tourist destination has met with some success, at least in terms of Facebook fan increases – 10,847 yesterday morning to 17,021 at the time of writing.
It’s not clear though how many of these sign-ups are from potential tourists or from Icelanders themselves. Call me a seer but you don’t need to be told the benefits of visting Iceland if you’re already living there.
This is the problem with social media, it’s pull not push. It doesn’t really matter how many Icelanders go online to promote the country what you need is one spectacular viral creative idea that pulls in your target market, showing that Iceland isn’t actually very dusty at all and should still be top of every discerning traveller’s city break list.
Having said that, ‘Inspired by Iceland‘ is a great tourism site, once you’ve found it, it’s very compelling and truly deserves more Facebook fans. The videos are cool, there’s naked people and everything, see below.
The other curious thing is the launch only seemed to gain press coverage in Australia/NZ – maybe they’re going country by country?
Anyway, the current champion of accelerated fan increase as promised by the subject line and decidedly not a commercial model to follow – from 80,000 to 8.7 million Facebook fans in one day – and you’re never going to beat it – the one and only Michael Jackson – June 25th 2009.
Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.
Interesting post Ross. But unfortunately alot of the points you make aren’t entirely correct. The increase you talked about on Facebook is about right, but the press coverage was picked up by the Daily Mail, L’Express, BBC World News, amongst a few. The coverage in NZ and Australia is additional.
If our focus was in driving fans to Facebook, then surely we wouldn’t have spread links to http://www.inspiredbyiceland.com which were retweeted to good effect, including those prompting 1,000+ people to download a twibbon supporting Iceland.
I agree the majority of people we motivated to tell a message to the world were Icelandic, but now that gives us a real base to share these messages with the world, amplifying any conversations five fold. Isn’t this the real effect of social media? Pushing out to pull in?
Would love to hear from you and your thoughts on how we could do this better…
Hi Matt, thanks for the post.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the campaign is great, you can tell this by the fact that we’ve written two posts about it.
I guess what I’m saying is that while the call to the people of Iceland is a great PR angle and certainly one that amplifies the message socially, there doesn’t seem to be – yet – a viral element sucking people into the site.
Ross
I like the TVC and think it is cute. I also like the slogan ‘inspired by Iceland’. However, irrelevant of the music (and the somewhat gay feel), I don’t think this can be called a (consumer) hook.
I was not aware Iceland is once again volcano-dust-free, maybe this need be spelt out more clearly as there is no clear indication if this was filmed before, during or after the event.
But the imagery is beautiful and makes me want to visit, ditto for the happy and fun people. So sometimes, a less pushy approach will work just fine.
And from the few Icelandic people i have met, this image is spot on, so good for you.
(Gay as in ‘happy’)
Ross, it may well be that the content is going to come by the barrowload. Assume the old marketing idea that 1-4% of people may engage with you, that’s still a healthy number. Now if you have that number of Icelanders posting up content to FB – pictures, video and so on – that’s an ongoing full-blown tourism press office and ambassador scheme right there.
Ash free?? today in Reykjavik you can berly see or breath, ironically It’s been the worse couple of days of ash in the Reykjavik area, and tonight between 7 and 8 PM the volcano was spitting ash again, so much for an ash free Iceland. Honestly you can berly see after 100 meters.
http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2010/06/04/versti_dagurinn_i_dag/