Over the past couple of weeks, everybody has heard about the BP Oil Spill at the Gulf Coast and has seen images or video footage of the devastation this has caused to the environment.

Many stories have come out about the long term effects this spill will have on the animal and plant life in the Gulf Coast and environmental organisations fear that dozens of species might become extinct due to this accident. Due to the nature of the images produced, many people were left feeling horrified.

Online, people were able to share their thoughts about this event with anybody and everybody, no matter how far away from the Gulf Coast you are. And they were able to show the world how they feel about BP and what action they will personally take to make sure that BP will feel the effects of this.

Whilst for some people this means not using BP for petrol and other services or conveniences anymore, other people have taken it a step further.

One great example of this is the persona ‘Leroy Stick’, who decided to register the Twitter profile ‘BP Global PR’, which BP had not registered themselves.

With this Twitter Profile set up, Leroy Stick, as BP Global PR, started tweeting about BP and the oil spill and made sure that every message came out with #bpcares, #bpspends, etc.

Although not all messages are about BP, Leroy manages to turn every statement made by the Oil Company into a laugh and mockery and hereby damages the BP brand online.

So far, he has over 138,000 followers, of which 3800 listed and has sent out 225 tweets, mostly about BP.

He has managed to turn a very bad PR situation for BP, into an even worse one. And he was not the only one!

This is just one case study of what can happen when you do not protect your brand online, especially on social media platforms.

One vital step that we recommend you take in your/client strategies is to register all domain names and associated variations, not only domains but also on social media profiles.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the World Cup!

Last week Wednesday I was lucky enough to attend a Facebook event, held by Habari Media. The event was held mainly to discuss the benefits of advertising on Facebook and the reach it has.

What I found extremely interesting was that Facebook was still growing, and that the so called “fad” is rather something that everybody has incorporated into their lives, young and old.

The Stage at the Facebook Event

Here are a few stats:

• There are over 350 Million active users in the world (active meaning people that have logged in at least once a month)
• There are now more users outside the US, than within
• 250 billion page views per month
• over 250 platform apps
• Facebook is the 2nd largest video company after YouTube
• It’s the biggest driver of traffic to YouTube
• The application “Farmville” is bigger that Twitter with over 75 Million users

It’s truely amazing if we look at the above, I am one of those people who thought that Facebook would be another MySpace, huge growth intitially but then dies down over the years. Facebook is the opposite.

Lets look at the last stat, Farmville is an application that allows Facebook users to log into their accounts and “create” their own farms, building crops etc. as desired. Personally not my cup of tea but clearly 75 million people would disagree with me. What does this mean for Online Marketers, 75 million of your potential “market” are spending enough time on Facebook to watch crops grow…. CRAZY? Yes! But so true. This means that new age “online mambo jambo” as my parents call it, is actually a reality and if your brand is not online, then you are nowhere. The potential in this ever growing space is emmence, the saying : “Keep up or get left behind” comes to mind…

Lets look at some South Africa stats:

• Facebook has doubled in size over the past 12 months
• South Africa is 29th in terms of Facebook usage
• 1.18 billion monthly active page views
• over 51% of the online population have Facebook accounts
• over 46% of those return to the site daily
• Fastest growing audience is still 55+ age group
• The average user spends 27 minutes on Facebook
• The average user visits Facebook 2.2 times per day

Wow!! That’s all I can say, lets put the above into perspective for advertisers and marketers alike!

The bottom line is that online marketers have 27 minutes to get their “message” across on Facebook.  With this in mind a bell keeps ringing in my head saying : ” YOU MUST BE CRAZY NOT TO USE ONLINE ADVERTISING”, yes and that’s on repeat. Ok, so not only can brands now engage with their customers, but they can “hang-out” where their target market does, and they have 27 minutes, twice a day to grab their attention. Sounds like a gold mine to me.

You Decide!

“The power to define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities”

Embracing Social Media as a strategic tool to cut costs and maximize returns on investments

Location: The Arena, Fourways, JHB

Ingrid Rubin will be presenting on 30 September 2009 on the topic of Monitoring Social Media Sites as Key aspects in Managing Your Brand.