TRAACKR

A Traackr client recently attracted some attention with their “out of the box” approach to publicizing the TV series, The Colony, debuting this week on Discovery. 

Inspired by the show’s “end of the world” theme, Campfire created an interactive Facebook app that simulates what your Facebook newsfeed might look like during the apocalypse (complete with people from your network sharing in the hysteria). Dubbed an intriguing social marketing app, MediaPosts’s Catharine P. Taylor shared some insight into the campaign in her article, Are We Entering Social Advertising’s Creative Golden Age? Mashable also wrote about the campaign.

In addition to their clever social media campaign, Campfire worked with Traackr to identify reality TV influencers, as well as people dubbed influential “makers”  – those who show interest in DIY projects a bit more involved than your average house painting task. The influencers identified were sent a End-of-the-World Survival Kit (including a Colony hazmat suit, masks and flashlights – all the things you’d need in the case of a deadly worldwide outbreak….along with Facebook, of course)

Congratulations, Campfire! We really enjoy seeing the great things our clients accomplish.

If you have some great stories to share, please let us know!

CSV Export

Finally, we have added a Export Button to the main Authority List page which will allow you to export your A-List as a CSV file.

Thank you all for your support!

The Special Envoy for Malaria for the UN recently announced their upcoming social media campaign, the UN Social Media Envoy for Malaria. The Envoy group is part of a social media grassroots campaign that relies on active celebrity Twitter users, such as Ashton Kutcher and Larry King, as well as big social media names like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, to spread the word about malaria through their own social media networks. Those that are part of this group pledged to take one “social action” regarding Malaria once a month for the next year. A social action in this instance is considered a tweet, post, video, etc. The ultimate hope for this campaign is to reach the Secretary-General’s goal of providing all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010.

What is interesting about this campaign, and what inspired me to write about it, is that it depends on the common belief that the most influential online individuals are those who have the largest follower base. There is no question that collaboratively the Envoy group reaches millions of people, however, if you caught Derek’s recent insights into the ICOM study, you’ll see that this is not necessarily the most important piece of online influence, and therefore not the best approach to campaigns with an online presence. One of the main points in the study, and one of our fundamental beliefs at Traackr, is that influence online is contextual. Those with extremely high reach aren’t necessarily going to make an impact on topics that they don’t normally talk about or that their followers aren’t truly interested in.

So, we definitely think this will be an interesting campaign to follow and we’ll be sure to keep you updated with insights once it officially kicks off on World Malaria Day on April 25. Stay tuned…

For more details on this cause, visit the official Web site at http://www.malariaenvoy.com/.

With all the hoopla going on about SXSW we simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show off our sweet A-List skills and bring you a public list of the Top SXSW Music Influencers. With hundreds of musical acts showcasing their talent on over eighty stages in downtown Austin, we knew the buzz would be huge.

After compiling the data, we can honestly say that we were surprised with the results. Who would have thought that a political journalist, everyone’s favorite gossip columnist, a well-known public television station (not usually associated with music) and not one, but two marketing pros would make a music list?

See the list for yourself here. In the meantime, be sure to follow the top influencers via Traackr’s SXSW Music Twitter list (@traackr/sxsw-music-influencers). Once you’ve seen the list, tell us what you think – did you love it? Hate it? Let us know!

We are putting influencer of the month on hold this month, but only because we’ve been busy cranking on an exciting partnership that was just announced at SXSW…(btw, we’re here now, so if you’d like to meet up, just ping @dskaletsky).

Official logo of SXSW 2010.

As you can read on the release, we’re partnering with PR powerhouse, Porter Novelli, our long-time friend Crimson Hexagon, and a newcomer  Spredfast to create the ultimate marketing/communication/social media application — complete with sentiment analysis, influencer identification and campaign outreach management. We really like the way this application is shaping up, combining what we consider the three most important elements of any quality social media campaign (at least from a tool perspective) — understanding sentiment, finding the influencers and managing engagement.  It’s a powerful solution and kudos to Porter Novelli for having the vision and commitment to put it all together!  We’ll certainly be talking more about this application and business opportunity as it develops in the coming months.

To learn a little more about it, you can check out the Porter Novelli microsite.  We have a Top 10 Trending SWSX influencers list updating on a daily basis on this page.  Check it out and…as always, let us know your thoughts…

Cheers from SXSW!

We are back from DEMO. What a fantastic event! Thank you Chris Shipley for inviting us and good luck in your future endeavor (this was Chris last year, after 13 years,  as an executive director for DEMO).

The format for the event, 6 minutes on stage, puts all the companies on an even playing field and creates a true sense of “we are all on the same boat”. The energy was terrific and you could see that all the presenters were excited about launching their new product (often the results of months of work). Companies were coming from all over the world and took the stage with a passion (even if it also meant being very nervous for most).

At DEMO, we launched our new product, Traackr’s Authority List (or A-List for short). Take a look at our presentation on stage.

We also got some great press coverage.  Check out these articles about Traackr’s Authority List: Mashable, Venture Beat, France 24

Thanks again to DEMO, the great DEMO team and the rest of the DemoFall09 alumn…

We are happy to announce the launch of Traackr’s Online Authority List at DemoFall09 in San Diego.

Traackr’s Authority List will the cornerstone of our business interface for marketers and PR professionals looking to locate top influencers for their brand or product.  The A-List will also be a tool which will enable the all-important relationship building between the communication pro and the influencer.

The Traackr team feels proud and privileged to have been selected by the DEMO team to launch our new product at a conference that has seen the emergence of Skype, TiVo, E-Trade, Salesforce.com, Java, Acrobat and many other groundbreaking innovations.

We are walking in the footsteps of giants and we won’t disappoint!