Thursday, September 2, 2010

Greenpeace Slapping Facebook with its Facebook Page

Enviro-activist group Greenpeace has done something clever to get influence and attention - 500,000 Facebook users are telling Facebook corporate to get out of coal-powered electric. Greenpeace sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to cut ties to coal-fired power at its new data center in Oregon. Greenpeace calls its campaign "Unfriend Coal," and it's getting lots of friends.

Very, very clever. Facebook is now the elephant leading the path in social media - if you look at Nielsen data, the numbers have become staggering. Twitter has grown exponentially but its visitor volume is way behind Facebook. So playing David and Goliath is a very sharp move for Greenpeace.

That said, social media is still in a newborn, vague, head scratching space for most users. Most of the marketing reports I've seen for the past year and a half have been obsessed with social media and making the most of it. Part of the confusion is how to make it work for your business - in terms of marketing spend, customer loyalty, and dealing with controversial stuff. What happens if your business gets lambasted online? Well, it seems to be that companies have to join in the conversations and find out what's working and what's not working.

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