Comedy Central funny men, Stephen Colbert and John Stewart held their Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear yesterday in Washington D.C. The rallies were announced only a month ago and over the past 30 days have managed to gather quite a large following. How did they do this over such a short amount of time? Besides their television shows being widely popular, Colbert and Stewart perfected their social media campaigns and as a result the rallies have generated a number of mini-web campaigns bringing awareness to the event.
Along with their public relations and digital media teams, Colbert and Stephens penetrated the social media world in almost every way. The web sites for the rallies have ways to engage the visitors. Fans can find updates about the event, merchandise, and interactive activities to up the users engagement with the site. On Stewart's site, people can browse rally signs and vote on whether they are sane or not. On Colbert's site, people can upload pictures of themselves dressed up as their worst fears and vote on the best pictures. Both sites give opportunities for people to donate to their individual charities.
The hosts not only did an wonderful job engaging people on their web sites, but they also offered information about the events via Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. The goal for using social media was obviously to promote the rallies, but it was also to help people feel like they were participating in the rallies even if they could not attend.
Public relations professionals trying to develop social media strategies for their companies should look at this campaign and take away some helpful tips on how to develop a successful campaign. Colbert and Stewart made information about their event available to many different audiences by reaching out to several different social media outlets. They provided all the information a user would want to know and created ways to actually engage the users through interactive activities and open communication between them and their audiences via live Twitter and Facebook chats and a live stream through their respective shows' website.
I think they planned and executed their social media strategy very well and I think they saw the results from all their hard work through the attendance at the rallies, the donations made, and the basic awareness and chatter their efforts created. If a PR professional is struggling with developing and/or carrying out a social media plan, they should definitely take a few pointers from these two.
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This is really cool. These guys are followed by the perfect demographic, as far as social media is concerned. I believe the success of the campaign is due to interactivity. You have to give your target a reason to go back to your site. Have people take pictures of themselves, and vote was a perfect, and relevant way to do this. The way they connected different social networking mediums was powerful too. They made a web of sites and they all have a single, focused message.
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