Almost exactly a year ago we met Alex and John from Spin Advertising and Design in Christchurch. They talk about how social media has helped build their sales and extended their networks. A year on, it’s amazing how little has really changed – pick up some best practices in this interview.

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John Johnston (JJProjects) led the social media campaign for the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour earlier this year. Find out the connection between success and letting go of your message!

Key learnings:

• 21st century marketing – whether it’s for a non-profit cause or for a business – is about you being of service to your audience. In the case of Earth Hour, JJ’s team were of service to people around the world who cared about the environment, and gave them resources to rally others to the cause.
• The way to scale your social media project is to share control with your audience. Try to control everything, and you’ll never be able to scale.
• There may be malicious or negative people who will try to sabotage, but this is largely self-correcting as your community stands up for you.

There’s a theme here of cooperating with your audience. It’s emerging in all sorts of aspects of business, as I discovered at the Auckland Tweetup on Friday night. Justin Flitter told me that Zendesk finds its staff among its greatest fans on the community forums. Our intern Courtney, who’s also a big fan of Giapo Icecream, found herself behind the counter serving a customer. An apt analogy for what’s happening now.

Will you let your customers behind the counter? When does this not work? Love to hear your thoughts, as always.

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Josie Campbell, Communications Manager at The EDGE Performing Arts Venue, tells us how she uses social media to build buzz and hold conversations with her customers.

Follow Josie on Twitter. And let us know what you think? How do you use social media for more than just one-way announcements?

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Hear how social networking greases the wheels when finding a new neighbourhood, job and home country! Also, lessons learned from the Kiwification blog, a site for people planning to live in New Zealand.

Referenced in this podcast:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Skype (we recorded this interview using Skype)
• WordPress (a blogging platform)
• Socialise Me! (a WordPress plugin)
• The Interactive Marketing Summit - coming up soon, in Auckland on May 26th!

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This week we continue our talk about blogging with breakthrough strategist and Generation C expert Jake Pearce. Hear how a solo consultant uses blogging to amplify word of mouth, and get his ideas across.

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And don’t forget to send your audio or video comment to simon@ijump.co.nz to be in to win Joseph Jaffe’s amazing book Join the Conversation!

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