Pinning Contest from Buick

It's funny how you notice specific things more after you have learned about them. Take for instance, I was scanning through Mashable and this article immediately jumped out at me, "Buick Turns Pinterest Board into Car Concept". Only two weeks ago, we were discussing Pinterest and how using contests is a great way to engage customers. Buick has now taken that into consideration and ran with the idea of creating a new car from a contest between 10 of the top design, fashion, food, and lifestyle bloggers.  They created boards with ideas of what they thought were good color schemes for the Buick Encore. Michael Wurm Jr won and Buick was inspired by his light blue and honey tones. Although the car won't be available to purchase, they are to opening up new ideas from customers. This was a great way to engage their followers and allow them to feel like they are contributing to the brand. This is also a great way to engage the younger generation that uses Pinterest. I do think that opening the contest up to the public would be a better way to attract a lot more followers and potential customers!

#KCA

So of course, its a Saturday night and I have nothing better to do than watch the Kids Choice Awards. haha Just kidding, I recorded it...but anyways. It occurred to me as I was watching it today that social networking has become a huge and indefinite part of our lives especially now with the younger generation. I was watching the award show and kept seeing these random people's pictures pop up on the main screen on stage. I didn't realize what they were until I saw the Twitter Feed throughout the bottom of the screen. This was a continuing thing throughout the night where kids could use the hashtag #KCA or #KidsChoiceAwards. It never said where the pictures were from on the screen but I assumed they were from Twitter. It literally amazed me that so many kids are using social media now a days. Kids were voting all throughout the week and tweeting pictures and its just crazy to think that seven year olds tweet. haha I mean what do they even tweet about.. "Mom made me a PB&J. #yes #loveher " They even created an app called Friendstofriends for voting that worked with and through Facebook. Entertainment Weekly tweeted a bunch of videos using Vine where they captured people getting slimed. I thought this was a great idea and very clever way for them to get a younger audience and new followers. I looked on social mention to see how much it was being talked about and to my surprise it was huge. They had 56% strength that it was being talked about on social networking sites, 53% reach, 131:0 sentiment, and 19% passion. These numbers were huge but I do think that the KCA's could have done a better job of promoting and getting the word out about their hashtag and tweeting though. Never once did Josh Duhamel say anything about hey kids go and tweet using #KCA's and it will pop up on the big screen. I think it could have been a lot more active and a lot bigger if they would have just kept mentioning it throughout the show. But overall great show!!!