Part (iii):  Our participation – “The Gerber Generation is looking for the Next Star”
In June of 2010 my wife and I enrolled our child “Saul” into the Gerber July contest “The Gerber Generation is looking for the Next Star” generating his contest number 11435. We received a tremendous amount of complements from so many different people about his cute appearance and decided to see what would happen.To gain a little more understanding on how we generated 17,808 votes in only one month using social media the following information illustrates how we achieved these results. First, we sent e-mails out to family and friends to gain visibility and generate more votes. Second, we used Gerber’s platform on their website to send e-mails to our friends and family and invite them to vote. Third, we used Facebook to leverage our combined network of over 1400 people to increase the number of people voting for our child.To begin we relied on e-mails to friends and family as well as Gerber’s platform on their website to send e-mails out our friends and family and by the first week we had 45 votes. On July 5th we posted more information about the contest on Facebook and by the end of the next week we had over 1400 votes. We were amazed! We continued to post and gather interest in the contest and by July 15th we had over 3200 votes. By July 15th it came to our attention that he might have the possibility of really placing well in the contest. My wife went through thousands of participants to see where he stood within his category. Our research discovered he was 11th in his category.

It became clear with this type of significant increase in votes that we were onto something really big and could perhaps have a chance at winning or placing very well in his category. We continued to post and gather additional interest using Facebook as our main medium.

By July 20th he was ranked 6th in his category with over 10,000 votes. These were phenomenal numbers so we continued posting and generating additional interest. We decided by continuing to monitor the other highly ranked participants we could have a very good chance at either winning or placing very well. By July 25th we had multiple companies voting for “Saul #11435” on a daily basis as well as friends, family, neighbors mainly from Facebook. It was very obvious Facebook was an excellent medium to gain more visibility and generate more votes.

On July 31st 2010, we had 17,808 votes for Saul contestant #11435. This put him in 4th place within his category according to our records after searching through the many contestants. Although Saul did not receive a prize getting 4th in his category we were amazed at the vast power of how social media influenced so many to votes for our bundle of joy.

In summary, Facebook is a tremendous medium in social media which can tremendously influence your community to take action in whatever you are doing. By engaging your community you can accomplish many things. Imagine the impact this will have on future business relations with people who choose this social media medium. Obviously, Gerber was quite visionary by incorporating this medium into their marketing strategy. Our participation is a great case study backing this up.

Part (iv) the conclusion of the Gerber contest will be posted next week

 

Paul Bradley Smith
Social Media Strategist/Blogger
E-mail: paul@smitherswebsolutions.com
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