HERE’S AN IDEA!

Create a project where you get to drink beer every day, write it off as a company expense and have everyone think you are some smart internet guy.Well I did just that.In mid-September I came up with the idea to embark on a social media experiment during October.Using a local bar, World of Beer - Westchase, and its annual beer and music festival, WOBtoberfest, as my target I created my version of a flash mob, the 31 Days of WOBtoberfest.I went to it every day in October, sampling two different beers and blogging about it.And no I have/had no affiliation with the bar.  I paid full price for everyone one of my beers!

THE EXPERIMENT

But the experiment was more than 2 beer reviews a day.  I extended the website with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Vimeo, allowing me to reach different audiences in whatever manner they preferred.The highlights were interesting and contrary to what I thought they would have been:

• Very few people found out about it through organic search.  Those that did, quickly bounced off of the site.



• It appears the offline activities played the biggest role.  Things like talking it up, leaving business cards everywhere and working the bar and its staff played the biggest role in attracting new visitors.



• Even with mentions by David Meerman Scott [PHOTO] and ads on Facebook, [PHOTO] they provided little in terms of repeat visitors, email subscriptions or RSS subscriptions.



• The two online bumps we had were tied directly to WOB’s rabid fan base.  Early on they put out a Facebook status update that spiked visitors and subscribers.  Also there were two articles in their weekly email newsletter that drove new traffic.



• The repeat visitors were largely due to a daily email update.  With an open rate of over 54% and a click-through rate of over 30%, I would consider that a major success.

They always say “the money’s in the list”.  This was no different.  Email played the most significant role is connecting with the fans of 31 WOB!

WHAT ELSE?

• What else should I pick apart and expose to you?
• How do you think I should measure success?
• Would the results have been different if there was more time in advance to build up anticipation?
• Was the experiment just too short to achieve anything greater?

Check out some of the hard numbers from the experiments Day 31 post for a more humorous look at its success.