The Social Element of Extreme Makeover

The last several weeks I've been hard at work supporting on of my clients, Bob Cook Homes, while they go through the process that most people see in a scant hour of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. One of the big parts of making this home come together quickly was the power of social media. In fact, one of the local newspapers noticed wrote a short article about the topic.

Everyone always wants to know how you measure the effects of social media. Here are the bare numbers of this particular campaign -

From the 17th to February 24 (during the build):

• 82 Twitter posts which garnered 131 RT & 2235 clicks.

• 119 FaceBook updates which produced 329 'likes' and 199 comments.
  Plus approx 500 new fans & 3238 visits to the extreme website.

• 5 blog posts to date have had 2193 views and growing
  

• 5 email blasts that had an average of 57% open rate and 49% click through rate.

Those are pretty darn good numbers - some would question, however, is that a good measurement?

The real measure is what happened as a result of the above. With all the social we were able to get workers to the right place when needed, get fabric transported from other states by volunteers to the build in Wichita, get extra siding on the site in under an hour, deliver enough beverages to the site in a single day that the crew never had a problem finding their favorite drink from that day forward. Just to name a few real life examples.

Could the same be accomplished in other business situations? Absolutely IF the same amount of time & effort are put into it. I've had similar successes on a smaller scale, a direct correlation to the amount of time involved.

So the big reveal is over, at least for those of us in Wichita KS. Our work is pretty much done. The rest of the country will get to see the hard work of the volunteers and Bob Cook's awesome team sometime in May.

Working on "Extreme Land" in an Extreme-ly White Land

Well here we are, a few weeks and many many miles into "Extreme Land" as Teajai so eloquently labeled the project, and things are finally starting to take shape. The Extreme Makeover version of Bob Cook's website has gradually gotten to a point where it's less burdensome to maintain, but still requires a lot of our attention. With nearly daily correspondence from the Extreme camp we're definitely being kept busy.

If you ever want to know what full service really means in the internet world - the Extreme Makeover project is definitely a prime example as we are handling everything from programming to design to seo & social media -daily.

We've gotten so busy in fact that sometimes we have to throw our hands up and say "HOLD ON!" and work on keeping up-to-date with our "regular" clients. That's what I'll be doing for the majority of this snow covered day. I think Teajai said she was still working on a banner for the Extreme Makeover Pep Rally that is going on tomorrow - it's free to the public, you should think about going, I'll be there.

It wouldn't be a blog post without mention of the weather here in Wichita, which is completely insane. I woke up this morning and didn't even look out the window. After I got out of the shower I figured I should probably check if school was in session. All it took was me looking out the window and being blinded by the light being refracted from the snow that I took it upon myself to decide school was canceled. I then called Teajai to see if she wanted me to come into the office, of course she said to stay in and work from home.

Hopefully we get an 80-degree warm front that melts all this snow by tomorrow morning. I much prefer working in close proximity to the boss for easier correspondence. Better yet, we could move the office to some warm beach side resort.

Let's see, one of our clients (The Ladies Golf Place) was featured on Groupon! That was exciting for me, I'm looking forward to seeing the Google analytics after the traffic settles down and seeing just how much of a spike they receive. I'm also going to spend some time today getting our clients up to date on their social media stuff. I'm sure everyone is just dying for more savings on dragon-shaped stamps (Superior Rubber Stamp) and huge "SALE" banners (Superior Signs).

Well, time to get back to work! I hope everyone is having a great week so far and I think Teajai and I are going to try to keep the blog more active for you guys.