It's a riot - part 2!

OK, so it's not a riot, but I thought I'd revisit my previous posting about how social media can exponentially increase the number of followers to a cause...

Buzz about the "Occupy" movement has reached amazing heights. A recent study showed that buzz about the movement peaked in early October with a the five-day surge of over 13,000 messages posted about to it - read more on Mashable

The movement started on Wall Street, NY, it then grew to other cities in the USA and is now occuring all over the world, including Melbourne.

If social media didn't exist, would the movement have grown so significantly? Would we be seeing it in Melbourne?? Is social media once again an instigator???

Social Media Stats - Australia

I found some recent stats that I thought I'd share with you all today. These stats were produced by socialmedianews.com.au and relate to social media usage in Australia for the month of September...

• Facebook – 10,628,600 users
• Youtube – 9.9 million UAVs / mo
• Blogspot – 4.6 UAVs / mo
• WordPress.com – 2 million UAVs / mo
• LinkedIn – 1.8 million UAVs / mo
• Twitter – 1.6 million UAVs / mo
• Google Plus – 622,050 Users

What I found fascinating is that Facebook is continuing to grow at amazing speed with over 100,000 new users in the last month. Where are they coming from!? It'd be interesting to find out what demographic these late adopters are coming from. Does anyone know?

More info available here: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-september-2011/

Rookie error Mt Buller - the next GASP?

Mt Buller - rookie error

Mt Buller went into crisis management earlier this week when they updated their Facebook status.  

The seemingly innocent status update provided a link to their website providing costs for the 2012 mid week pass. 

Within minutes, fans who considered themselves 'loyal' to Mt Buller showed their outrage - 78 comments on this status and growing.

Turns out Mt Buller had increased the price to $1299 when their major competitors, Mt Hotham and Falls Creek had only recently slashed the price of their 2012season passes...  $699.

Rather than respond to the comments and/or ignore the profanities, Mt Buller dug themselves a deeper hole by deleting posts and making another status update...  Oops, rookie error!

41 comments ensued with 'fans' fuming, eg:

Kathryn Vine So basically if we say something such as rip off, overpriced, or we are going to falls or hotham you guys shall find that offensive and delete our post?

Rob Leen You guys aren't really good at this Facebook thing are you? 

Mt Buller finally went into reputation management mode, put forward an official response from their GM, arranged a 2hr Q&A Facebook forum, a Q&A page and discussion section on their facebook page - phew...

But has the damage been done?

Check it out here - https://www.facebook.com/MtBuller?sk=wall

 What do you think?? Is it a case of too little, too late?