Swim with the Social Media Savvy

Here's a quick way to assess whether you are stroking smoothly in pristine waters with the social media savvy or swimming against the current toward the island of Yesterday.

Scenario: You're trying to fill a temporary public relations position and over 34,000 people from almost 200 countries apply for the job. Do you:

1. Ask yourself if you actually have to read all of those resumes?
   
2. Consider the opportunity cost of all those interviews you'll need to conduct?
3. Delegate the job of screening applicants to a someone else?
4. Ask EVERYONE who wants the job to post a 60-second video on YouTube?

If you answered 1, 2, or 3 ... you're definitely swimming to Yesterday. If you chose 4, consider yourself social media savvy. Now, if you want to be really strategic about it, toss tradition to the wind, forget the whole idea of resumes and just ask everyone who wants the job to create a mini-advertisement about themselves, and by extension, your company, cause or brand.

That's exactly what Tourism Queensland in Australia did. Their "Best Job in the World" contest, launched in January, was designed to find someone who would take an "Island Caretaker" job for six months.

What is an Island Caretaker? Someone who's willing to move into a three-bedroom beach house within the Great Barrier Reef neighborhood. And while the job does include a few menial chores, the real purpose of this $110,000 half-year position is to increase awareness of the Great Barrier Reef by growing a global audience via blogs, tweets, photos, videos and podcasts from down under. Tough work, but apparently someone's got to do it.

The winner, Ben Southall, 34, from Great Britain starts his new job on July 1. But the real winner may be the folks at Tourism Queensland who harnessed the User Generated Content (UGC) of over 34,000 people who used their social networks, their creativity, and their earnest desire to land what is arguably one of the best "temp" positions on the planet, all in a surreptitiously collaborative effort to promote what Tourism Queensland sells.

According to Tourism Queensland's CEO, Anthony Hayes, world-wide response to the "Best Job in the World" campaign has been "nothing short of phenomenal."

Within days of its launch the campaign became virally charged as applicants posted and shared their videos on YouTube and numerous social networking sites. The number of applicants was soon paired down to a more manageable 50, who competed with each other to develop an audience by entertaining and educating their online followers with stunts, stats and schtick that stealthily promoted the greater goals of Tourism Queensland.

The group of 50 was reduced to 16 finalists who gathered together on a sandy beach in Queensland for a heavily hyped final round of interviews and activities that led to the selection of a winner.

Tourism Queensland spent $1.7 million on the campaign to reap an estimated $110 million in world-wide publicity. So while their social media strategy was far from free, the ROI was nothing short of incredible. More importantly, Tourism Queensland proved a social media maxim:

When you dare to let consumers define your product, you lose some control but you can gain a boatload of publicity, the kind that money can't really buy.

Now, get back in the water and swim with the current.