Call Secret Boston HOTLINE to leave messages for friends, announce upcoming events, review things done, or just leave a plain old rant!
<<< 1 (617) 682-0379 >>>

We promoted using Twitter, Facebook and this FMBL flier, below:

FANS
start – 4854
end – 4885
total gained 31

I think that this is because people like to win things but more importantly it gives people a simple reason to engage. In a lot of ways I don’t even think that the contest or the prize have to be that substantial.

It is funny because we could post something that is extremely cool, like a secret rock show or a secret restaurant but it would not get as much interaction as say a cutest dog competition.

What does this say about us as people or about our audience, I don’t really know. But if you are looking to be involved in Social Media, it is important to know what works and what doesn’t.

Kbizz

Initially our growth curve was steep as all get out. We grew by the hundreds. A large reason for this was that we, Jake, Michelle and myself, invited our entire friend list.

The result was instant. People accepted.

As time has gone by we have continued to grow everyday but the progress has slowed down.

A couple days ago Michelle decided to ask people to fan us in the status update.

My initial feeling was that people would not react well to that. I don’t like the feeling of asking people to fan us however I was wrong.  The strategy has worked extremely well.

Sometimes people need encouragement.

If you find that your fan growth has slowed it may be time to just ask. The worst thing that can happen is that people don’t.

It is worth a shot.

Best,

Kbizz

I did not know that this was possible. Through being an admin on our page it became important for networking purposes that when I would write in the name of another fan page in a status update that people could click on it and go directly to the corresponding fan page.

So, how do we do it!

1) You have to become a fan of the page that you want to make a hot link for.

2) When writing the status update, you write your text normally but when you get to the name you write a @ symbol.

3) What will happen if you are in fact a fan of that page, is that a menu will pop up and give you the option to select the page.

4) Select it and it should then make the text a hyperlink.

There is immense value in this when you are promoting another brand, person or page. Maximizing the ease of use is our number one priority.

If the barrier to entry is low, then people are more likely to click on it and go to the page that you are referencing.

I hop that this is helpful!

• Post a photo of your dog to the Secret Boston wall.
• Photos with the most comments, win (posters comments, not included)

2 PRIZES from Polka Dog Bakery:

• 1st:  Gift Basket work $68.00
• 2nd: Gift Certificate $25.00

WINNERS

Katelyn Paglia with
34 Comments

Barbara Mulvey-Welsh with
24 Comments

STATS

• Contest was announced on Friday at midnight – ending Friday at 5pm (17 hours)
• New photos added:  45
• Fans
  • Start:  4102
  • End:  4190
  • New fans added:  88

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

♥

1st Prize
Fabulous Gift Basket
$68 value

2nd Prize
$25. gift certificate

‘Abandon bldg in Downtown Crossing. I want it.’

When I got home three hours later, there were 17 comments ranging from:

• nostalgia
  • memories of David Lee Roth there in the 90s
  • different businesses that occupied the space
• mentions of surrounding businesses
• philosophical waxing of what it could/should/would be like
• interest in buying the building
• offers to partner in creating a creative workspace
• advice on how to go about finding out who owns the building
• more more more ♥

It’s moving, this!
How one photo can create community among strangers,
and inspire solutions and dreams.

Enter Secret Cities, who exist to inspire the world!

Secret Cities is the evolution of the Secret London Facebook Group that was created on January 19th 2010 by Tiffany Philippou. Within two weeks over 150,000 people had joined the group to share and discover London’s secrets.

With the goal of building a website to make the mountains of submitted content easier to find and share, a pizza-fuelled community of volunteers gathered over Valentine’s weekend. Supported by another London start-up, they worked day and night to create secretlondon.us.

Then around the world people began to start other secret cities and like with Secret London, did very well. Tiffany and her crew decided to register Secret Cities Custodians so that other Facebook Groups would have a place to go as they expanded.

Right now there are Secret Cities in Paris, Warsaw, Madrid and Austin to name a few.

Go and check out the site, and know that when you contribute to Secret Boston you are in the company of people from around the world!.

Best,

Kieran

THROW SPAGHETTI – SEE WHAT STICKS
Truth is, when we posted the contest at 7:30 am, the idea wasn’t fleshed out, at all.  We just wanted to encourage activity on the Secret Boston wall, and since we dig shoes, figured asking for shoe shots would be compelling enough to get our fans to participate. (perfect example of ‘throwing spaghetti, seeing what sticks, and then proceeding…)

Originally we promised:

• A prize (unknown)
• A winner picked randomly

This all changed a couple of hours later when we were able to secure the gift certificate from Dany, the owner of Dame, an amazingly cool vintage clothing store in JP that EVERYONE is talking about.  We realized there should be some action participants could take, in order to have a chance at winning the prize.

CH CH CH CH CHANGES
So, for the third time in three hours we tweaked the contest to make it a bit more competitive, and announced that:

• The person whose photo got the most comments by 4 pm, would win the $25. gift certificate from Dame.

CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO HIT UP THOUSANDS
At this point it was around 11:30 am and I was confident, enough, that we wouldn’t change the contest anymore, and sent a message to our almost 4,000 fans announcing the contest and prize.

SLICK
… which takes us to about 45 minutes ago (3pm) when I started tallying the posts and comments.  At this point I realized that we shouldn’t include certain comments:

• Secret Boston’s
• The person who posted (participant)

And we noticed that there were some ambitious (clever) people carrying on full conversation threads with one person, and we pondered disqualifying them.  We even thought about crowd-sourcing the dilemma, but then realized, wait, we want people having full conversations on Secret Boston – of course we WILL NOT disqualify them – that would be counter intuitive, right?

And the WINNER is:
Jaime Morton with:

• 33 Total Comments
• 18 UNIQUE Comments

GOOGLE DOCS
Check out a screenshot of the spreadsheet we used to tally:

• Participants
• Comments (total)
• Comments (unique -not made by participant or Secret Boston)

See you next Friday w/ a brand new contest, brand new prize!

♥