I've spent a good amount of time this week participating in the Mercedes-Benz Tweet race to Dallas (around the "big game"). Two members of the higher ed community (@tsand and @ijohnpederson) managed to be selected as one of four teams to participate (the others are media personalities, bloggers etc). Each team was assigned a celebrity to "help" and guaranteed their charity $25,000 for being selected. St. Jude's is the "only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance."
So the race begins. I don't have any idea if they thought they could win or if they were just happy to get that major donation... and then the community went crazy. Higher ed is a tight group of interconnected, intelligent, creative and obsessive people. We crushed every challenge, we tweeted enough that their fuel tank NEVER dropped below full (to the point that @tsand thought it was broken) and today, the start of final day 3, they have more than double the points of any other team.
MBTeamS: 65,485
MBTeamGL: 26,345
MBTeamE: 20,486
MBTeamCL: 26,733
Based on how the other teams are doing... that was probably what was expected to happen... a nice close race into Dallas. But the highered community stayed up to finish challenges, ran around to local dealers and sent photos, changed avatars when requested etc.
From the headquarters:
MBtweetraceHQ Mercedes Tweet Race
#mbtweetrace Update: Pts earned from #DLER #challenge: #MBTeamS 325 #MBTeamGL 150 #MBTeamE 75 #MBteamCL 50
MBtweetraceHQ Mercedes Tweet Race
#mbtweetrace Update: Pts earned from #AVTR #challenge: #MBTeamE 70 #MBTeamS 365 #MBTeamCL 160 #MBteamGL 255
This is an example of how social media differs from every other form of marketing communication. If your community cares, they will come out and help when you need them. Or they will at least pay attention to what you are doing. If they don't care, you're begging them to notice.
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