00:00:18
alex welcome uh we appreciate your time
00:00:20
and and the
00:00:22
the insights that you're going to give
00:00:23
us today as we talk about your forays
00:00:25
into social media and indeed social
00:00:27
networks so maybe tell us a little bit
00:00:30
about the background and
00:00:32
some of the approaches that you've had
00:00:33
as you started out
00:00:35
um the topic of the day what is what is
00:00:37
the network we're talking about what is
00:00:38
alex brown racing you know where are we
00:00:40
starting from with this sure sure and i
00:00:42
i appreciate obviously the invitation to
00:00:44
to come here um i actually used to work
00:00:47
at wharton and and
00:00:49
i was a teacher at the university of
00:00:50
delaware and i taught internet marketing
00:00:52
and concurrently i have a passion for
00:00:55
the horse racing industry and i ride
00:00:57
horses in the morning
00:00:59
so you know along the way i'd always be
00:01:02
experimenting with some blogs and some
00:01:04
other web
00:01:05
projects
00:01:06
as i taught
00:01:07
internet marketing
00:01:09
and i built a website for a racehorse
00:01:11
trainer
00:01:12
i told the guy
00:01:14
we would make it a blog and this was
00:01:16
kind of
00:01:17
at the time when nobody really knew what
00:01:18
a blog was
00:01:19
but i encouraged him that we'd build
00:01:21
some traffic and some audience if he
00:01:23
kept it updated
00:01:25
and we did that and we got about three
00:01:27
visits a day for about two years so
00:01:30
clearly it was an interesting idea but
00:01:32
we really didn't build any traffic
00:01:34
and then when barbaro came to back to
00:01:37
fair hill after he won the kentucky
00:01:38
derby i suggested to my friend that we
00:01:41
started blogging about barbaro's
00:01:43
preparation for the preakness and he
00:01:45
agreed and at the time i was teaching a
00:01:47
class so i bought some google ads
00:01:49
and you know with the students we
00:01:51
followed
00:01:52
the rise in the traffic based on the
00:01:54
updates we provided and we built the
00:01:56
traffic up to about 120 visits a day
00:01:58
going into the preakness and
00:02:01
man i was really excited i could see
00:02:02
something working and it was pretty cool
00:02:04
so when you first started you said that
00:02:06
the three visits a day what what year
00:02:08
was that how early was that in the in
00:02:09
the blog evolution it was probably
00:02:12
wasn't that early i'd run a few projects
00:02:14
before but it was probably about 2003
00:02:17
2004
00:02:19
but you know we did some things wrong
00:02:21
yeah we updated once a month you know
00:02:23
you're not going to get people coming
00:02:24
back if you don't update on a regular
00:02:26
basis and i think the content was quite
00:02:28
interesting but we really didn't provide
00:02:30
any glue to build an audience i don't
00:02:32
think any other early lessons besides
00:02:35
frequency what else was it that drew
00:02:37
attention
00:02:38
um i think
00:02:39
obviously i think frequency is important
00:02:41
i think transparency is very important
00:02:43
in this arena you say the way it is you
00:02:45
can't sugarcoat anything
00:02:47
that just comes back and bites you later
00:02:49
i think
00:02:51
and there are other things but certainly
00:02:53
frequency attention to your audience
00:02:55
is very important what about linking
00:02:58
outward now this blogs are usually the
00:03:00
building blocks of social networks right
00:03:02
yeah was there an evolutionary step that
00:03:04
you took
00:03:05
looking forward thinking well we should
00:03:07
connect this in other areas we should
00:03:09
find ways to mesh out some sort of a
00:03:11
network i certainly tried that in the
00:03:13
early days
00:03:14
before barbara came along
00:03:17
but you know other people are resistant
00:03:19
to link to you you can say well we're
00:03:20
the first racehorse trainer with a blog
00:03:22
and you know they don't want to drive
00:03:24
traffic to you necessarily
00:03:26
um it it's kind of interesting the whole
00:03:29
idea of what is the role of media and
00:03:32
different websites building audiences or
00:03:36
providing the best information i think
00:03:38
sometimes those two goals conflict
00:03:41
um if your goal is simply to build an
00:03:43
audience you're reluctant to provide
00:03:46
useful links if your goal is to provide
00:03:48
the best information you're more
00:03:51
likely to provide useful links but those
00:03:53
useful links drive your traffic traffic
00:03:55
somewhere else i think that's that's a
00:03:56
very important differentiator there what
00:03:58
was the relationship you had with
00:04:00
general media at the time there's always
00:04:02
a lot of coverage of the equestrian
00:04:03
world did you have any kind of interplay
00:04:05
with them again at that time early days
00:04:08
very little relationship i mean some
00:04:10
simply through my teaching of internet
00:04:12
marketing
00:04:14
because again i was pretty early adopter
00:04:16
of that subject matter
00:04:17
i i had some in a play but literally
00:04:20
until barbara came along i was a
00:04:23
complete non-entity
00:04:25
so to speak and well sometimes notoriety
00:04:28
helps
00:04:29
drive the traffic yeah and from this
00:04:30
though you've gone on to create really
00:04:32
what i think is a very very impressive
00:04:34
network through the alex brown racing
00:04:36
brand and and
00:04:38
a lot of the efforts that you have to
00:04:40
help the crest equestrian world and and
00:04:43
and some of the
00:04:44
uh some of the movements there maybe
00:04:46
give us an overview of that too and then
00:04:47
we'll dig deeper into what the network
00:04:49
is all about so
00:04:51
sadly the preakness 2006 barbara broke
00:04:54
his leg and i think
00:04:56
certainly everybody at penn knows that
00:04:58
since
00:04:59
he came to penn's hospital at new bolton
00:05:01
center and
00:05:03
my initial reaction to the to the to the
00:05:06
tragic incident was to quit the project
00:05:09
i certainly wasn't going to exploit a
00:05:10
bad situation simply because i knew i
00:05:12
you know there was going to be a lot of
00:05:14
traffic right
00:05:16
the following day
00:05:17
not to get into too much detail but the
00:05:19
following day
00:05:20
i was at a friend's house having sunday
00:05:22
dinner and i just went on onto my site
00:05:25
and i realized people were googling
00:05:27
barbara at a phenomenal rate
00:05:29
and getting no information i mean the
00:05:32
information out on the internet was
00:05:34
just wasn't that all and ironically all
00:05:36
the media was at new bolton center but
00:05:38
there was really nothing coming out of
00:05:40
there
00:05:41
so i made a couple of phone calls to a
00:05:42
couple of vets put up some information
00:05:44
and then a vet called me back as soon as
00:05:47
barbara came out of
00:05:48
surgery
00:05:50
and and
00:05:51
along the way i was updating the google
00:05:53
ads on what we were doing and so forth
00:05:54
so when people did google barbara they'd
00:05:56
get my ad straight away updated barbara
00:05:59
information come straight to my site
00:06:01
so um
00:06:02
so when barbara came out of surgery
00:06:05
three thousand visits in an hour the
00:06:06
site crashed
00:06:08
because i was on a free server and you
00:06:10
know it's clearly three visits a day
00:06:14
typically we weren't ready for three
00:06:16
thousand visits in an hour
00:06:17
so the next day i just
00:06:19
determined that if i was going to do
00:06:21
this
00:06:22
i was going to do it correctly i was
00:06:24
going to provide updates if i had the
00:06:25
permission to provide them
00:06:27
and
00:06:28
i would run with this project
00:06:31
and we know now obviously eight months
00:06:33
later sadly barbara didn't make it
00:06:36
but along the way the the site went from
00:06:39
tracking barbaro's um
00:06:42
time in new bolton center
00:06:44
and then we started talking about other
00:06:46
horse welfare issues
00:06:48
and specifically we're focused on the
00:06:51
whole horse slaughter issue
00:06:53
so along the way we started raising
00:06:56
money for horse rescue and some other
00:06:58
initiatives
00:06:59
and when barbara did pass away um
00:07:03
i i did think at that time it would
00:07:04
probably end the project but
00:07:07
interestingly enough it didn't and and
00:07:09
the project's taken a whole new life um
00:07:11
and we're clearly a website about horse
00:07:14
welfare
00:07:15
at this point and we're actually quite a
00:07:17
large player in that in that field
00:07:20
along the way i started off with a blog
00:07:23
a blog for about three months
00:07:26
on its own
00:07:27
after barbara broke his leg we were
00:07:29
getting 500 comments a day
00:07:32
and you really can't have good
00:07:34
conversation when you're getting 500
00:07:36
comments in one blog post where people
00:07:38
are trying to discuss a variety of
00:07:40
different
00:07:41
things so
00:07:42
i used some of my
00:07:44
contacts when i worked at wharton i got
00:07:46
a a
00:07:47
a license from a prospero discussion
00:07:50
board provider
00:07:51
and implemented the discussion board
00:07:54
initially to some resistance because the
00:07:56
community was used to one platform the
00:07:58
blog now i was asking them to shift to
00:08:01
another platform or and keep both
00:08:05
and the resistance was there for a while
00:08:07
but then they saw the value in the
00:08:09
discussion board
00:08:11
if it wasn't for the discussion board we
00:08:13
wouldn't have been able to start raising
00:08:14
money and we've raised more than a
00:08:16
million dollars to date well let me ask
00:08:18
you then how do you feel the discussion
00:08:20
board drove the revenue or the uh
00:08:24
the donation sure
00:08:27
i'll explain a little bit about the the
00:08:29
how the fundraising model works um we're
00:08:32
not a non-profit organization in fact we
00:08:34
don't exist as an entity
00:08:36
um i basically provide a medium for
00:08:39
fundraising
00:08:41
a horse rescue can go to our discussion
00:08:43
board
00:08:44
and they can start a discussion thread
00:08:48
potentially for example about a couple
00:08:50
of horses that might be in a kill pen on
00:08:52
the way to slaughter and they
00:08:54
they might need a thousand dollars to
00:08:55
get those horses out of harm's way
00:08:58
and they'll
00:09:00
provide the information
00:09:02
and various members of the community the
00:09:04
community is actually called fans of
00:09:06
barbara
00:09:07
will contribute fifty dollars twenty
00:09:10
dollars a hundred dollars
00:09:12
the money will be raised and the horses
00:09:14
are then out of harm's way
00:09:16
i don't think you can do that on one
00:09:19
sort of
00:09:20
comment um system like i would update
00:09:23
the the the blog once a day with a new
00:09:27
um blog posting and then just do various
00:09:29
updates within that
00:09:31
um so there just wasn't a medium at that
00:09:33
point to do what we could do with
00:09:36
a discussion board did you find uh after
00:09:39
the initial resistance that people took
00:09:41
to the discussion board more so than
00:09:44
they had on the comedy blog and uh from
00:09:47
your own strategic viewpoint was there a
00:09:49
difference between the information that
00:09:50
you sent out via the blog
00:09:53
and the conversation that sort of
00:09:54
nurtured itself
00:09:56
right yeah
00:09:57
certainly um
00:09:59
very quickly that the community realized
00:10:02
the value of the discussion board
00:10:04
there are still community members and
00:10:07
there really is no such thing as a
00:10:08
member but people people that use the
00:10:10
community that only go to the blog or
00:10:13
that only go to the discussion board now
00:10:16
because they
00:10:17
became part of the community after the
00:10:19
discussion board was in place
00:10:21
so there is a little bit of that but
00:10:23
mostly they cross over pretty good now
00:10:27
i actually i update the blog every day
00:10:29
still three or four times a day and try
00:10:32
not to get involved in any of the
00:10:34
conversations on the discussion board
00:10:36
unless they're particular questions
00:10:39
where i have some expertise like gallop
00:10:40
and a horse or
00:10:42
or you know what's going on getting
00:10:43
ready for the triple crown or something
00:10:45
like that
00:10:46
it's very important for me as a
00:10:48
moderator and i now have three other
00:10:50
moderators to stay out of conversations
00:10:54
why do you feel that's important
00:10:56
because i don't want to put my footprint
00:10:59
on on
00:11:00
the discussion board the discussion
00:11:01
board works because it's a lot of people
00:11:04
talking about a lot of different issues
00:11:07
some of which they agree to agree and
00:11:09
agree to disagree but
00:11:11
i think you know because it's quote
00:11:14
unquote my sight
00:11:16
my word carries a degree of influence
00:11:19
probably more so than somebody else's
00:11:21
so because of that i just stay out of
00:11:23
the conversations to the extent that i
00:11:25
can i think you're probably touching on
00:11:27
a couple issues that are very very
00:11:28
important and the proper adoption of
00:11:31
social media strategies
00:11:32
the community yeah uh is in dialogue
00:11:35
with itself it grows on itself they have
00:11:37
a lot of value to add to it yet at the
00:11:40
same time you have in essence a brand
00:11:42
yeah an oversight yeah so whether or not
00:11:45
their members that brand is immaterial
00:11:47
they're they're galvanized by the topic
00:11:49
they're galvanized by the purpose so you
00:11:51
have the ability to give some expertise
00:11:53
yes
00:11:54
and yet you can have the ability to
00:11:56
listen and let that that uh audience
00:11:58
agree i think it's worth noting too that
00:12:00
you have some incredible statistics
00:12:02
about the growth of this i mean you're
00:12:04
in youtube you're on facebook you have
00:12:05
thousands of friends uh in this type of
00:12:08
environment so you've gone from blog
00:12:10
posting you know
00:12:12
every now and then into a very vibrant
00:12:15
aspect
00:12:17
what is it you think draws all these
00:12:19
people together surely you haven't done
00:12:20
any
00:12:21
outward marketing to try and collect it
00:12:23
what is it that gets the
00:12:25
as a friend of mine would say the canary
00:12:26
is flying your way what brings people to
00:12:28
the site i mean
00:12:29
now what brings people to the site i
00:12:31
think is the reputation of the site and
00:12:33
the generosity of the community the fans
00:12:36
of barbara
00:12:39
it
00:12:40
it's i think one way to capture this
00:12:43
community and how it's grown is kind of
00:12:44
like a positive virus
00:12:46
this is a community that does great
00:12:48
things and that intrigues people and
00:12:50
people come to the community
00:12:52
and do good things because they see a
00:12:54
lot of good things being done
00:12:56
so it feeds off of itself
00:13:00
and you know i talked a little bit about
00:13:03
why we introduced the discussion board
00:13:06
um
00:13:06
you know one of the roles that i think i
00:13:08
do play in this community which is
00:13:10
important is
00:13:12
from a strategic standpoint what sort of
00:13:14
social media tools should we be using
00:13:17
and about six months ago i i decided
00:13:21
that you know we also have a wiki we've
00:13:23
had a wiki for a while in order to sort
00:13:25
of um aggregate content and and
00:13:29
and
00:13:30
sort of a depository for people to learn
00:13:32
from what we've already done right
00:13:35
but there was a decision about six
00:13:37
months ago to adopt facebook as a
00:13:40
social networking tool for the community
00:13:43
and to me i think that was important so
00:13:46
we could reach out more to people that
00:13:48
are interested in what we're doing
00:13:50
but wouldn't necessarily come to our
00:13:52
websites on a daily basis
00:13:54
and the nice thing about facebook is it
00:13:56
does allow
00:13:57
me to email out once a week sort of a
00:13:59
summary of things that are going on
00:14:02
and
00:14:03
so so i'm quite quite interested in how
00:14:06
facebook has enabled us to sort of
00:14:09
essentially accomplish two things one
00:14:11
strengthen the ties within the community
00:14:14
so those within the communities that are
00:14:15
on facebook can now learn more about
00:14:17
each other
00:14:18
and secondly to reach out to other
00:14:20
people
00:14:21
and other people include media for
00:14:24
instance it gives me a much
00:14:26
um
00:14:27
stronger reach into media that are
00:14:30
going to
00:14:31
join our facebook group but they're not
00:14:33
going to spend hours on our website
00:14:36
every day
00:14:37
and that enables me to further get the
00:14:39
word out and get connections um
00:14:42
and and you know we we created a youtube
00:14:45
group simply because a lot of our
00:14:47
community likes to create
00:14:49
video content so why not enable some
00:14:52
form of aggregation of that content and
00:14:54
we're now running a pretty cool youtube
00:14:56
contest which i can go into a little bit
00:14:59
more detail about and most recently
00:15:01
we're now on twitter and twitter is
00:15:03
useful
00:15:04
i think to sort of reach out again to
00:15:07
sort of media types and others that
00:15:09
wouldn't ordinarily go to our site and
00:15:12
keep them people updated with maybe some
00:15:14
media coverage that we're getting or or
00:15:16
some other sort of significant things
00:15:18
that the fans of barbara and
00:15:20
and alex brown racing is trying to
00:15:21
accomplish so
00:15:23
i think it's important when you look at
00:15:24
these different tools have goals for
00:15:26
them
00:15:27
and and stick to that i mean i i tried
00:15:30
my space didn't work
00:15:32
and quit on it pretty quickly you know
00:15:34
and if you're not prepared to make
00:15:35
mistakes you're not prepared to figure
00:15:37
it out right so along the way we've made
00:15:39
some mistakes for sure well i was just
00:15:41
about to ask that how did you determine
00:15:43
that it did or didn't work in the
00:15:45
facebook example well facebook i learned
00:15:48
pretty quickly and i could find my way
00:15:50
around pretty easily i still haven't
00:15:51
figured out my space so personally i
00:15:53
just couldn't figure it out
00:15:55
i don't think
00:15:57
myspace's
00:15:59
demographic is
00:16:01
as suitable for us as facebook we
00:16:03
typically
00:16:05
reach an older audience my demographic
00:16:08
of 50 year old women
00:16:10
to a large extent
00:16:12
which is quite interesting that they
00:16:14
actually a lot of them kind of learned
00:16:16
the blogging environment through this
00:16:18
project and the discussion boards
00:16:19
through this project and are now going
00:16:21
to facebook through this project very
00:16:23
comfortable so you helped educate them
00:16:25
to be active participants in the
00:16:26
community too you made a comment earlier
00:16:28
i think was very very important as the
00:16:30
strategic adoption of these tools it
00:16:33
doesn't sound like you've just been
00:16:34
willy-nilly about i'll grab it because
00:16:36
it's buzzy it sounds as though it fits
00:16:38
in your overall community architecture
00:16:41
very well maybe you can talk a little
00:16:43
bit about how somebody
00:16:44
with a brand or a purpose or a cause can
00:16:48
make that strategic assessment
00:16:50
yeah i mean it's difficult
00:16:52
i mean i will say out of all the work
00:16:54
that i've done
00:16:55
um when i worked at wharton at the
00:16:58
university of delaware and other
00:16:59
consulting work this has been
00:17:01
intellectually the hardest project i've
00:17:03
ever worked on
00:17:04
and i think all my sort of experience in
00:17:07
internet marketing was necessary for me
00:17:09
not to make too many mistakes
00:17:12
how do i assess these tools
00:17:14
strategically is a little bit of hit and
00:17:16
miss but the key is you have to
00:17:18
experiment and you have to have clear
00:17:21
goals for outcomes
00:17:23
and
00:17:23
to some extent
00:17:25
measurable
00:17:26
and try to measure them but i will also
00:17:29
say if you ask me how many members there
00:17:32
are of our community
00:17:34
i wouldn't be able to give you a
00:17:35
straight answer
00:17:36
and i wouldn't really care
00:17:38
now do i know page views do i know
00:17:42
number of messages posted per day on the
00:17:44
discussion board do i know dollars
00:17:46
raised i know all those metrics and
00:17:48
they're all important to to me in the
00:17:50
project to to continue moving forward so
00:17:54
it's somewhat data driven but
00:17:57
not not probably as much as as perhaps
00:18:00
others would would appreciate i think
00:18:02
interesting aspect the wharton
00:18:04
interactive media initiative is all
00:18:05
about examining the data generated by
00:18:07
these types of platforms and the story
00:18:09
that the data tells and how that can
00:18:11
drive your business decision but you
00:18:12
have something else at work uh along
00:18:14
with that that strategic examination i
00:18:16
think and it's it's the authenticity
00:18:19
right uh the transparency and the
00:18:21
passion that goes along with this
00:18:22
particular topic yeah i i don't know
00:18:25
that you'd be able to fabricate this
00:18:27
kind of uptake with the audience and the
00:18:28
community that you have how much of it
00:18:30
do you see is as a function of of
00:18:34
of a need that's answered a platform to
00:18:36
give voice to all these people
00:18:39
i mean i think it is a huge function of
00:18:41
what we're doing in terms of you know
00:18:44
we're a horse welfare site essentially
00:18:46
hosted by a racehorse
00:18:48
from a horse racing perspective
00:18:52
and
00:18:52
that that has been very important to tie
00:18:55
people together
00:18:56
i'm i'm i'm very sort of
00:19:00
i'm convinced that we're successful um
00:19:05
because of the internet and the innova
00:19:06
that provides two things for us
00:19:09
one is pure transparency
00:19:12
it's and transparency is just super
00:19:14
critical and the internet's provided
00:19:16
that and the other is connectedness and
00:19:18
the social networking aspects of
00:19:20
connectedness obviously
00:19:22
but you combine transparency and
00:19:23
connectedness
00:19:25
and
00:19:26
now you have to have authenticity as the
00:19:29
word you use um you have to say it the
00:19:32
way it is
00:19:33
and
00:19:34
sadly in in the horse world
00:19:36
we need the horses need a voice and it
00:19:39
needs to be said the way it is so that
00:19:41
we can
00:19:42
get passionate about issues like horse
00:19:44
slaughter and at the end of the day i
00:19:46
absolutely believe we'll end that
00:19:47
practice simply because of the
00:19:50
combination of transparency and
00:19:51
connectedness we continue to grow get
00:19:53
more people involved
00:19:55
and the the reasons that we have horse
00:19:58
slaughter
00:19:59
can no longer be sort of um maintained
00:20:03
because they're not authentic
00:20:06
and i'm not going to go into the
00:20:07
political debates about the particular
00:20:09
issue but
00:20:10
that's my belief and that's my passion
00:20:12
and that's why i think we can be we are
00:20:14
being successful and and we can continue
00:20:16
to be more successful but without this
00:20:19
sort of the social networking side
00:20:22
it would be a lot harder you're able to
00:20:24
pull all that passion together and
00:20:25
almost a singular voice uh that that
00:20:28
gives tell us a little bit more about
00:20:29
your youtube uh contest now you're it's
00:20:32
another platform yet but again it fits
00:20:34
strategically in your mind it fits
00:20:35
strategically in our mission and it's an
00:20:37
example of what i think is an
00:20:38
interesting tactic so if you get down to
00:20:40
sort of you know the
00:20:42
goal strategy and some of the tactics we
00:20:45
use um in terms of
00:20:47
the horse slaughter issue
00:20:49
one of my goals is simply getting the
00:20:51
word out about horse slaughter i'm not
00:20:54
absolutely going to convince you whether
00:20:56
it's
00:20:57
a practice that should occur or
00:20:59
shouldn't occur my goal is that you know
00:21:01
about it then you can make up your make
00:21:03
your own decision right but if you know
00:21:06
about it through me obviously some of
00:21:07
the content is going to be biased toward
00:21:09
my viewpoint i guess right but the goal
00:21:12
essentially is just make everybody aware
00:21:14
um so in terms of the youtube contest i
00:21:18
put up a thousand dollars
00:21:21
for
00:21:21
um you know
00:21:24
someone to create a youtube video that
00:21:27
essentially wins the contest and what is
00:21:28
the contest it's to create a one to four
00:21:32
minute video
00:21:33
about the practice of horse floor now
00:21:35
i've written a 16 page essay on this
00:21:37
practice so one of my rules is you've
00:21:40
got to read the essay
00:21:42
and then you know create a a video about
00:21:45
some piece of that essay whether you
00:21:47
agree with it disagree whatever it might
00:21:48
be
00:21:49
um and then i have certain other rules
00:21:52
some are designed to get google choose
00:21:55
and you know search
00:21:58
stuff which is obviously very important
00:22:00
um so you know in the title has to have
00:22:02
horse slaughter for example and some
00:22:03
other stuff
00:22:04
um
00:22:05
and
00:22:06
the the other is the other rules are
00:22:08
designed for the more viral aspects of
00:22:10
the internet right so
00:22:12
how does how does the winner get judged
00:22:14
it's based on number of comments number
00:22:16
of views and and the rating purely so
00:22:19
when the submission date's over which is
00:22:22
you know april 10th there's a one month
00:22:24
period until may 10th before the winner
00:22:28
is judged based on some algorithm
00:22:30
of that data
00:22:32
so you know my goal is people get
00:22:34
incentivized to create a piece of
00:22:35
content and then market it and get it
00:22:38
out there and get other people to
00:22:40
forward it and
00:22:41
get it ready to get it on google and and
00:22:43
so forth and one other rule that i put
00:22:46
in there is simply it's got to be pg-13
00:22:48
nobody wants to read about
00:22:50
or see video of course is getting
00:22:52
slaughtered
00:22:53
any kind of animal slaughter is going to
00:22:55
be gross to look at right so i mean
00:22:56
that's not the point the point is we
00:22:58
need to create content that people will
00:23:00
actually
00:23:01
view
00:23:02
and and learn from
00:23:03
right
00:23:05
and and i do believe that you know
00:23:06
there's lots of whole slaughter content
00:23:08
on youtube that
00:23:09
people absolutely won't view because
00:23:11
they just don't want to be
00:23:13
offended by by what is
00:23:16
a horrible experience but through this
00:23:18
contest you're able to
00:23:19
enable your community yeah reach out to
00:23:22
others
00:23:23
share on youtube
00:23:24
raise awareness of the issue right i i
00:23:27
assume that the the voting and ranking
00:23:29
is done in the youtube platform as well
00:23:30
yeah yeah and then you have nice uh
00:23:32
interactivity between
00:23:34
your site and youtube so you can
00:23:35
hopefully generate some traffic and the
00:23:37
cool thing is prince i'll give you a
00:23:39
very short example montana right now is
00:23:42
trying to introduce some legislation
00:23:43
that makes it easier to open up a
00:23:45
slaughterhouse
00:23:46
one of the youtube producers i i'll call
00:23:49
them is based in montana created a
00:23:51
wonderful youtube video about why horse
00:23:54
lauder shouldn't come to the great state
00:23:56
with a big sky and all the beautiful
00:23:58
stuff right and it's a really cool video
00:24:01
because this is an ongoing issue and the
00:24:03
governor of montana has yet as we speak
00:24:06
signed the bill that video is has has
00:24:09
gone viral it's all over the internet
00:24:11
it's being blocked by pretty pretty cool
00:24:14
people
00:24:15
and it's being used to encourage people
00:24:17
to watch it and to then call the
00:24:19
governor of the state of montana to
00:24:21
request that he veto the bill so it's a
00:24:24
perfect example of of what we're trying
00:24:26
to do
00:24:27
what's what's next for you you mentioned
00:24:30
twitter already
00:24:32
where do you see the evolution of the
00:24:33
community going and how do you feel like
00:24:34
you can
00:24:35
fulfill the needs of the people involved
00:24:38
with it i mean my goal is always every
00:24:40
day wake up and don't mess it up
00:24:42
right i mean it's a pretty basic goal
00:24:44
but it's a very it's very easy to mess
00:24:47
this community up
00:24:49
you know i could ban the wrong person
00:24:51
that could create a massive adverse
00:24:53
effect and so on and so forth so
00:24:55
you know
00:24:56
what new tools will we look at how will
00:24:59
we continue to grow the the network
00:25:03
i'm not sure i can really answer that
00:25:05
because if i knew that we'd probably
00:25:06
already looking at it like i but for
00:25:08
instance like twitter i know about two
00:25:11
years ago but we only started using
00:25:13
twitter a couple of months ago so i
00:25:15
spent quite a lot of time thinking about
00:25:16
that kind of stuff
00:25:18
um
00:25:19
but my goal like we have a thousand um
00:25:22
members of the group on facebook i'd
00:25:23
like that to be 5 000. we have i you
00:25:26
know there's only a couple hundred
00:25:28
people currently following us on twitter
00:25:30
i'd like that to be 500 you know these
00:25:32
goals probably by the end of this year
00:25:35
so it's goals within
00:25:37
what we're currently doing
00:25:39
um you know our
00:25:40
discussion board has a million posts we
00:25:43
get about 1200 posts a day
00:25:46
let's you know grow that to 2 million
00:25:49
you know in the blog to be honest i
00:25:51
don't even follow the blog
00:25:54
page views anymore i had to take site
00:25:56
meter off because they had a bug in
00:25:57
their program once and i never put it
00:25:58
back on
00:26:00
so um you know
00:26:01
i have some pretty
00:26:03
pretty pretty strong goals but you know
00:26:06
you also have to be pretty flexible in
00:26:07
this environment i mean who knows
00:26:09
twitter i don't know if it'll last
00:26:11
whether it will i don't even know what
00:26:12
their business model is so they need to
00:26:13
have a business model to stick around so
00:26:16
i don't know how
00:26:18
you know invested you can be in some of
00:26:19
these things and our blogging platform's
00:26:22
free or everything that we're doing is
00:26:23
free
00:26:24
so i always concerned that we'll get the
00:26:27
the carpet pull you know the rope pulled
00:26:30
out under us at one point at some point
00:26:32
but you know along the way you focus on
00:26:34
the brand alex brown racing so if
00:26:36
something does if we are interrupted as
00:26:39
it were hopefully that brand is now
00:26:42
gained enough strength that we can come
00:26:43
back in another form well you're shored
00:26:45
up by a very valuable very vocal and
00:26:48
very growing community so i think you've
00:26:50
got a lot that
00:26:51
will keep you afloat for a long time to
00:26:53
come alex uh we appreciate your time
00:26:55
with us today and and your insights on
00:26:58
on how to work these social networks in
00:26:59
in the right direction um alex of alex
00:27:02
brown uh racing we appreciate your time
00:27:04
thank you very much some tremendous
00:27:06
insights from alex brown today on how to
00:27:08
nurture and build a community and
00:27:10
leverage the strength of social media
00:27:11
and social networks moving forward i
00:27:13
think a couple of the key points that he
00:27:15
made was it revolves a lot around his
00:27:17
mission statement the ability that this
00:27:18
community is drawn together for a
00:27:20
purpose it's not fabricated there aren't
00:27:24
artificial tools there's authenticity
00:27:26
there's trust there's information
00:27:28
there's value to the community i think
00:27:30
it's also really important to understand
00:27:31
that
00:27:32
alex and his team experimented they grew
00:27:35
and they did it strategically looking at
00:27:37
the tools that are available in the
00:27:39
social media construct the twitters the
00:27:41
blogs the social networks the facebook
00:27:44
all these things weren't just thrown
00:27:46
together in fact you know they were very
00:27:48
strategically designed to help power the
00:27:51
community so through a strong mission
00:27:53
statement a strong
00:27:55
galvanizing factor
00:27:57
it's
00:27:58
very apparent that brands can can really
00:28:00
pull together a strong network a
00:28:02
community that functions a community
00:28:04
that gets things done i think some of
00:28:06
those really interesting
00:28:08
frontline aspects are very valuable and
00:28:10
can be extrapolated to other business
00:28:12
models
00:28:22
you
