Would you outsource this via odesk or some other business or keep it in-house?

Thanks
Mark

One thing I think has been omitted from this rather large budgeted campaign that could have impact in this industry is an educational / viral online video campaign. This could be included as part of the social media campaign and videos.

As someone who deals with much smaller budgets I will watch with interest as this discussion continues!

Measurable: Set gaols that you can measure (baseline). Don’t set goals that you can’t mesaure. And analyse everything! This also covers usability testing, SEO, pay per click etc.

Sharable: Make all content compelling, remarkable, technically sharable, use PR, syndicate widely, enable your audience to distribute (retweet etc) content for you.

Findable: Back to SEO and usability.

Manageable: Set systems in place so that all elements are part of the process – a process of constant testing, refinement and improvement.

But…!!!!

None of this will be worth a damn unless you have AWESOME content. That’s where your crack team of writers is so important. Looking back on each of those themes, they all rely on having something to say of relevance to your target audience – whether the focus is clean-tech or sand-paper manufacturing.

Mick – The advantage of employing having full-time journos in my not so humble opinion is to let the staff do their job (perhaps give them blogging duties) and create something that could quite easily rival (and beat) traditional media channels – on a national or global scale.

Imagine a future where the mainstream media does not have the resources to research and break big stories (investigative journalism etc). Unless the big boys figure out a way to monetise this sort of journalism (something that is becoming a struggle), the only parties left with the financial motivation will be private industry channels – like the hypothetical solar panel company.

Who will own the news of the future? The people who can make the most money from owning it. I would argue that a solar panel company can derive greater financial benefit from ‘owning’ its channel than a News Ltd.

Option A: Spend $500k on advertising
Option B: Create an ‘A-Team’ of industry specific journos to (hopefully) become the world’s leading source (or Australia’s leading source) of clean-tech news.

A $500k ‘journalism’ budget would indeed make this ‘crack unit’ the most highly funded team of clean-tech journalists in the world!

The other member of the panel was Heather Snodgrass (@likeomg) who kindly stepped in when Kim McKay had an urgent family issue.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

I think it was interesting that James suggested hiring journos from around the world. A real social media campaign would just get the team that developed the solar panels to write about what they know and love. That would be a lot cheaper.

The whole panel though was definitely a case of carpenters solving all problems with hammers – me 100% included. “Focus, focus, test, measure”