He’s one of just 131 kakapo left in the wild and is one of the ways the Department of Conservation get the word out about their work, and the recovery project. In this post, I’ll share with you what you can learn from this fascinating case study.

~ The obligatory backstory ~

That video went live in October, 2009, and promptly went viral. It had Stephen fry providing witty comments and hilarious angles of Sirocco doing his thing.

A few months later, he was officially recognized as a conservation ambassador and dubbed ‘The Spokesbird.’ They built a brand around The Spokesbird concept which included a minisite and Twitter presence.

I’m a bit of a birdwatching and conservation geek so I really enjoyed following Sirocco on various social media accounts. I quickly realized that this is how people (or birds) should be using social media. I love reading his updates. I know they are from a person and the bird is simply a persona – similar to Gus at Haul – but I don’t care. Sirocco, and the recovery project, has made me feel compelled to take action and share the story with my community.

Here’s what they did right:

They saw an opportunity and took it.

It would have been easy to do nothing based on the viral success of the video. The video in itself is enough to generate interest. Opportunities such as this rarely present itself. I discovered the kakapo species via the above video, as did many.

They created a compelling personality

A subject like this can easily be dry. They leveraged the perceived cheekiness and incorporated it into their presence. Most comments being with the BOOM or ‘Skraaark’ birdcall. He often talks about his own handsomeness and plays on the incident in the above video. People have fun engaging with him. I giggle every time he replies personally.

They are experimenting with other online tools

This can bring in a new generation of fans, and is similar to what Lady Gaga did when she released her new album. There is a game called Smallworlds where users can support the Kakapo by purchasing a Sirocco Kakapo wearable.  I don’t know what that means, but I saw a lot of response via the fan page. It also meant that people found their own way to promote the cause via the game, such as this effort.

How it has affected me

I am the ideal fan/follower. I’m heavily interested in the what Sirocco talks about and it has made me want to do the following:

• I want to buy books and documentaries so I can learn more about the kakapo
• I am so disappointed that I can’t go to NZ next month to see a kakapo up close. That probably would have injected 1k into the NZ economy.
• I’m very interested in volunteering, if I could work out the logistics
• I’ll share a lot of the information he shares with my tribe, because he has sparked that passion.

I do a lot of work in social media and I’ve only felt this way about two brands in the last few months. (The other is this comic store in Melbourne, but that’s another blog post.)

Over to you

Do you have a favourite brand on social media? I’d love to hear about stories similar to this. I’d also be interested in hearing about similar ways social media has been used to promote conservation issues.

As the above picture proves, I did a lot of hanging out. And, by hanging out, I mean sitting in a jetlagged stupor thinking ‘damn I’m hanging with some of the best minds in this industry… now wheres Andy Hayes and his promised ice cream?!’

Despite the many things that went horribly awry, I still managed to keep my eyes out for awesome stuff to share with my community. There have been a lot of comments in Blogworld roundups about how I excelled as a connector. Well, what most people don’t know is that I’m even better at sourcing and sharing the good stuff.

The people and products featured in this post are the ones that really stood out. Some of those reasons are not logical.

Learnable.

I was first introduced to Learnable when I puked outside the party Sitepoint were holding with Problogger. It featured on the screen in the suite but I was unfamiliar with the concept.

The incredibly helpful Shayne Tilly filled in the blanks when I rocked up to the Problogger/Sitepoint booth the next day. By ‘fill in the blanks’, I mean explained it to me in a way that my friends and peers could resonate with.

Basically, it is the platform that Sitepoint are using to deliver their courses and they are now allowing it to be used by normal people. They have a slick delivery system which includes a Q & A and forum sections. It is all hosted on their site and all the customer/tech support and sales queries are handled for you. In return, they take 50% of the income earned.

The launch post summed it up better than I could by saying:

Learnable handles the technical stuff, payments, and support to allow you to focus on what you know best: communicating what you’re passionate about.

This reminds me a lot of the Review Me model. I’m not sure how effective this will be for a number of the A-Listers but is worth monitoring. I’ll be talking to the Sitepoint guys about this fully when it’s close to the full release. I do know that it is time consuming handling and outsourcing many elements of the sales process. It’s also worth keeping track of as you can potentially earn affiliate commissions by referring it to your audience.

Learn(able) more

Jaime Tardy

I met Jaime briefly. I wish there was an interesting story behind it, but it was on the day a stalker-face called me 10 times in a row at 2am in the morning. I stupidly decided that it was worth staying awake when he called again at 8am.

One of my secrets to success is relying on the judgement of my network. When asking for recommendations for bloggers to watch, her name come up several times. Srini wants to interview her. And, when searching through my email, I discovered that we had already been in contact.

Basically, she was lovely enough to point out some errors on my testimonial page after being referred to me via Michelle Woodward. She offered to buy me a meal but by the time I got to Blogworld I had totally forgotten. I now have a CRM in place to ensure people like her don’t get forgotten when I get overwhelmed.

Normally I don’t connect to many personal finance blogs because I have been poor for all of my adult life. I connected to hers. She blogs at Eventual Millionaire and I really appreciate her common sense approach to managing her finances. Usually, I get turned off because the blogger practices extremely frugality or has aggressive plans for wealth creation.

From her about page:

I like to help people put money back in it’s place. Where people control money and money doesn’t control people.

You can read her recap of Blogworld here

Mark Thompson

I sat next to Mark when we all went out for lunch. He was talking to Annabel Candy about how nice her ebook looked. She was showing it off on her iPad and he commented on how Dave Navarro also has slick ebooks. I was like “Wouldn’t it be funny if you were sitting next to Dave’s networking assistant’ and he handed me his card.

You can follow him on twitter, check out his blog or visit Search Creatively. Networking tip: his blog accepts guest posts

Everett Bogue

Glen Allsopp kept on saying that Everett was going to be the next big thing but I had trouble resonating with his content. Then I became overwhelmed with my business and started devouring his posts in the hope of simplifying my life.

I love his approach to work, art and business. He is demonstrating that you can earn a full time income while taking a minimalist approach. I have read his two books, Minimalist Business and The Art Of Being Minimalist, and whole-heartedly endorse his work.

Corbett Barr

I actually started chatting to Corbett when he wanted to arrange an interview with Dave. Despite the minimal communication, I was really impressed with his professionalism.

He blogs at Think Traffic. I am very impressed with the standard of his articles and believe this blog will become and authority. I hope to see him add more resources and interviews in the coming months.

Fabeku

I discovered Fabeku through Catherine Caines fear wrangling course. Despite the awesomeness of his site, I was kinda turned off by the woo-woo aspect of his sound healing.

I heard the interview and instantly loved him. He is awesome. We chatted on Skype shortly after and both of us were plotting world domination with our stuffed business mascots.

He is so much fun to get to know. And, for the business inclined, you can learn a lot about positioning and conversation marketing from his site.

Amy Harrison

Larry Keltto recommended Amy to me recently. Her name sounded familiar so I dived into my email archives. There was this lovely email from her offering to help.

Amy is everything I love about blogging. She is engaging, hard working and genuinely loves the community. I definitely recommend you check out her copywriting services.

Joi Murugavell

I met Joi at the Connect Now conference and may have snobbed her. We soon bonded over being introverted misfits and she has corrupted me in more ways then getting me addicted to the duck song.

She is a fantastic designer. She also does these addictive sketches called Oodlies.

I highly recommend her to delightful weirdos and those who like brilliant design.

Danielle Laporte

I found Danielle via Dave’s interview with her. I figured that considering I worked for him, I may as well check out the people he interviewed. I’m so thankful I did that.

I bought her Fire Starter Sessions and fell in love with her work. She is a brilliant writer and a genius at empowering her community. She is in a league of her own.

I’ll be diving in her archives in the coming weeks and will report what I’ve learned about community management and compelling writing. You can find her at White Hot Truth.