Olympic sized headache

This past week was primarily focused on social media.  We began our Olympic Facebook campaign yesterday so last week was full of planning, drafting, and brainstorming.  I was exposed to a side of contests that I have never seen before.  There is so much behind the scenes work that must go into setting up a contest.  We first had to read through the International Olympic Committee's legal publication regarding the copyright and trademark restrictions for the 2012 London Olympics.  You wouldn't believe how stringent they are!  We wished to run a contest coinciding with the Olympics that asked contestants to like us on Facebook and then guess how many medals the United States would win this year.  Little did we know but the words London, Summer Games, Olympics/Olympian/Olympiad, or even 2012 were copyrighted!  It goes without saying that it was extremely difficult to brainstorm a way to run our "Olympic" promotion without specifically mentioning the Olympics.  We used to crafty marketing lingo to come up with the 2012 Equity Trust Games!  We first had to set up the contest on a program called Shortstack.  This sets up a tab for the game to be played directly from our Facebook page.  Another long, arduous process we had to go through was reviewing our own rules and regulations.  It is mind-blowing to me all the detail that must be put into each game or contest because of all the lawsuits that are filed in today's day and age.  Luckily we got the contest up and running and I will be posting a new Olympic themed post each day until the end of July. 

Also this week we threw together a short campaign because we were closing in on 1,974 likes on our Facebook page.  Since Equity Trust Company was founded in 1974 we thought it would be a fun idea to post some fun facts about the year 1974.  I drafted and posted four different posts talking about how gas prices have changed from 55 cents a gallon, how that was the year the speed limit was changed to 55 mph, and also mentioned the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match that took place that year between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.  It was exciting to me to see the quick feedback to these posts as I received a like only one minute after posting.  Now if only my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts could be so popular! 

This week I also continued with my competitor analysis and met with Kent and Jeanette about the Evergreen system.  I am hoping to start running with that later this week.  Finally, great news from the BiggerPockets blog forum that I have been monitoring.  A gentleman responded to one of my posts, he must have liked that I was an informative and educated poster, asking for information regarding a self-directed IRA.  I passed him along to our sales team and I learned later that they had converted this lead and he opened an account with us!  I was extremely excited that the posting I have been doing on the site is generating business for our company. 

I should hopefully be posting later this week to update you on my work.  I'll cross my fingers the IOC didn't notice how many times I mentioned the Olympics in this blog, since I'm sure they follow the ETC marketing intern very closely.  Until next week!