I’m glad #ALSIceBucketChallenge is over … now what can we learn?

As a marketer, watching a breakout viral story unfold before my social network eyes is always fascinating. How did that start? Why did that one catch fire and others didn’t?

Last month, I wrote this article for ClickZ, in collaboration with my colleague Roger Katz, on just these topics, for Friend2Friend — “What brands can learn from the #ALSIceBucketChallenge” summarizing recommendations as follows:

  • Be social platform agnostic
  • Leverage the social network effect
  • Make it meaningful, but make it fun!
  • Make it clearly actionable
  • Give it time to catch fire, and
  • Involve celebs if you can!

You can read an explanation for these recommendations at ClickZ.

Airbnb’s growth hacking story

Growthackers.com presents some insight into Airbnb’s growth hacking experiences that I didn’t know before. Interesting article that can be read here.

Airbnb, like many successful ‘out of nowhere’ startups began its life by solving a problem that the founders had themselves in 2007 — they wanted to rent out their own San Francisco apartment. They soon found out that they were not just solving their own problem, they were solving a problem that people all over the world had too — a solution that is now worth $10B.

Here are the things that stood out for me about what Airbnb did:

Continue reading Airbnb’s growth hacking story