05 February 2009 What Brands Can Learn From An Oyster

Today I'm going to talk about Daniel Oyston and his entry into the Australian marketing blogosphere. It started early last year when Oyster first sent feedback to the Marketing Today podcast. He followed that up with further comments over the next few months, adding value to the conversation each time. In October, he started his own blog. He was soon commenting on a number of different blogs, adding insight and thought to each post. Building up his online presence, he established networks and from that his own posts started receiving a lot of attention. He contacted me personally and we had a number of emails back and forth about beer and funny internet memes. He still sends me random shit he thinks I'll like. And he offered to host some images on a server he had access to. In less than six months, he's been able to do what I've been trying to for nearly two years. In just this short a time, he's blog is held in incredibly high regard. I believe that while his content is remarkable, his community driven approach and the rules of engagement he followed have attributed to his success. I think if you asked Oyster whether this was a strategy he set out to do or if this was just what he thought was common sense, logical and how a decent friendly guy would act, his answer would be the latter. Brands can learn a lot from this. The way Oyster first monitored the environment, began to put out feelers and ultimately engaged with the right influential people was superb. Brands should use this example when conducting social media response and broadcast....