11/25/2009

Take a break at the CU Water Cooler

By Tim McAlpine

Last week, Matt Davis (the Credit Union Warrior and newly minted Filene innovation implementation consultant) called me up and explained a brainwave he had. Without getting all Jerry McGuire on you, I saw the merit immediately.

Matt bought a URL, launched a Wordpress blog and recruited a dozen active social media credit union advocates as editors and the CU Water Cooler was launched in just over a week! I was happy to contribute the graphics.

Each editor is tagging interesting links using Delicious, the tags are compared using Fever and the most popular links are published in a daily blog post. The goal is to bubble up the best credit union content and to make it easier for credit union fans to find relevant information.

As an added bonus, the CU Water Cooler Liquid Lunch live Internet radio show is being launched as a companion piece to the link service. A revolving cast of three to five CU Water Cooler editors will discuss and debate the most popular stories of the week. The first 30-minute episode is scheduled for Monday, November 30. Watch for a time and URL. We're looking for listeners to also participate in the chatroom. We were inspired by Carla Day's new CU Chat Up live show that she is doing and think the CU Water Cooler Liquid Lunch will be a great addition to the emerging live credit union radio show space!

I'm excited about the CU Water Cooler. It is an excellent concept and I'm proud to be involved. Matt wrote a great intro blog post that sums up the vision for the site. Please give it a try and let all of us know what you think.

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11/23/2009

Living Young & Free featured on CBS Evening News (well, kind of)

By Tim McAlpine

As a follow up to last week's recap post on our "T-shirt buy" with Jason Sadler of iwearyourshirt.com, here is the story that appeared on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

I guess I'll patiently wait by my telephone. It should start ringing off the hook... right? This experience has been way too much fun!

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11/19/2009

Living Young & Free Show 008: Career Day

By Tim McAlpine

Episode 008 is here! DeAndre' from Texas interviews a credit union CEO, Myles from Alberta interviews a human patient simulator technician and Josh from South Carolina interviews a language arts teacher.

You can also download all of the episodes as a podcast from iTunes.

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11/17/2009

He wore our shirt! Fantastic fun for about $600

By Tim McAlpine

As I mentioned yesterday, I rented Jason Sadler's torso (of iwearyourshirt.com fame) to promote Living Young & Free. For $313, we received the use of said torso for the full day of November 17, 2009 (the 313th day of the year). To get the most bang for our buck, we added a life-size cut out of DeAndre', Josh and Myles which ran us $100 plus shipping. Finally, add in the cost of an XL T-Shirt and you've got a $600 media buy beyond compare.

For that price, we received two tweets to Jason's 23,000 Twitter followers...

Mutiple status updates to Jason's 3,000 Facebook friends...

Four Flickr photos...

One hour of live coverage on Ustream.tv...

(If the above video is all black when you press play, hit the refresh button on the lower left)

A wrap up video on YouTube and Facebook...

Four minutes on national live TV on MSNBC...

 

Plus, we owned Jason's home page for the day...

And if that weren't enough, Jason will be wearing our shirt on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric this coming Monday, November 23. Seriously.

What an absolute gas. Jason Sadler is the hardest working man on the Internet. I cannot believe that he does this seven days a week. What I love is that it is 100% real and authentic. There is no automation (tweeting in advance, auto DMs, etc.). Just one guy being incredibly social!

What's the social media marketing ROI of the above? I have no idea, but $600 seems like a steal to me. Thanks again to Jason Sadler, who will likely be running for U.S. President in 2012.

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11/16/2009

Jason Stadler is wearing a Living Young & Free shirt tomorrow!

By Tim McAlpine

I learned about Jason Stadler and his iwearyourshirt.com website in February 2009 after he'd been up and running for about a month. I love simple brilliant ideas and this is definitely one of the most original concepts I've heard about in a long time. Here's a description from Jason's site.

Well it’s a pretty simple idea and I’m a pretty simple guy. For 2009, I am selling the upper-half of my wardrobe (shirts). I am selling every day of the year at face value, so January 1 is $1 and December 31 is $365. I will be selling all 365 days without exception!

So what do you get for the day(s) you purchased? Well I’m glad you asked. You mail me your shirt (size: X-Large) and you get:

• Daily Video on YouTube & Ustream.tv
• Daily Photos on the blog & Flickr
• Daily Posts on the blog & Twitter
• Calendar (You/Your Company's Logo & Website)
• All of these with me wearing your shirt

Upon seeing this service for the first time back in February, I immediately bought a day! And tomorrow is that day. Jason will be sporting a Living Young & Free shirt and will be a honorary Young & Free Spokesperson for November 17, 2009. We've got some fun stuff planned including a contest.

I've tuned in from time to time throughout the year and have witnessed Jason turning into a one-man-social-media dynamo. His daily, one-hour live shows attract lots of viewers and he has been featured on dozens of national news sites including CNN and the New York Times.

Tune in to the live show tomorrow on Ustream.tv at noon Pacific.

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11/15/2009

Listerhill Credit Union is having great success with Young & Free Alabama!

By Tim McAlpine

By all accounts, Listerhill Credit Union should be having a harder time than our three other live Young & Free regions. Listerhill is approximately one-third the size of TDECU, South Carolina Federal and Servus in members and assets. The state of Alabama has the lowest Internet usage in the USA. The Muscle Shoals and Florence area of Alabama has only about 100,000 people. Yet, none of these factors has not stopped the team at Listerhill Credit Union from smashing Young & Free Alabama out of the park!

The application phase closed just over a week ago with 17 incredibly talented applicants. This is our second highest total in our five searches to date. Only South Carolina with 28 has been higher. Web traffic is on par with our other regions. 

In addition to a gung-ho and professional team at Listerhill there have been a number of factors that have contributed to the success of Young & Free Alabama to date including high on-campus word-of-mouth awareness at the University of Northern Alabama, great visibility at numerous events and a very success partnership with a local radio station (listen to some great clips in the Young & Free Alabama media center).

We are now in the voting stage with three talented young men battling it out for votes and attention.

Congratulations to the Listerhill team. Your tremendous grass roots efforts are paying off! We can't wait to name the next Young & Free Spokesperson.

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