Eberything begins with a click

Original prompter  of my presentation to the Piura’s Regional Council of Youth, October 13th, 2014. Edited and translated by the author.

Thanks for having me, and I hope to give you  useful information, if not you bull me at the time of the questions. How to do marketing on the social media? The key of everything is making a click. Of course, making a click is the easy part. The complicated is to build all the strategy that becomes that magic moment meaning a click. But making a click has few magic and much science, indeed.

First, let’s define  what marketing is. In simple terms it’s the ability that I have to satisfy a need of the people in any field, so they ever continue to choose me. Said simple – it’s the art of selling. We offer a good or a service through every sale in exchange of another good or service. The trick is in the verb to offer. Because it’s not the same to say “buy those potatoes” instead to say, for example: “Make your family to enjoy tonight – put some Piura’s fried potatoes to your crispy chicken.” Essentially, we’ve said the same. The difference is in how we present it, and how this presentation satisfies a need of the people.

The Malingas Initiative

Well, what do the social media have to do in all this?I learned how to edit webpages for myself 14 years ago. When I thought to have some experience on the issue, I decided to launch my personal website in September 2000, and one month later I launched FactorTierra, what we call FACTORTIERRA.NET now. The most of our coverages has been social-environmental conflicts, until an interesting door opened to us in December 2008.

After a problem related to  natural resources predation in Malingas, Tambogrande, story we became to release, a community’s leader sat down with my crew in March 2009 and made us a challenge: to put Malingas on the map. For making that, the first we realized was to research in-depth how this community is, so we spent a full week living with it. Initially, we were  to focus on the agriculture and cattle topic, what was that you could see straight, until ending the first day of research, Luis Correa, one of the producers, came back with news: a new petroglyph. Who knows Malingas, its best known archaeological vestige is The Devils of Guaraguaos Alto. But, what Luis Correa was saying to me was we had more sites.

Because of his insistence, we got an archeologist who we started to research with by our own, and we found, at least, a dozen of archaeological sites in a 200-sq-km area. The evidences we got to gather set that the petroglyphs could be until 4000 years old. Only as a reference, Chavín is 3200 years old. With all this information, we began to build a microsite you can visit, now if you want, on http://www.factortierra.net/malingas

When we closed the research in 2011, we decided to pack all those sightings on an article that made viral. In May that year, we released El secreto de Malingas (The Secret of Malingas), that was first ranked by RPP Noticias and Radio Cutivalú, and what came later was a load tthat included Andina News Agency, that is the official news agency of Peru, and other media across the nation and abroad. In the next two days, the story of the 4000-year-old petroglyphs in Malingas went around the globe, literally. The challenge that they imposed to our crew, to put Malingas on the map, was gotten, at least in a first step.

(An award to the) identity

And wwhat was the secret of Malingas? The truth is that the secret was seen for everybody: its own identity. We all have our own identity, or we should have it. The same happens to the products. And if we understand Malingas as a product, then the first one we have to look for is the own identity, I mean what makes it unique in the world and different to the rest. And when you bet to the identity, you make a trend.

Obviously, we put the link to the original article and the rankings on Facebook, and they had too likes and shares that it almost made pretty viral. For Malingas, it was an opportunity that costed more than the gold because they could add the touristic activity to the agricultural and cattle activity, so they could improve their life conditions.

Because of the impact we got –remember that our goal was to put Malingas on the map-, we received the Environmental Citizenship National Award for the Best Media Campaign, ending 2011 . This trophy, granted by the Peru’s Ministry of environment and the Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University, is the first one that Piura got. The other one was gotten by my colleague Alberto Navarro for a beautiful series about the carob tree. The formula applied by Alberto is exactly the same like the ours: betting for the identity, for the own. The own sells. But, is enough to bet for the identity to sell?

Originality (Via Satellite)

I think the other reason for what Alberto by his own, and my crew by its own, received the award is the manner we presented the product. I don’t know if Alberto, but the exigence inside my crew was to be very creative in the manner how we presented each one of the features we published. In other words, we bet for originality. The opposite to the original is called copy-and-paste.

Originality means you are capable to create something from nothing, or you can set what was already created so it is seen as a unique, different  thing – to innovate, in other words. Then, to do marketing  on the social media, we need identity and originality, and we get innovation with both. But, and what about the social media themselves? They’re simply platforms. They’re only tools to magnify all those contents. And did we have additional results plus the award? Yes, we did!

In 2013. History Channel Latin America network came to shot the Alien Contact series, and it contacted us because it was interested on an original story we produced at Huancabamba highlands, where the identity was what sold. The episode wwhich we featured was premiered in July 2013, and it’s reprised by the network up to today, and we’re penetrating in about 40 million homes from Bravo River to Patagonia.

The anecdote of that show is the reenactment of the story could not be video-taped in Huancabamba because, when the crew came to shot, the road got interrupted. So we needed a petroglyph, water, trail, and people. All this segment ended to shot in Malingas, Tambogrande.

Marco Paulini

And can the identity-plus-originality formula work for other products? Yes, it can. On May 30th  this year, I met a Young proffesionist from Sullana. We were becoming friends. You know the friendship is based on the gradual aknowledge of the people. I learned this way this guy had made a research by himself, in a Pacaipampa’s village.

He is an obstetrician and his speciality is the sexual and reproductive health of the people. What did his research discover? Between 7% aand 8% of teenagers from that village know what a condom is, but between 5% and 6% would use it. When those data were processed, we advised him to write an article to be understood for the most people as possible. We got to release it on El Regional de Piura website, on last July 30^th, just two months later we met each other. The feature now overcame 2000 hits. Why?

I forgot to mention a detail. The research was made in Bellavista de Cachiaco, Pacaipampa, the same place where the Guerrero-Neyra family comes from, the creator of Corazón Serrano band. Los riesgos del amor adolescente en tierras de Edita (Risky Teenage Love – Somewhere Piura’s Andes) is now one of the most successful original articles in Piura. And how this guy decided to bet for his own professional and personal identity, he gave it added value. Then, we recommended him to activate his Twitter account 

After that first article, he wrote one about how to use a condom correctly. The feature wwent over 2500 hits. Then, it came another about having bareback sex. It overcame 2000 hits. And he just released one about teenage pregnancy, a little time ago, October 2^nd, that already overcame 1200 hits. All these features have been released by El Regional de Piura.

El Regional receives, at least, 10 dollar cents for every hit because it’s subscribed to the Google’s AdSense programme. For this montth’s ending, we estimate that the four Marco Paulini’s articles can overcome 10 thousand hits. That means Marco Paulini could give 1000 dollars to El Regional de Piura for the end of October. And for the end of the year, we think he could generate about 2000 dollars. What would you do with 2000 dollars?

Plus, it’s enough you post something that says “Marco Paulini” on El Regional de Piura and the visit counter triggers inmediatly. What? Does Marco have magic powder? No, he doesn’t. It’s the same recipe than Malingas’ – identity and originality, what becomes him an innovator. And what does Marco gain from all this? Well, ADDING they start to consider him in Sullana for some activities, he had a tweet that said something like, and I’m paraphrasing: “Marco, what do you propose from your region for Peru to enter the first world?” Signed: Annual Conference of CEO’s, CADE 2014.

Rather, his article about teenage pregnancy has been marked as Favorite by Peru’s Vice-President Marisol Espinoza. Also, the Health Integral Insurance recommends everyweek on Twitter to visit the @MarcoPaulini account, at the same level than Pan-American Health Organization, Aldeas SOS, or journalists as Pilar Higashi or Ana Trelles. Now, Marco and my crew are looking for funds to prove what he found in Bellavista de Cachiaco repeats across the region, and if urgent rules are not taken about, we’ll have a population crisis in the next 10 years. To make it simple: there will be few food, few place for many people.

Conclusion: The Malingas and Marco Paulini formulas are no lab ccreations. They’re products that have identity and originality. Through the social media, we also prove they’re an innovation. If they could do it, you too. If you doubt of how to do it, look for me. I already said you I’m on  http://www.facebook.com/nelsonsullana and http://www.twitter.com/nelsonsullana  And what I do? I turn local ideas to global impacts. And I’m waiting for my next challenge.

© 2014, 2019 by  Nelson Peñaherrera Casyillo and Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Authorized reproduction quoting the source.