How Where in Oslo’s article went VIRAL and why big brands behave childish!
Why brands and institutions behave childish some times?
Update 22.01.2016
Visit Oslo answered and apologized for their behavior and explained that the reason why they did not share the link from whereinoslo.com because the website was down at the moment they checked the article!
And..
The article mentioned earlier went viral, massively viral!
Heres how many times is has been shared:
Over 96.000 visits on whereinoslo.com only by this article. Here is the Google Analytics stats.
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It is surprising how big brands and institutions behave some times! It surprises me every time. This time it was VISIT OSLO behaving some how childish. Yeah that Visit Oslo.
I will explain.
The members Where in Oslo
The majority of the members of Where in Oslo — Super Social are expats and internationals who permanently live in Oslo for some time now, or newly moved to Norway’s capital. Where in Oslo is a community based guide and through our Super Social community portal. We organize often OFFLINE events based on members mutual hobbies and interests. It’s very special to actually meet people in real life and not only chat with them on Social Media. For us, that what we call SUPER SOCIAL ;)
The weather in Oslo today
It has been a very cold and icy in Oslo. Slippery icy all over the city actually. Oslo’s emergency clinic had over 150 patients with broken bones in just five hours. It has been that bad.
Cars slid off roads and into ditches, couldn’t stop from running into each other and spun full round on highways. Entire bus systems ground to a halt. Police sent out urgent warnings of extremely slippery roads, and pleaded with commuters to not even attempt driving. By newsinenglish.no
Today was the perfect day to share this article on whereinoslo.com It was all about posting relevant information, solving a problem on the right day. Things like that go viral. The article demonstrates in a funny way how to walk on ice, by taking penguins as an example.
I used our existing distribution channels to share it with the community members. Those channels are Super Social’s Facebook Page and Where in Oslo’s Facebook Group.
The article went VIRAL
And it did go viral. The article with this funny photo which teaches humans how to walk on ice has gone VIRAL and it is still being shared and liked as Im writing this blogpost.
Over 21.000 unique visitors (until now 23:02 local time) has visited the article, today only. Over 14.000 social activities has been recorded in Social Media which are related to the article. That is shares, likes, comments, pins, +1 etc. The massive traffic actually resulted on our VPS to fail a few times. With some database optimization the problem was fixed though.
HUGE success for such a small website as whereinoslo.com is.
THANK YOU ALL for loving and sharing.
We also hope that the method demonstrated in the article saved someone from pain and unnecessary visits to hospitals and emergency clinics.
This is what happened when I contacted Visit Oslo
Visit Oslo shares often on their Facebook page links from external websites so far the content is related to Oslo and aims to promote the city.
In the mean while I saw that the article was being shared and liked on Facebook. To me that was a signal that people love it because it is so relevant to the icy day and article gaining traffic and understood that more of Oslo’s would like to see it.
So why not send Visit Oslo a message on Facebook and suggested them, if it would be interesting for them of course, to share it with their Oslo-followers on Facebook.
What they did is just weird and some how childish too. They (obviously) Googled “how to walk on ice” or something similar, found the same image at an international blog and posted that link instead! Obviously driving traffic to irrelevant international websites is better than the local ones!
Of course, they decide what to post and what not to post based on their content strategy and the way they work. It’s just fine to not want to share the article I suggested, but liking the idea and posting it from an other website that has nothing to do with the slippery roads of Oslo and Oslo in general, is simply childish! There you go. I said it. :)
Why ?
The reason why Im posting this blogpost is because Im wondering, I would like to know, why would such a big brand and important institution behave that way?
I would understand their behavior, if we at Where in Oslo were competing with them, but we are not! We can not. They are many and work full time with a fine salary. We are few, work for free because we love it and put a lot of effort and time to organize events and bring people together in real life, voluntarily.
P.S: I have sent a second message to Visit Oslo on Facebook, asking why? No answer yet!
Why do big brands behave childish some times?