Getting better at getting the word out / Promotion

A friend just mentioned Thunderclap to me. Would it make sense to try and announce a number of courses this way? (Pros/Cons/Feasibility?)

The Music MOOC example shows that even with NYU and Media Lab involved, it’s still a lot of work to reach large audiences.

Opening this thread to generate some ideas on how to get the word out, better, bigger, louder. Not just with thunderclap, but other tools and approaches.

It looks interesting - seems Twitter shut them down a while ago, but they’re back.
And while some people may have privacy concerns with us essentially borrowing their Facebook and Twitter feeds, it looks like something that might be very useful for short campaigns with defined milestones.

What this makes me think, though, is that blanket social media noise is not the best promotion strategy either - perhaps we needed to come up with a promotional plan that was more tailored and targeted?

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I just went back and looked at Steve Carson’s media plan, and it was very targeted–he identified media leads beforehand, and had a schedule for when each partner would make noise.

I’m thinking that nurturing individual relationships with media outlets might be the best way to go–and starting that conversation earlier so folks know when things will come their way.

We now have a relationship with Alan Henry at Lifehacker–but I think we should all be reading blogs of interest, commenting and reaching out when appropriate. I know @1L2P did so with the Atlantic.

I’m kind of skeptical to this - I recently participated in my first ThunderCalp for the OA Button, but I have since had second thoughts about it. To me it seems too much like spamming - and of course, people typically follow a bunch of people who are interested in similar things, so when your activity feed is overflowing of the same message again and again, it seems wrong. It might have a use for protest/political kind of activities, but I don’t think it’s ideal for routine announcements, like new courses. (Much better to have a bunch of people write their own thoughtful tweets about a new course, spaced over a few days - or retweet P2PU tweets, etc).