I attended the AiMA event this past Wednesday and Andy Mitchell, VP of Digital and Development Marketing at CNN Worldwide was the speaker. He was responsible for the “I just saw it on CNN.com” campaign and the multiple initiatives involving Facebook for the 2008 Presidential Elections. Andy admitted that their 1st attempt with Facebook Connect for the Debates was not a success: they only gave 2 weeks to build up and so it did not work for this high-profile event.

CNN learned from this mistake and worked with Facebook to drive traffic to Facebook.com/CNN for the Jan. 20th inauguration. This was a HUGE deal because CNN was sending traffic away from their own site and to Facebook in order to build RSVPs for the stream. Andy went on to explain that being where the audience was, being a part of the news feeds, going viral, and building a reputation for being real on the social networks was MORE important than getting lots of hits on the CNN website.

You heard it from a big-wig at CNN, guys!!! This is EXACTLY what social networking is about…building these relationships, being where your target audience is and helping them/giving them what they need or want…

And those who are still skeptical about social networking: the 1st CNN and Facebook venture failed. The 2nd one for Inauguration? CNN beat the record 700,000 RSVPs for streams and ended up with over 1 million. There were over 2 Million Facebook Status updates on January 20th. Its SO important to get into social media, and according to Andy Mitchell, know that you are going to make mistakes, but that if you are committed to being a part of it, you can make it work. This was a GREAT event, thanks AiMA!