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[Update: The poll on polldaddy has been scrapped. The winner will now be determined by a vote from the 10 finalists. Each finalist get's 1 vote for another, in a Survivoresque manner. WISH ME LUCK!]

Mkay.

So there’s been a great deal of controversy in the Nerdies this year (I say this year like I was around last year… I wasn’t :p)

Lots of trolling, flaming and baiting. Just like most other online debates I guess? The real culprit here, I feel, is anonymity. It’s easy to be a dick when you’re behind a mask. Equally, it’s easy to cheat when you can’t get caught.

So, in an attempt to somewhat absolve myself, from all this nastiness. I would like to present some evidence.

How I got where I am in the vote so far:

I have put a great deal of work into getting as far as I have with this contest.

I recently left my company, a respected, well established agency. So, I am working very hard to make a name for myself in the digital, social media sphere in SA.

The Nerdies has helped me achieve that. So, the motivation for my working hard to win, is not just a ‘mines bigger than yours’ thing, it’s business. I’m starting a new agency, and I need some background for legitimacy. It’s tough out there.

While I don’t consider myself a social media expert, I certainly know enough about it to put it to good use.

For the sake of my maintaining my dignity and reputation, both of which are very important to me, I’m gonna give you my step-by-step breakdown in the hope that you won’t confuse me with someone that’s cheating.

First thing I did, right from the start, is build ‘personal’ connections with the people involved. Sheena included.

A simple personal email from me (which started with my sponsoring a prize) lead to a bit of banter which lead to me getting picked up by SheBee social radar.

I did the same thing with a few others, including Owen and more recently ChrisM.

I got involved in the ‘cliques’ (I hope you’ll not take that term the wrong way) conversations on Twitter and on blogs.

Then I got emotionally involved.

You remember the car, speeding debate on twitter? I said I was appalled at ExMi and your giving warnings of speed cops. That point was defining in the process, I got in some faces, established that I was not a sheep and I got a few people emotionally charged (if only a little)

Once you’ve impacted someone emotionally once, your opinion holds more sway with them. There’s a subconscious need to get emotionally charged again, even if it’s negative.

This was an important piece of the puzzle. Now, a lot of the people felt they ‘know’ me better. This would mean I can more freely follow what’s going on, and ask questions openly. It also means I was retweeted more often (When you retweeted my voting link once I received maybe 30 votes in 10 minutes).

Then there was the facebook campaign.

Simply placing status updates etc. was not cuttin it. Again, I had to get personal.

I reached out to individuals, that I knew were connected. I messaged them, chatted to them, re-established whatever relationship we’d had when we became facebook friends and then made the pitch. I helped them understand that I sincerely wanted to win, to help my business. And that their help; in the form of a status request, mass email, retweet, whatever… would go a long way towards helping me.

My initial Mass Email.

My initial Mass email resulted in many more.

Since I didn’t have the time to build my own ‘brand legitimacy’ I had to leverage existing trusted trend sources.

As for Twitter and Facebook.

I picked people that had a lot of followers, local trend leaders like Roy Potteril and Kgaugelo Mogoale. These 2 people alone have over 2500 loyal followers. They get numerous comments and likes on all their comments. I had many people singing my ‘VOTE NICK VOTE NERD’ Mantra.

Last night, I sent the link, and a plea for help to friends in the USA. Another, well connected Digital Designer, Jarques Pretorius. His contributions added up a lot over the past couple of days.

It just spread.

Since I didn’t have the time to build my own ‘brand legitimacy’ I had to leverage existing trusted trend sources.

Other than that, I’ve just been whoring/spamming myself out. LOTS of tweets and status’ and messages etc. Getting the word and the link out.

I built a small brand as a platform, as you can see on my twitter page, and blog.

I even got all my family on board to vote!

This contest held a lot of hope for me.

Vote for me guys! I’ve put in the hard work, and my intentions are good.

Thanks for your time.

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