Facebook For Tourism: Tiny Swiss Village Wins Nearly 10,000 Fans

Swiss Village of Obermutten Pop 79, Facebook fans 9,832 | The Realtime ReportFun social media story for the day: how did a tiny Swiss village become a Facebook sensation with nearly 10,000 fans?

Obermutten, an adorable village in the Graubunden region of Switzerland, launched a Facebook page to promote tourism to the area.  The page featured a video in which the village mayor promised that anyone who ‘liked’ Obermutten’s on Facebook would get their profile picture posted on the village bulletin board.

Apparently getting your pic up in town is quite the motivating factor, as over 9,800 fans have ‘liked’ the page, and some of the town’s population of 79 are now busy posting the growing numbers of profile pics – having overrun the bulletin board – on barn walls and other surfaces all around town.

Obermutten engages Facebook fans with contest for handknit scarf

Within four weeks, Obermutten had “likes” from 32 countries and every continent in the world.  Based on the video posted below, 4 out of 5 fans interact with Obermutten’s Facebook page, giving it better engagement than the pages of celebrities like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.  In addition, traffic has gone up on the Graubunden tourism website by a whopping 250%.

In addition to keeping up with profile pic posting, Obermutten is finding new ways to engage its rapidly growing fan base, posting videos and even creating a contest for one lucky fan to win a scarf knitted by the mayor’s daughter.

The campaign is run by Jung von Matt/Limmat as part of “A campaign dedicated to the little and lovely mountain villages in the Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland.”

According to Creativity-Online.com, the campaign has been reported in over 20 countries.  Check out this great video of the village and the Facebook campaign by Jung von Matt/Limmat: