Social Media ROI Case Study Slam Panel at 08NTC: Carie Lewis, Human Society
Notes
ABOUT ME
My name is Carie and I’m the Internet Marketing Manager for The Humane Society of the United States.
I run the org’s web 2.0 and online advertising campaigns.
I love animals and I love the internet, and I’m a self-proclaimed social networking junkie.
ABOUT THE ORG
The HSUS is the nation’s largest and most powerful animal protection organization.
Our mission is “celebrating animals, confronting cruelty.”
We’ve been responsible for bringing animal cruelty and animal welfare related issues into the media spotlight and on the minds of average Americans.
WHY THIS CAMPAIGN
What Vick did was a horrible thing, and dogfighting is a dispicable crime. It’s now a felony in all 50 states
But this case brought dogfighting into the spotlight and raised awareness to people that may have never heard of it before.
Since this brought dogfighting into the spotlight and put it on the minds of many Americans, we figured it was a good time to reach out to people.
WHY THIS CAMPAIGN
People were buzzing about the issue online and obviously outraged by their comments. We could tell by all the comments and images floating around.
We wanted to take that energy and give people an outlet to express their feelings about michael vick and dogfighting in general.
We wanted to be creative and capitalize on the media attention to bring dogfighting into the spotlight.
We wanted low cost and high impact
WHAT CAMPAIGN
In the middle of the Vick dogfighting drama, we launched a UGC campaign called the “Knock Out Animal Fighting YouTube Contest”
An Integrated campaign using website, email, social networking, video sharing, TV
PROCESS - contest
Asked people to go to our website to learn about the contest
Create videos about how they and their pets felt about dogfighting
Then, they uploaded it as a video response to our dogfighting video and filled out our submission form
PROCESS - contest
We picked a winner and also allowed people to vote for their favorite, generating a people’s choice winner
This gave people who didn’t or werent able to participate by creating a video a way to be engaged – important with higher-engagement leveled UGC campaigns
PROCESS - marketing
Email
Website
Social networks
Web badges
Blogger outreach
OUTCOMES
Both tangible & intangible
Increase list members (we don’t spend money on online marketing unless its tied to a donation, advo, or other list building campaign. That way can recoup the $ spent and justify time spent. Great thing about online marketing – trackable
Raise awareness – youtube video views
Get original contest – videos
Encourage engagement - # of votes for people’s choice award. High engagement contest – to be able to make a video – engaged in issue and also have equipment
OUTCOMES - tangible
Number of video submissions
Number of new list members from video / voting page advo (worth = $3 per list member)
Number of page views to the winners announcement on HSUS.org
Number of votes for people’s choice award
Number of youtube video views of winning submission
MEASUREMENT TOOLS - tangible
Sourced links for new list names from marketing – to quantify ROI
Page views from our stats program & Video view count from youtube – to quantify exposure
Time spent on page & Vote count from poll program – to quantify engagement
PROCESS / STRATEGY
Measuring buzz
-link love – google syntax to show you who’s linking to you
-referring URLs in stats program
-google rss alerts (can be set to daily, as it happens, etc.) – good for time-sensitive response (answer questions, defense, etc)
-do a regular google search for related terms
- Pr / newspaper coverage
Friend recruitment (TAF)
- bulletin reposts on myspace
Not just number, but quality of blogs look at technorati and alexa rankings
PROCESS / STRATEGY
Top 10 referrers were all from mail programs – aol and yahoo
Indicates that people were forwarding in order to share
MEASUREMENT TOOLS - intangible
# blogs / websites mentions and links
# comments on social networks / blogs
# related inquiries
# RSS subscribers (n/a)
Rating of youtube video
Comment content
Keywords leading to page to define interests
Referring sites (count, quality) to find out where people are coming from
Friend request / commenting trends in relation to other activities
WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS CAMPAIGN - GOOD
people’s choice involvement
Timing w/ media
Using youtube – technical support on their end, cost effective, mainstream venue, increasing video views (it was on the homepage)
WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN?
How do you know if it was successful? If the numbers are good? If it was worth your time?
Time spent = amount of outreach compared to number of venues
We do not use a formula to determine if a social media campaign was successful. We also do not track time – everything is an estimate.
Did you build a relationship with a blogger that will cover your stuff in the future?
Media coverage - Tv, blogs, newspapers
Was it worth it? Youtube UGC – yes – we had to start somewhere
Made a TV PSA that otherwise we would have had to pay to get an agency to do.
We learned - were running a flickr contest right now that takes lessons learned from wendys and has been successful.
KEY TAKEAWAYS ABOUT ROI, MEASUREMENT, and METRICS for nonprofits using social media
If you or your boss are stuck on time spent ROI, track as you go.
Pick one link and market it for consistency – will be easier to track – use a vanity URL. and have all resources available (related press release, web story, etc.)
One person to know where all the moving parts can be brought together to evaluate in the end. Also helps for communicating with UGC contestants and winners.
Disclose policies in contest rules - this is the easiest way to incorporate list building in UGC campaigns is to disclose that all entrants will be auto added to your email list and can unsubscribe at any time.
Next time, we’re thinking of having a celebrity judge so that we can collaborate with them and generate more excitement about submissions.
Most of my time was spent doing contest logistics since this was our first contest. Next time put more time into creating buzz.
The complete panel notes can be found here.
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