Define your target audience(s), and what benefit does your product/service bring them?
Target Audience:
- BGSU Population
- Undergraduate Students
- Graduate Students
- Faculty/Staff
Benefit:
- Get Involved
- Give Back
- Meet People
The objective of your promotional activity (e.g. provide information, increase demand, differentiate, etc.)
- Increase BGSU community awareness and participation
Your initial design, message(s), or content
- Utilize Social Media, present information where the students are getting information
- Blog:
- Share Miracle Children Bio
- Bring a “face” to the cause
- Facebook:
- Advertise upcoming events: Meetings, Fundraisers, Deadlines, etc.
- Spread the word through others, encourage others to “tag” Dance Marathon’s Facebook in their status
- Twitter:
- Connect other College Dance Marathon’s to ours
- Start trending #bgdancemarathon before and at the event
- Relay information from CMN Hospitals to BGSU Students who follow us on twitter.
How you planned to measure success (match these measurement(s) to your objective(s))
· Our goal was to increase the number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends by 100 each. We also wanted to obtain 100 blog views.
· The numbers prior to implementing the social media promotion were the following:
o 233 followers on Twitter
o 837 Facebook friends
o 350 friends attending the BGSU Dance Marathon Event on Facebook
· The numbers that showcase our goals are as follows:
o 333 followers on Twitter
o 937 Facebook friends
o 100 blog views
Explain what you changed after you started and why.
· Our group was originally just going to utilize Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger. However, we decided to incorporate even more forms of social media such as Skype, Youtube, Stumble Upon, and Digg.
Present your results (e.g. hours worked, measures of your objectives etc.). Was this promotion a success?· The following are the social media outlets that our group utilized for our project:
o Twitter
o Facebook
o Blogger
o Stumble upon
o Skype
o YouTube
o Attempted Digg
· Our group worked a total of 20 hours with an average of 4 hours each week. A lot of our work was the set-up for others to interact via social media.
· Although we were a few short followers and friends on achieving our goal, we still witnessed an overall success regarding our project. The following numbers depict how we measured our success.
· The numbers after implementing our promotion are as follows:
o 331 followers on Twitter
o 939 friends on Facebook
o 364 friends attending the BGSU Dance Marathon Event on Facebook
o 220 page view on our Dance Marathon blog
· The social media promotion increased all of our measurement numbers. The increases in percentages are as follows:
o Followers on Twitter: 42%
o Friends on Facebook: 12%
o Friends attending Facebook event: 4%
· Dance Marathon’s online fundraising doubled this year. Our group feels this definitely has a correlation with our social media push. Fundraising increased from $70,000 to $140,000 in less than 3 weeks.
Describe the next steps for the organization’s use of social media.
· Dance Marathon will be restructuring positions.
· Our group will also have to pass down information/access that was started through this project to continue success for next year.
· A focus on feedback and interaction is pertinent for utilizing the forms of social media. After the event, there was a tweet that asked “What was your favorite moment”. This received a great deal of feedback from those involved.
· Dance Marathon needs to be PROACTIVE. An idea is to give people a shout-out via social media when someone signs up for the event. This way Dance Marathon is going after people instead of waiting for them to stumble or find us.
Explain three lessons learned.
· Our group sat down with the 2011 Exec board of Dance Marathon. We suggested that the Public Relations side of Dance Marathon needed a “face lift”. After this meeting, Technology and Publicity will be restructured.
· We also learned that although just spitting out information receives visits on our social media, that if we allow individuals to interact and provide feedback it would allow for the social media to be more effective.
· We also learned that a blog isn’t going to receive “celebrity status” overnight. By tweeting the link and posting the link on Facebook, we did see an increase in visitors. However, it will take time and effort to grow the following of the blog.
· We were also made aware of how the amount of Twitter activity has increased. Twitter has seemed to “catch on” at BGSU and we feel this is where Dance Marathon can draw a great deal of attention.
