Evaluation of Team RWB Social Media Campaign - Essay Example

Social Media Strategy Evaluation: Team RWB campaign

Old Relay Program

Introduction

Social media networking websites are recognized to be extremely popular online platforms for cost-effective communication among different groups of users, including: individual users, businesses, communities, government and non-government organizations, etc. Both profit and non-profit organizations actively utilize such platforms as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc. not only for purely communication purposes but also for users’ engagement and additional promotional purposes. Thus, for example, Team RWB recently has launched a massive social media campaign in order to promote integration of the US veterans into the local communities, to raise funds, and to engage wider community. This research aims to provide a more detailed analysis and overview of one of the social campaigns launched by Team RWB.

Briefly about Team RWB

Team RWM is a non-profit organization, which was formed in order to “enrich the lives of America’s veterans by connecting them to their community through physical and social activity” (Team RWB, 2015). This organization aims to create and sustain positive quality relationships that would improve overall well-being and life satisfaction of the veterans. According to the vision of Team RWB, enrichment is concept comprised of three key elements: people, health, and purpose (Team RWB, 2015). People are the veterans and community, who drive the Team RWB activities. Health is a comprehensive concept, which includes not only fitness, recreational activities and sports, but also emotional and mental wellbeing. Purpose is to ensure meaningful individual, team and community experiences. The whole philosophy of Team RWB is built around the Veterans, who face with significant physical and psychological challenges for adapting to the social environment.

In order to achieve its mission and to spread information throughout the American communities, Team RWB has undertaken significant efforts. Thus, for example, in 2015, Team RWB delivered local programs in more than 170 cities across the US and approached 95, 376 members, adding about 658 new members every week. Team RWB has developed two key programs, including Chapter & Community Program and Leadership Development Program. Chapter and Community Program is the program comprised of chapters that deliver local opportunities for veterans and the community. These chapters host regular social gatherings, fitness activities, and community service events. The Eagle Leadership Development Program is a program that aims to train, educate and inspire the leaders to enrich live of the Veterans in the local communities (Team RWB, 2015).

Old Relay Program

One of the national programs launched recently by Team RWB is the Old Glory Relay program. This relay was held during 59 days. Every day, the American flag was given to the days’ runner and then handed to another runner folding and storing flag overnight. Thus, during the relay, the flag passed from one runner to another, travelling from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. As part of this campaign, virtual supporters and local communities took active role in supporting the runners. In total, the campaign registered 1,094 participants and raised $436,000 ("Old Glory Relay raises $436,000 for veterans programs", 2016). These results and success of the program has been achieved largely due to the Team RWB’s active promotions on social media. Below is provided a more detailed analysis of the social media campaign launched on behalf of Team RWB to promote the Old Glory Relay program and raise awareness on social media.

Social media campaign analysis

In order to promote via social media the second coast-to-coast Old Glory Relay program, Team RWB has used the service of third-party contractor, Stackla. The run began on September 11 in San Francisco and ended on November 8 in Washington, D.C. The creative theme “Faces of Old Glory” was specifically designed in order to encourage veterans and other members participating in the program to share their pictures, personal stories and experiences (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016). The idea of someone running with the American flag on the road has turned out to be an insightful image that encouraged and motivated many observers to participate.

Goals of the campaign

The ultimate goal of this social media campaign was to fundraise $100,000 for the relay. Based on these goals and criteria, it is possible to evaluate the overall effectiveness and success of the social media campaign. The second goal was related to the registration for the Relay, which also was part of donation process for people who registered as virtual participants. The third criteria was related to the number of new veterans who joined the Team RWB during or after the relay. Thus, the goal was to raise the awareness about Team RWB, their mission and activities among the veterans and to connect veterans with the local communities (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016).

Contest for photos and videos

As part of the social media campaign, there were introduced live on-course celebrations for several cities on the San Francisco-Washington route. In addition to this initiative, Team RWB initiated a contest on social media for Old Glory Relay supporters. To engage with this audience, people were asked to post and share their photos and videos with the #OldGloryRelay hashtag. The Team RWB has used its main website to post all the photos, videos and social post of relay participants. To aggregate this content, Team RWB wrote blog posts, created a press kit, and worked closely with the program sponsor Microsoft. Thus, the organization created user-generated content that helped the Team RWB to talk through others’ voices and to offer more information and individual experiences. By relying on the user-generated content, the program encouraged and invited everyone supporting Team RWB’s mission and activities to publish content on a social media platform and to share it with their friends and community members/subscribers/followers (Wyrwoll, 2014). Taking into consideration the fact that the user-generated content is recognized to be content of high value, which has greater capacity to achieve set goals and to empower civil movements, Team RWB has chosen adequate and cost-efficient tools and instruments (Wyrwoll, 2014).

However, Team RWB, being a non-profit organization with limited human resources and technical knowledge and expertise in social media, faced with some challenges of content aggregation. In order to aggregate content and hashtags across all the social networks, Team RWB invited professional agency Stackla. As it has been explained by one of the leaders, “We had a couple of hashtags, but we didn’t have a tool to help us aggregate all the content across all the social networks” (cited in Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016). By delegating the function of aggregating social media content to Stackla, Team RWB has managed to satisfy user’s demand for diverse types of content and platforms (Tekin and Van der Schaar, 2015).

In order to promote the Faces of Old Glory, there were utilized all the major social media networking channels, including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and YouTube. All these social media networks are recognized to be popular online platforms that enable every user to create and post content with minimal efforts. The Team RWB initiated the contest in order to encourage participants, members and other parties to share more multimedia content, including photos and videos. Thus, the public was acting as both contest participants and judges for the entries submitted (Seligman, 2013). This strategy has helped to attract attention of many new members and community supporters who shared the ideas and principles promoted by the Team RWB.

Participants of the contest could win different prizes sponsored by Microsoft (for instance, Microsoft Bands, the Microsoft Surface 3, etc.). Thus, Team RWB has managed to find a globally recognized successful US-company, which acted as a main sponsor of the event. The prizes of Microsoft should have been perceived by public as valuable and stimulating for competition. The idea has proved to be very effective. Thus, for example, a photo whereas a police officer saluted a runner of Old Glory, Tim Muessing generated more than 650K shares, 17K comments, and reached more than 19 million people within the first week ("Old Glory Relay raises $436,000 for veterans programs", 2016). Due to the hashtag engagement program, the company reported that “the #oldgloryrelay hashtag was used over 3,500 times via Twitter and Instagram with over 6M impressions generated in the last 30 days of the campaign alone” (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016, n.p.). The images posted by the relay members and participants enabled the organization to show to the US veterans and civilians that Team RWB was a powerful community, whereas people did different things, varying from running and yoga to golfing, hiking, biking, and rock climbing (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016). Thus, by integrating the key social media platforms and encouraging users to publish, comment, and post photos/videos the Team RWB has been able to expand its reach greater number of people, interested in this event.

Results Evaluation

While evaluating the effectiveness of social media campaign, many researchers find it difficult to set and track both quantitative and qualitative indicators (Paek, Hove & Cole, 2013). On the one hand, it is possible to analyze to what extent the social media has helped the organization to achieve the goals initially identified before the event and campaign. On the other hand, some goals that were set by the organization may not have covered all the opportunities and gains generated via social media platforms.

The Team RWB set the target to raise $100,000 for the relay. Taking into consideration the fact that about 40% of this financial target was achieved within the less than two first weeks after the event started, it is possible to claim that the kick off the program was quite successful. In total, the Old Glory Relay program helped the Team RWB to raise $436,000. Thus, referring to the financial goals set by Team RWB it is possible to conclude that the organization has raised more than four times larger budget than it was initially planned.

Visitor Engagement was another important goal set by the Team RWB leaders. The number of new Team RWB members also have outperformed initial expectations reaching the number of 10,118 people. However, under visitor engagement, it is important to recognize not only the number of new members that joined the campaign, but also those who have been affected from different dimensions: self-esteem, social facilitation, inspiration, intrinsic enjoyment, socializing and participation, community, etc. (Paek, Hove & Cole, 2013). In terms of content generation, the Team RWB captured more than 4200 used generated videos and photos with thousands of hundreds personal testimonials (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016). The top 30 stories enabled to generate more than 7700 shares via social networks, generating in total nearly 10M in web traffic (Stackla - Social Media Aggregator, 2016)

Combined use of traditional and digital media channels enabled the Team RWB to generate a potential reach of more than 950 impressions. The website traffic growth also was impressive - the increase of traffic during the Old Glory Relay by 65%. In addition to these results, the total pageviews increased by 94%. Moreover, the campaign attracted attention and engaged various influencers including both individuals and organizations in the Veteran space, athletes, brands, politicians, and community leaders. Overall, the campaign based on user-generated content via social media has turned out to be very effective and cost-efficient.

Conclusion

In order to promote via social media the second coast-to-coast Old Glory Relay program, Team RWB jointly with the content aggregation agency Stackla have launched a massive national campaign triggered by contest among users. To engage with its target audience, Team RWB asked people to post and share their photos and videos with the #OldGloryRelay hashtag. Thus, the organization created user-generated content that helped the Team RWB to talk through others’ voices and to offer more information and individual experiences. In order to promote the Faces of Old Glory, there were utilized all the major social media networking channels, including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and YouTube. Combined use of these social networks enabled the company to penetrate through wider communities, reaching thus greater number of people. Overall, the campaign was very successful, as Team RWB has not only reached the initially set goals and targets but also benefited from additional financial and non-financial gains.