Creating Environmental Awareness through Social Media Campaign - Case Study Example

Creating Environmental Awareness through Social Media Campaign By 14th March, Table of Contents Introduction 2. Problem Faced by the Educated People Society Website 3. The Social Media Campaign 4. The Proposal 5. The Strategy Document 6. Overall Aim of the Strategy 7. Social Media SWOT Analysis 8. Access Model a. Audience b. Concept c. Competition d. Execution and Social Media Tools e. Sales Viability 9. Strategy Overview a. Diversity of Opinion b. Independence c. Decentralization d. Aggregation 10. Experiments which did not work 11. Critical Review 12. Conclusion Creating Environmental Awareness through Social Media Campaign Introduction Educated People Society was created with the sole aim of creating awareness about environment, cultural heritage and the natural resources among the intellectual citizens especially youngsters. The society reaches over 9 million people all over the world through their publications, products sold, TV channel and the website collectively. They act together with famous organizations like Green Peace, WWF and National Geographic Society. They fund these organizations, volunteer in their activities and support them through their influence whenever necessary. Nearly 4 million unique visitors use their website every month. National Geography magazines published all over the world millions of copies every year both online and offline (Bartman, 2012). Educated People Society members have been sheer contributors of the magazines for years. Their aim is to make famous websites like NatGeo, Greenpeace and the WWF reach maximum number of people and create environmental awareness through the same. Their website has a plethora of information related to photography, nature, travel and adventure, culture, history, geography and animals. Most of their viewers are young people aged 18 to 24. They have very short attention span and usually look for one line interesting facts about science, animals and environment in the website. Problem Faced by the Educated People Society Website National Geographic channel which ranks 1041 among the Alexa ranking is considered as one of the best websites related to the environmental causes in the world in terms of interactivity and interlinking (Craig, 2013). Educational Peoples Society wants to create a similar website which reaches maximum number of intellecutal people. Educated People Society website viewership statistics shows most of their viewers have some basic education. People in the age group 55 to 64 constitute a major portion of their unique visitors. However, many youngsters aged 18 -24 use their website occasionally especially for assignments. However, the viewership of the website is constantly reducing for the past few years instead of increasing. There are several reasons for this. 1. Educated People Society website tried in every possible way to improve itself through advanced multimedia facilities, improved interlinking and good interactivity. They tried to show more slide shows and 60 second videos than publishing essays and photographs which make the page static. But, all their measures backfired. The reader surveys and reviews about the website complain about long loading times due to extensive multimedia items. Further, most of their videos take very long time to stream, making the young visitors to leave the page without getting the required information. 2. The slide shows they include have very simple graphics with little in-depth data. Most of the loyal readers who had been using the website for over a decade feel the static pages were much better than the new model. 3. The competition for the website from other websites is very high. People no longer need to come to this page to get fantastic animal and nature images or details. Several social media tools like Tumblr, Flickr and Pinterest dedicated for photography provide very good pictures on nature, environment and animals posing a great competition for the page. Nationalgeographic.com and its interlinked websites get nearly 779510 visits a day (The Website for the Action Class, 2012). Educated People Society is aiming to create a versatile and wide readership similar to this. Their revenue is limited to the visits generated per day, the products sold and the fund owned by the trust controlling it. The website does not post general advertisements. Hence, the maintenance cost of the website is getting costlier by day. They are in a crucial position where they have to take some immediate steps to increase the viewership of the website or at least maintain the current rank of the website. The Social Media Campaign The Educated people’s society decided to launch a social media campaign to regain it status using the same tools which serve as its competitors. The main aim of this social media campaign is to target the youngsters who are random visitors for the website and convert them into unique visitors. If even half of the random visitors start browsing the website for more than 5 minutes a day, the number of unique visitors to the website would be doubled. This will create substantial increase in the paid membership users and sale of products as well as fetching sponsorships from huge NGO’s connected with environment, nature preservation, adventure sports etc. The society is not very keen on spending millions of dollars to make the social media campaign a great success. Very limited resources are provided and the proof for ROI or return on investment has to be submitted with clear statistics regarding the project. They want their campaign to be As economical as possible Reach maximum number of youngsters at a short time Generate or direct unique viewers to the website Analysing the various available tools, the team decided to take up three tasks to achieve this goal. The first is to set up a Twitter page linked directly to the Educated Peoples Society. The page will contain photographs, shared links from NatGeo website, interesting one liner, inspirational quotes from Green Peace website and humorous pictures from WWF. The second step is to create a blog with interesting information related to various articles posted in the National Geographic website, Green Peace website and the WWF website. The blog will have some important points and direct the user to visit the actual web page for the full article. The third task is to create a Facebook fan page and generate as many likes and views as possible. The page will contain photo albums grouped under various sub headings. It will have polls, questions and simple quizzes like guess what this picture is. The following tasks help achieving the social media campaigns goals in the following ways. The blog, Twitter page as well as the Facebook page does not require any amount to create. They are quite economical to create. They will reach maximum number for youngsters because Twitter and Facebook are the target audience’s favourite social media tools. The audiences are usually guided towards the website with a question. So, they will take at least a few minutes to find out the answer going through the article, making them unique visitors instead of random ones. The links will direct them to simple pages which will load quickly without many videos to achieve this task. The main aim of the project to is to make the website profitable enough to maintain and create a general awareness among the public about the crucial factors affecting out environment, natural resources etc. The articles, photos and quizzes published in these social media tools also target the same aim. In addition to providing entertainment and kindling the curiosity of the readers, they sow seeds for debate and lead them to scholarly articles related to them. The important points in the articles are highlighted through small sentences and short paragraphs which will make the youngsters read them in a jiffy without having to spend more time or effort. The Proposal Company/Organisation or Brand Explain your choice of Company/Organisation or Brand Educated People Society Educated society works to create awareness among the citizens of the world related to nature, history, geography and the latest technologies. Overall Aim of Social Computing/Media Strategy Outline of Strategy To create awareness among the general public regarding sustainable energy, wildlife protection, harmless sophisticated technology and environmental factors affecting the earth. Achieve the aim of empowering the target audience aged 18-24 with valuable knowledge about science, environment and the natural resources of the planet. Making them get this knowledge through social media tools and internet. Aim 1 Associated SMART Objectives Using Social Media Tools like Blog, Twitter and Tumblr effectively to create awareness among the youth Educated People Society tries to popularize societies like NatGeo, WWF and Greenpeace to create awareness among the locals. Specific: Their objective is to reach specific target customers through social media. They target the youngsters who use the media more. Realistic: They set realistic aims to increase their page’s viewership as well as other related sites viewership. Their target is 5% increase compared to the previous viewership. It is easily achievable even in 10 unique visitors are targeted towards the website every day. Measurable: They can calculate the number of likes, followers in Twitter and how many links have been generated from these links towards their page. Related Actions to Aim 1 Explain your proposed action in detail Creating a Twitter log and a technology blog which gives interesting details about various articles in NatGeo, Green Peace and WWF websites. Directing the customers from these pages to the actual scholarly articles. This will increase the readership of the ‘Educated People Society’ website. It will help them gain various sponsors to run the website and fund actions related to environmental activities and scientific research. Aim 2 Checking the level of awareness created through the social media tools by conducting a questionnaire survey among them and involving in the qualifying youngsters in projects related to their interests. Associated SMART Objectives Achievable: Creating an environmental awareness is the main objective. Be it a laptop the youngsters use or a leather jacket, they should be educated regarding the way it is created, the core technology and the various political and economical facts associated with it. This knowledge is important to make them valuable citizens in future. A youngster who changes his mobile once in year will stick to one smart phone for years if they realize how much e-waste they are creating. A person who knows how the plastic covers thrown around affects the environment will never use them again. Time: Providing such information in an interesting format is the main objective of the social media tools used. The aim of the social media campaign is to advertise about the same by entering their territory. This will provide very quick results. Objectives SMART? It is hard to make youngsters visit a science related site or lecture them about environment. But, taking the site to tools like Blogger and Twitter where they use will make them peek at it automatically. Related Actions to Aim 2 Creating Twitter page and a blog about page and a technology blog The actions are related to the objectives as it will lure in youngsters related to various fields at the same time. Explain your proposed action in detail The blog and Twitter page explains about the animals and the photography site in Nat Geo. The technology blog related dwells with various subjects shown as documentaries in NatGeo, WWF and Green Peace websites. So youngsters with diverse interests will be directed towards these sites from their favourite pastime areas in the internet. The info presented will be mostly in the format of quizzes, puzzles and guess what this photo is about. The readers will be directed to the original article to know the answer. Mostly one liner and humorous facts will be used in the social media campaign. Interactive engagement of the readers and interesting presentation of complex data will definitely lure the youngsters to probe more to know the answer. The Strategy Document Educated People’s Society was started in 1998 by wealthy people who shared a passion for nature, history, geography and everything brainy formed a club in Washington D.C. with the sole aim of inspiring other people to take an interest in preserving their rich culture, saving the natural resources of the earth and enlightening the world about the thousand wonders of our planet. They publish a high class journal every month. Their website was started a few years back. It is a very successful website generating numerous views from like minded people all over the world with thousands of registered members. Overall Aim of the Strategy Most of the modern day youngsters do not have any concern or knowledge about the numerous endangered species of our planet or the rich historical heritage of their country. Websites lile National Geography, Greenpeace and Educated Peoples Society website is a haven for such people. It presents complex scientific, historical and biological facts in a very interesting way with ample attractive photographs and interesting videos. But unfortunately, nearly 83% of the youngsters below 18 do not have the habit of using it. Considering the ample time spend by the youngsters in Facebook and other social media sites, the Educated Peoples Society aims in launching its own Facebook page and making the page famous among its users though efficient social media networking. They also created an interesting page regarding environmental issues in Twitter with attractive photographs to make the site famous in a short time. A blog was also created with numerous interesting facts regarding technology and various core issues shaking the world. In short the Educated Peoples Society aims in inspiring the youth to work along with them towards making our planet a better place to live. They use the social media as tool to lure the youngsters and enlighten them on several rich facts about animals, history, and latest technology. Social Media SWOT Analysis (Social Media SWOT and ACCESS model) Strengths: The main strength of the Facebook page is its competitive advantage over others. There are very few animal relates sites with quality photos and accreditations like Natgeo. The site has ample resources like photos and videos taken by the best experienced people in the field. It can use it effectively to lure in more and more youngsters. Weaknesses: Their reputation is that of a very knowledgeable site. So many social media users can simply refrain from joining them just looking at their name. Opportunities: They can partner with various lifestyle oriented, fashion related and technology pages to make themselves famous. They can make use of the vulnerable position of other such sites with their ample data strength and grow enormously. They have a long history of being flexible to market developments. They should this quality to reach new markets. Threats: The competitors might not have such noble intensions as Educated Peoples Society. So, they can lure people with absurd images. They should try to overcome such obstacles using interesting pictures and comments. Access Model (Social Media Modellen, 2013) Audience: The main target audience are the youngsters in the age group 15 to 25. They are the future leaders of the world. Hence, creating awareness among them is very important. Studying their interest, they are crazy about sports as well as video games pages. Targeting certain wrestling stars and football stars to advertise for the page will fetch lots of likes and followers for these social media pages. Making the celebrities recommend the page will also work. They can also try to create small interesting animal history related games and give it for free in the social media sites and blogs. Farmville became quite famous just because of Facebook. Educated Peoples Society can create a similar game (Safko, 2012). Concept: The concept used to attract target audience should be very interesting. For example, writing about the Facebook page contains group oriented images like motherly love, anger, comedy etc. Instead of explaining simply about a particular species grouping their expressions in such topics will look interesting. Competition: The competitors might have huge technology. But, Educated Peoples Society’s strength is its data collected over years. Trying to make the target audience look at it is the greatest success. For example, they can showcase animal gods worshiped in various parts of the world Eg: Ganesh in India - the elephant god to convey info about history as well as elephant conservation together. Execution and Social media tools: We have decided on our target audience, concept and the way to tackle competition. The next step is to execute the same. Creating, blogs, Facebook page on Twitter page is in the execution plan. These tools are the most popularly used social media tools by the target audience today. Hence, we select them. Sales Viability: The Return on Investment or ROI should be calculated using the number of views directed towards the website from these tools and the number of products sold via them. A good software will take care of these calculations (Safko & Brake, 2012). Strategy Overview Considering the blog, Tumlr page and the Facebook page we should target on three types of people Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. These people who constitute 20% of the regular viewers are responsible for making any social media site very famous in a very short time. The connectors in our project are people with huge number of followers and friends list. Making them follow the page will give a chance for the company to make their many followers view the page. They can be lured in though offers as well as interesting news (Gladwell, 2000). Salesmen in our people are experts in the area like social media managers who can make this happen in a short time. They work for various agencies and for money and can make link the page with many such connectors in no time. Mavens or info experts should be given the chance to update the page in the most interesting way. They can be indentified through contests and competitions and their service should be used to keep the site interesting. A lot has been written about the wisdom of the crowd and how to utilize it to make a particular tool exceptionally famous in a very short time. Tools like Twitter and Facebook got extremely famous among the crowd because of three main reasons. They were simple and to use but different from the traditional websites in some way or another. They created an image that not using them is a disgrace to social status and had plenty to make people laugh or get money. They were slightly useful to the customers, very entertaining and addictive. Educated Peoples Society should use the same strategies to succeed. They should exploit the crowd psychology to create awareness for their own good. Types of crowd wisdom in divided into cognition, coordination and cooperation. Nat Geo can create positive crowd wisdom to popularize their social media ventures through these steps. Diversity of opinion: They should give something special for each person. For example, they can address each registered user by name, conduct a survey to find out their interest and mail them facts pertaining to their lovable field. Interlinking related topics will make the blog unique. The blog will follow a specific pattern. It will dwell upon a latest issue which happened in the world (For example Meteor Hit in Siberia) and build upon the article. It will list the various articles relate to that subject available in the website in the form of photographs and articles. A person reading the article will be able to get some new news which now other magazine or newspaper relates to. This will make them enrich the knowledge and appreciate the uniqueness of the blog making them regular visitors for the blog. Independence: Not all opinions of a person are influenced by others. Conducting polls and debates to get independent views about core issues mentioned in the blog or site from users and rewarding potential point will make many loyal followers of these tools (Suroweicki, 2004). Decentralization: Many people know about the history of Eiffel tower in Paris but do not have any knowledge about a great place near their hometown. Empowering them with local knowledge about historical sites and special species in their localities will help. Facebook became very famous because it paved for getting in touch with people nearby whom we seldom knew were there. The same concept should be used here too. The blog should monitor from which area most number of traffic is generated and post local facts related to history, geography and natural science. It will also pave way for good interactivity among the users by making them give comments, replying to the same and debating over the issues posted in the page. Aggregation: Making celebrities recommend these pages will create a collective craze about the site. Using common man to advertise will also help people identify themselves with them. I will list most of the photographs with the name of the photographer and the place taken. If possible it will publish their photo too. Introducing the sculptures who worked day and night to make Educated Peoples Society what it is today will make the audience relate to the social media tools in a better way. Most of the competitor websites just place random photos without much technical details about who took it or how. The blog and the Twitter page will try to stay different from this usual concept to give something unique and extra to the readers. Experiments which did not work When we started to plan the activity we chose three tasks among which conducting a treasure hunt through SMS was one. But, it failed miserably as none of the participants were able to follow our instructions. The main mistake we made was to select general public to take part in the event. Since the aim behind our project was to popularize the Educated Peoples Society through social network pages through them, many people did not understand the concept. They wondered why they are made to look at banners and posters regarding NatGeo and Green peace. They lost interest in the game thinking it some marketing hype. Critical Review Considering our work on creating the Facebook page, Twitter page and the technology blog, we generated more than 300 visits to the Educated Peoples Society page and sold about 20 products from these visits. Several views were created towards the adjoining pages too. Considering the ROI, it is a fairly good return as very little amount was used to create these pages. Since all the three are free pages, the money spend was very little, but the effort and time invested was very high. The overall satisfaction and receptions from the viewers was overwhelming. Most youngsters are ready to accept complex scientific facts and interesting historical data if it is presented to them in an alluring way. Updating the page regularly, changing the theme, creating a community of trusted followers and making them paid members of the website are the long term goals of the project. Judging by the way the initial success, it seems the path to reach the goal is not so hard. The major roadblocks will be in creating views for the blog and Twitter page. The project will link them to the Facebook fan page in the future to gain more users. It also plans about paid advertising and using the service of social media managers at a later stage to maintain the initial success. Conclusion The main aim of the project was to create awareness among the youngsters about the Educated Peoples Society and about the core issues related to history, animals and various other technologies. Our end user survey conducted among the regular users of the blog and the Facebook page suggests they have gathered some useful knowledge about the animals and technology. Mostly what was given comedy quoted has reached them more. The micro strategy behind the concept was to increase the viewership of the Educated Peoples Society website. Nearly 75% of people have become regular viewers of the page now. So, we can conclude using social media tool effectively has garnered the required result in a very short period of time successively. References 1. 2012."Audience Demographics for Nationalgeographic.com". Alexa the Web Information Company. Retrieved 25th February from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nationalgeographic.com 2. Bartman, George. 2012. "ABC Releases National Geographics First CMR". Retrieved 25th February from http://accessabc.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/abc-releases-national-geographics-first-cmr/ 3. Craig, Amanda. "National Geographic: Inspiring people to care about the planet". Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved 25th February from http://www.personal.psu.edu/abc5126/WebAnalysis.htm 4. Gladwell, M. "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference". UK: Little Brown. 2000. 5. Surowiecki, J. "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations". US: Doubleday. 2004. 6. Safko, L. "The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success". John Wiley and Sons. 2012. 7. Safko L, Brake, D. "ACCESS Model". Retrieved 19th February from http://www.socialmediamodels.net/social-media-implementation-models-category/social-media-access-model/ 8. "Social Media SWOT and ACCESS model". OIA Web 2.0 Project. Retrieved 25th February from https://sites.google.com/site/oiaweb20project/page-8/social-media-swo 9. 2013. "Social Media Modellen". Retrieved 25th Febraury 2013 from http://www.socialmediamodellen.nl/social-media-strategie-implementatie-modellen/access-model/ 10. "The Website for the Action Class". National Geographic.com. Retrieved 25th February from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mediakit/pdf/ng-com/NGCom_Media_Kit_2012.pdf Read More