eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Followers, Friends and Fans:
Expanding Your Online Community
A Case Study in Building Buzz…
…Without a Budget
Jonathon D. Colman
Associate Director, Digital Marketing
The Nature Conservancy: www.nature.org
jcolman@tnc.org
206/343.4345 x368
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #1 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Case Study: Digg [Buzz-Building]
Breaking news, video, and amazing content from all over the world —
users find, post, and vote on the best of the web’s newest content.
• 169th most popular site on the Web [ALEXA]
• Over 22 million unique visitors/month [COMPETE]
• 2.7+ million registered users [ESTIMATED AS OF JAN 2008; JOHN GRAHAM-CUNNING]
• Largest age demographic: 18-34 years old (40% of total) [QUANTCAST]
• Referred 234K visitors to nature.org for FY2008
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #2 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
With a large, well-connected audience, Digg’s “democratic”
algorithm promotes diverse stories, niche news to its homepage
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #3 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
The Nature Conservancy’s first entry into the “Green Living”
genre: science-based tips from TNC staff and green bloggers
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #4 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
“Green Living” ads are now mainstream on search engines,
not just a niche market, which means a lot of competition = $$$
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #5 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
flickr: ricko
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #6 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
No Time? No Money? No Problem!
• Digg and social news can help you get the word out fast
• Among the most popular sites on the web
• Diverse audiences, not just kids in college
• Free for you to use
• Great at driving traffic as well as commentary
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #7 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Our post on Digg earned enough votes to become “popular” and
get elevated to the homepage where all Digg users could see it
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #8 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Results: Social News Campaign on Digg
200 visitors/day
“Typical” web feature
on nature.org
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #9 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Results: Social News Campaign on Digg
20,000
visitors/day
200 visitors/day
“Typical” web feature “Typical” visitors/day
on nature.org on nature.org
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #10 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Results: Social News Campaign on Digg
20,000
visitors/day
18,000+ visitors
in one hour
300+ visitors per
second
200 visitors/day
“Typical” web feature “Typical” visitors/day Everyday
on nature.org on nature.org Environmentalist
Digg traffic
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #11 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Results: Social News Campaign on Digg
76,000+ visitors
in one day
20,000
visitors/day
18,000+ visitors
in one hour
300+ visitors per
second
200 visitors/day
“Typical” web feature “Typical” visitors/day Everyday
on nature.org on nature.org Environmentalist
Digg traffic
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #12 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
But Isn’t This Just “Empty” Traffic?
• Yes: High bounce rate and relatively few actions taken on our site
• And: Motivated much engagement on Digg: 2,200+ total “diggs”
and over 600 total comments
• Created “spillover” success in other social networks
• Drove many unsolicited links from other web sites and blogs (50+)
• Inspired links from elite sites (1,000+ authority in Technorati),
inc. The Huffington Post, Cisco.com, Mental Floss, and LockerGnome
• Increased organic search engine findability, positioning
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #13 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
So: How Much Work/Time Did This Take?
• Less than 5 minutes to create the actual Digg post
• Plus 2 hours to publicize the post to Digg contacts (via Digg
“shouts” to friends, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, etc.)
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #14 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
So: How Much Work/Time Did This Take?
• Less than 5 minutes to create the actual Digg post
• Plus 2 hours to publicize the post to Digg contacts (via Digg
“shouts” to friends, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, etc.)
• Plus 1.5 years to build up a credible, authoritative Digg profile
• Becoming a good member of the community, learning best practices
• Building reliable contacts, voting for their stories
• Creating network of links to/distribution for our posts
• Posting content other than nature.org stories (i.e., not spamming)
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #15 of 16

eMetrics | Washington, DC 2008 | A Case Study in Building Buzz… Without a Budget October 21, 2008
Conclusions on the Value of Social News
• Social news is not always the right tool for all marketing scenarios
• Complements a strategy leveraging traditional online tactics
• Success generates short-term (and huge) bursts of web traffic
• Engagement on social news sites will be high, but will be low on
your site (as measured in length of session, conversions, etc.)
• Becoming popular can drive coverage on elite blogs, web sites
driving many new links, audiences to your web site
• Can take time to build up credibility and authority in the network
• Offers short- and long-term benefits for search engine positioning
Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy Slide #16 of 16