Building Buzz Without a Budget

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

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Building Buzz Without a Budget

by Jonathon Colman @jcolman

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