BlogWell DC Social Media Case Study: USA TODAY, presented by Glenna DeRoy
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In her BlogWell DC presentation, USA TODAY's Social Media Analyst, Glenna DeRoy, shares how they made charity cooler than Justin Bieber with their Twitter campaign.
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BlogWell DC Social Media Case Study: USA TODAY, presented by Glenna DeRoy
- 2. #AmericaWants: How USA TODAY made charity cooler than Justin Bieber Glenna DeRoy Social media analyst, USA TODAY With credit to Alexandra Nicholson, Cone Inc.
- 4. Focused on media and ad industries
- 5. Lots of play in trade publications – in print, online
- 8. Tweet this:#AmericaWants (name of charity) to get a full-page ad in USA TODAY.
- 10. Specific phrase for accurate results
- 11. Required to be a 501(c)(3)
- 13. Promotion via USAT Twitter accounts
- 14. Print promotion in USA TODAY
- 15. Outreach to philanthropic, charitable contactsaw.usatoday.com
- 19. Results: By the numbers 4 days 60,000 mentions of #AmericaWants 500charities mentioned 3number of times #AmericaWants trended Winners: To Write Love on Her Arms @TWOLHA PETA @TeensMAD4Rwanda
- 20. #AmericaWants tweets over time
- 21. Impact of #AmericaWants 1) Free publicity: Ads in our paper, Mashable, Twitter 2) Promoted USA TODAY as a brand that understands social media
- 23. 3) Goodwill: Who doesn’t love pictures of happy kids?
- 24. Why #AmericaWants worked Low barrier of entry for participants Kept our tweet short for easy RTs Universal concept: Everyone has a cause they believe in Twitter is pretty democratic; small causes had a chance Celeb, nonprofit participation Tips and takeaways Keep it simple; set clear rules Decide on a reasonable timeline for participation Understand how to pull metrics Work with Legal and IT on execution Choose the right incentive Understand how and where to promote Involve all possible internal departments in promotion
Editor's Notes
- Brand campaign meant to differentiate USAT as uniquely American and more in tune with the country’s everyday conversation and concerns.We launched in in March of last year.Even though the campaign was advertised on social media sites and built around idea of national conversation, it wasn’t particularly social.
- Here’s an example of one of the ads that ran. Pretty obvious from this ad who we wanted to differentiate ourselves from. The point was: We’re concerned with Main Street, not Wall Street.So, taking this campaign social would accomplish a few things:1) Take the brand campaign’s message to a new audience; the campaign was about “real” Americans, but I don’t know too many of those that read Ad Age2) It would extend the message into the next month - from March into April3) Would reinforce the idea of USAT as a contributor to the national conversation. Social media is where America hangs out.So, we settled on the #AmericaWantshashtag campaign, which took us from this to THIS.
- And I’m going to explain how it all came together.
- What’s important to remember as we discuss all the logistics of this campaign is that a lot of coordination went on behind the scenes, but for the participant, it was always this easy.Tweet this. Or even easier, retweet this.
- The idea was pretty simple – Give away an ad for charity and determine the winner by which charity received the most tweets.We involved Legal from the beginning to make sure we could do this and do it a way that could keep the rules as simple as the concept. We didn’t want to stand in the way of anyone’s participation and we knew success of this campaign would be determined by volume.But we also didn’t want to leave ourselves open to any liability.Promotion was easy for us – We’re a media company. We used our website and paper to promote, including our Kindness community, which is a blog about nonprofits and volunteerism.It was easy for us to reach a lot of people, but we wanted to reach the right people. So, we used list of our philanthropic and charitable contacts to spread word of the campaign.All the rules and campaign details can still be found at aw.usatoday.com
- To make sure we came up with accurate results, we chose a monitoring service that has access to the full Twitter firehose. For us, that was Radian6.We also worked with a guy in our IT department to write scripts that would parse out the relevant part of the tweets and make it easy to count. He said it took minimal effort and was very, very worth it.Don’t be tempted to do this by hand. We recently executed a small hashtag campaign that drew about 2,000 tweets and even that was a nightmare to sort.Plus, you never know when your campaign will take off. Be prepared.
- The concept was so simple, even celebrities couldn’t resist. Everyone from Taylor Lautner to Willie Nelson joined in and exposed #AmericaWants to their large followings.Important to note: They helped the campaign catch on, but they didn’t determine the results. Their participation increased the visibility of campaign and spurred other people to contribute their own tweets – but in the end, the winner did not have celeb support.Important because we wanted this to be a grassroots effort and wanted it to help an organization that wouldn’t otherwise have the $$ to buy an ad in USAT.
- #AmericaWants was a success. Over 4 days, 60,000 tweets mentioned America Wants and 500 individual charities received entries. And the campaign and USAT trended on Twitter 3 times – knocking Justin Bieber from the list once.In the end, To Write Love on Her Arms came out on top. TWLOHA helps people struggling with depression, self-injury and suicide.PETA you already know.and maybe most impressive, Teens MAD 4 Rwanda classroom project in Texas.So, the winners really represented a wide spectrum of causes – and we got our wish: the winner was a charity that wasn’t widely known and could really benefit from the exposure.
- Obviously, we didn’t get 60,000 tweets on the first day. The campaign built over time, each day better than the last. And by the third day, we doubled our tweet volume.
- What did we gain?Free publicity reached a wide - and diverse – audience: USA TODAY readers, Mashable readers, and of course, Twitter.Really, this tweet sums up what we wanted to accomplish.Easy altruism, a campaign that was born to go viral, and one that makes us look generous and savvy.
- These are the ads we ended up with.We were so happy with the campaign that we ran an ad to announce the winner – and feature the top 100 charities.And we also gave ¼ page ads to PETA and Teens Mad 4 Rwanda.
- Who doesn’t love pictures of happy kids? There was no downside to the campaign. Every one involved benefited from it and it was well-executed.The most important part for us was that it took the message of the What America Wants brand campaign and put it into action.It promoted us as a brand that cares about social media, cares about charitable causes – and cares about the issues that affect this country. Instead of saying it with ads, this campaign showed it.
- Just to sum it all up … Low barrier of entryShort tweet made it very easy to spreadCeleb involvement – also the # of nonprofits that are on Twitter – really active and vocal communityUniversal concept – Everyone had a tweet to contribute.Democratic platform – Wanted the small charities to have a chance.If you try this remember to:Keep it simpleGive the campaign enough time to catch onAnd just to mention a couple things that might be harder for non-media brands:Choosing the incentive: This came naturally to us, but other brands might have to give some thought to it. And for other campaigns, we would probably give more thought to it. I think it does depend on the campaign – For us with nonprofits, what we have (free publicity) is exactly what they need. So, as long as that incentive matches the needs of your target audience, you’re good.Promotion: We have the megaphone of a media organization, so this came easy to us, but that wouldn’t have been enough. Needed to reach the right audience.