The Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is a racing, car show, and charity event that raises money for organizations supporting autism. The event attracts 250,000 people annually, most of whom are middle-aged professionals from Western Pennsylvania. This document discusses using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote the event, engage attendees, and attract more sponsors to raise more money for charity. It analyzes the demographics of social media users and how to build communities, share relevant content, foster conversations, and ultimately drive people to support the event and its causes through donations and sponsorships.
3. What are we? The PVGP is a Racing event The PVGP is a Car Show event The PVGP is a Charity event Raising money for the Autism Society of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Valley School is the ultimate purpose $$$$ We raise money through donations & $ponsor$ $$$$
4. Who is our audience? 250,000 people attend over the course of the event 200,000 people attend on race weekend Age Range: 16-82 Mean Age: 47 77% Male 80% are Professionals 94% own their own home 21% own their own business’ 20% are from Pittsburgh 68% are from Western PA 12% are from outside PA
7. Explain how you can helpThe Ultimate Goal: More Sponsors = More dollars to the charity
8. The 4 C’s of Social networking Communities Content Conversations Conversion http://socialmediasonar.com
9. 1. Communities Traditional advertising is about interrupting. Social media is about sharing and interacting. 78% of social media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, an increase of 32% from 2008. 95% of new media users also believe companies or brands should have a social media presence. 89% believe that they should interact with their consumers using social media. Its important that you build communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter that are made up of your prospects and clients.
10. 2. Content Content is King No hard selling DO NOT communicate a sales message DO IMPLY a sales message Consumers want entertained, informed, and educated. If they like your content they will probably like you. If you share good content consistently over time they will likely begin to trust you. Social media provides great vehicles to share video, photo’s, written, and audio content.
14. A “Thumbs Up” on a Facebook wall You need REPLY BACK to these responses or there is NO conversation.
15. 3. Conversation: The important thing THE KEY: You put out a message or content and someone chooses to respond. These conversations and those among others will have an impact. 51% of respondents say that social media has influenced their online transactions. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
16. 4. Conversion All of the pieces should work together to lead toConversion. Common mistake: Send people to the home page. It builds traffic but may not help build DIALOGUE. 5 Actions of the Landing Page: Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s) Get a visitor to buy Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course. Get a visitor to tell a friend (all the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback
17. Twitter is a free social networking (micro-blogging) service that allows users to send and read messages known as “Tweets” “Tweets” are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the authors subscribers “Followers” Twitter was created in 2006
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20. We’re following, Racers We’re following Vintage tweeters We’re Following Car makers We’re following Race Teams We’re following Local organizations We’re following Autism
23. Top Insights: January 5th, 2009 The 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate in over the approximate 6 months since we last produced this report The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months For those interested in advertising alcohol on Facebook, there are 27,912,480 users 21+, representing 66.3% of all users Miami is the fastest growing metropolitan area (88.5%) and Atlanta (6.4%) is the slowest There are more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) on Facebook – 2.2% are of unknown gender. The largest demographic concentration remains the college crowd of 18-24 year olds (40.8%) which is down from (53.8%) six months ago. Take away? Parents and professionals are rapidly adopting Facebook.
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28. Facebook auto news feeds to Twitter which reaches out to a world audience! If it posts on FB it posts on Twitter which then pushes it to be VIRAL!
29. 30% (9 million) earn nearly $93,500/year. 69% read blogs, and 9% maintain their own blogs. 28% (8.4 million), senior executives earning a mean of $104,000/ year 22% (6.2 million), use LinkedIn because friends convinced them to join. This group is careful about who they connect to, and only connect to people they know in person. They earn nearly $88,000 per year 21% (6.1 million), are the hard-core job searchers. 70% of this group is employed full-time but actively looking for another position. Of all four groups, this one skews the youngest and most female (52%). They earn just over $87,500 per year and have a work purchasing power of $84,000.
Editor's Notes
There are all of these social networking sites out there which one, if any should we use. What audience do they serve? We’ll look at each one and we’ll find that each of them can serve as a different tool in an multi-faceted social media marketing program
We represent several things - depending on whom you are talking to. We’re racing to some, car shows to others and we hope everyone knows we’re a charity event. The key point here is that we have different audiences and each is interested in a different aspect of the EVENT. By recognizing that we represent different things to different people we can tailor our social media marketing to each demographic segment.
These are fantastic demographics. There are sponsors our there who WANT this demo. And WE WANT THEM. But who are they? How will they know about us? You will call and talk to a salesperson if a friend tells you how great it is but you won’t talk to a salesperson who calls you up and tells you that you’re a perfect match.
These are fantastic demographics. There are sponsors our there who WANT this demo. And WE WANT THEM. But who are they? How will they know about us? You will call and talk to a salesperson if a friend tells you how great it is but you won’t talk to a salesperson who calls you up and tells you that you’re a perfect match.
Before we continue we should review the 4 C’s. This is really the basic of social networking from a branding standpoint
Social media is about sharing and interacting. As you can see from the demographics this IS the new way to go to market. We, and I mean that collectively as consumers (prosumers) are on the front end of this new media trend. Many companies have not figured out how to use these communities. It’s like walking into a room full of people and everyone is talking and everyone is a potential new customer. Where to begin?
What should we provide? What are the do’s and don’t’s” Many companies are desperately trying to figure out how they can get some conversation going via their content. WE HAVE CONTENT and car people and racing fans LOVE to talk. We have it ready made for us to get them a discussion topic which you will see when we reach the SpeedTV forum area at the end of this presentation
THIS IS THE BIGGEST THING TO GET OUT OF THIS PRESENTATION. CONVERSATIONS. This is the “word-of-mouth” that all of the marketing hub-bub is about. THIS is what our goal is. Get people talking about our events, races, shows, cars, and our charities - and they tell two friends and then they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on…..It’s word of mouth and it’s free advertsing
Conversion is “taking action” whether it be to pass it along (share it on facebook, retweet it on Twitter, email it to a friend, or sign up to attend an event or participate Bernie – is landing page your website?
50% of the activity is Conversation, News and Passing it along… This is in effect, free advertising. It’s ‘word-of-mouth” sales
Twitter attracts college students and Grad students as well as the 35-49 age group. Basically this is our existing demographic for the PVGP. However, the real key to this is the 18-34 age group. This is the next generation. This is the group that advertisers are trying to reach…. And this is a segment that is growing for us.
This is what our Twitter site looks like. 957 people we are following, 245 following us. We’ve “tweeted” 184 times
We follow active racers like Danica and Reubens and Paul Tracey because we want them to follow us. Racers talk to sponsors! We follow vintage tweets for obvious reasons. We follow car makers from around the globe to so that they can turn around and follow us…. Then they are paying attention… they are prospects sponsors. We follow local organizations like the Pgh Tech Council and Global Pgh and the Museums because we are all partners in driving tourism and if they want to do an event in conjunction with race weekend without our asking then that is good because they market for us to. And, lest we forget we follow autism issues because all the other groups need to know what our charity event is really about and learn more about Autism and mental retardation.
Here is who is following us!
NOTE: GET A BETTER DEMOGRAPHIC TABLE HERE IF AVAILABLE. IF NOT. Note the growth areas in bold…
Boomers and GenX’s are one of our target demos and they are the target demo of our ideal sponsors. The sponsors who want this demo WANT US as well. Facebook is a good medium to enable those sponsors to find US
Our FBdemograhics marry what we already knew… However, not that the 35-44 age group is bigger for us on FB than the event. This is the next generation of volunteer leaders for the PVGP
We have more younger females following us on FB. The 25-34 bracket is a growth area for us as well.
When you go to the Groups Page of My Speed you will find the PVGP group page listed on the first page of groups. This says alot about the interest in Vintage Racing and our event as the listing is based upon the number of “views” on each site. Given that the “Pinks” and “Wind Tunnel” are shows and that “Speed Fanatics” is a marketing program for all of SpeedTV this says a lot about the interest level of the racing crowd in our event. Note also that “Formula 1” ranks very high here as well. According the the folks at SpeedTV, the OnLine demographics are a bit different than what the TV audience is. The online demo (AND IT’S TARGET AUDIENCE) appears to line up perfectly with OUR demographics! THAT IS A BIG BIG DEAL
There are a couple of network functions you can do on the main page of our group. This is what the page looks like if you have not been here yet.
Here is the most important Stat! We have had over 6601 Profile views of our page since we launched it in late November. NOW, here is the BIG BIG deal: Note the forum topics area. THIS is where we need to be on Speed to really go after and draw in conversation. The PVGP does not have a “forum” site and when we talked to Speed about using their group page as OUR forum they loved it! BUT this is where we need some help. We need to generate conversation HERE and drive traffic here. IF we drive traffic here we will get traffic to the PVGP site… but, and this is important, if we drive traffic to Speed their people will pay attention and then maybe, just maybe we can get coverage of the race or some events… AND BIGGER SPONSORS as speed would sell this to them and THEY WOULD HAVE TO BUY BANNERS, ETC. FROM US
We have created forums for all of our events. People can log in, post pictures, ask questions and post comments. EVERY event has a forum and we can change the dates year to year so that there is a running history of the fun that people have had…
Each Car show and Car club have a forum page. That means that each club and each show can garner more interest from an international audience and thereby continuously improve the caliber of the cars that show at our event! Better cars = better tv coverage = better sponsors. Again, we need people to log in and post some information to generate conversation
This is what it looks like when you go into the Cortile Forum… there are a number of discussions started and you can comment on any of them or start your own. NOTE the number of views on this… we just need some more people to participate in the discussions because no one but me is doing it and that means everyone else is afraid to be the first to comment
Now we have drilled all the way down into the the specific conversations. As you can see I’m doing a lot of talking to myself. Items in blue in the topic are HOT LINKS right to the Cortile page