The Knight News Challenge saw significant increases in awareness and engagement through strategic use of social media. With a small part-time team and limited budget, they increased traffic to their website by 47% and unique visitors by 50% through activities like blogging, local meetups, an online community called the Garage, use of Facebook groups and events, emails, and outreach to influencers on Twitter and elsewhere. Their plan focused on measurable goals in awareness, buzz, application diversity, and community building. Executing regularly over two months through various social media channels helped generate over 2,000 applications and engaged hundreds in local events and discussions online.

1. Case Study: Knight News Challenge
2008‐09
Using social media to drive
awareness & engagement (while
being lean but not mean)
Susan Mernit
Seizing the Moment conference
August 2009

2. How to use social media tools—Facebook, TwiMer, Flickr
& blogs—to create awareness for your project that will
get you new audiences, deeper user engagement and
more buzz—without a lot of cost: a case study.

3. Knight News Challenge (newschallenge.org):
 Annual compeQQon awarding $5MM in funds to projects that support
local news and discussion in specific geographic communiQes (3 yrs)
 Open compeQQon, anyone can enter, products MUST be open source
 InternaQonal reach, proposals sought from wide range of communiQes

4. Goals for 2008‐09 challenge:
 Improve quality and diversity of
applicaQons
 Improve peer support and peer
mentoring experiences at start of program
 Strengthen internaQonal applicaQons,
parQcularly in Asia What we had to work with:
 Part Qme team of 3 people: 5 hours a
week each for 2 months
 $2,500 events budget
 Free social media tools
Results we achieved:
 47 % increase in traffic to newschallenge.org
 50% increase in unique visitors
 17,000 uniques at site last day of compeQQon, 100%
increase
 224 blog posts about program compared to 24 the
previous year
 Vibrant community: 1,800 registrants for NC Garage

5. So how did we do that?

6. Made A Plan w/Measurable Goals
Goals:
 Increase awareness in tech &
social media communities
 Create viral buzz,
blogosphere
 Diversify applications
 Build community
Tactics:
 Orchestrate program of blogging
 Local meet-ups
 Build Garage, peer review/mentoring
 Multiple Facebook groups & events
 Email blasts across the world
 Outreach to key influencers
 Multiple twitter accounts 2X day for 2
months

7. Executed plan, on a schedule
• Built 2 month, 3X a • AcQve flickr groups;
week schedule for blog • #hashtag, #knc09
posts; asked reviewers • 2X week email blasts
to blog
• 9 live meet ups across
• Assigned main
US over 2 months
twiMerer; retweeted,
thanks others for • Video tesQmonials
retweets • Repeated contacts w/
influencers, bloggers

8. Budgeted Qme & money
• Time • Money
– Assigned staffers, – P/T social media
distributed Qme over community manager for
week 2 months, 15 hours week
– Minimized lingering, – Free spaces for meet‐
turned social media OFF ups, soda & chips for
– Weekly call discussing snacks
roles, impact, goals for – No hotel bills; planned
week with Knight travel

9. Results
 2,323 entries submitted
 60,000 mentions of “Knight
News Challenge” on non-Knight
sites in 2008; 110% increase
from 2007
 1,800 registrants, Garage;
50% applied
 400 attendees, live meet-ups;
50% applied
 700 links to mentions of the
events indexed in Google, 30
photos on Flickr tagged Knight
News Challenge meet up)
 Write ups NYT, Valleywag

10. Why did this work ?

11. Social Networks are growing VERY
Twitter Facebook
QUICKLY
FriendFeed Flickr YouTube

12. Adults have joined FB & TwiMer
In the past year, Twitter traffic has grown 3,700%; minutes
spent on Facebook have increased 700% in the same time
frame
In the U.S, total minutes spent on social networking sites have increased 83 percent year‐over‐year.
Visitors aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 49 were the highest indexing age groups on Facebook, represenQng 27
percent and 23 percent as more likely to visit the site than the average user, respecQvely.

13. And it’s on our phones.
Yes, even those crappy
cell phones…

14. Web resources for follow‐up
 Social media for social action, Susan Mernit, white
paper documenting social media outreach by The Knight
News Challenge & others
http://susanmernit.com/services/
 Beth Kanter’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social
Media-http://beth.typepad.com
 Deanna Zandt, forthcoming book, Share This! How You
Will Change the World With Social Networking!
(Barrett-Koehler) &her blog: http://deannazandt.com
 Rebecca Leaman, Wild Apricot’s Non Profit Tech Blog,
http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog
 SocialBrite, social tools for social change,
http://socialbrite.org

15. Real Time Resources to learn more
 Public Media Collaborative, volunteer group
dedicated to free and low cost training in social
media—next training October 23, 2009, Oakland,
CA (http://bit.ly/1UkVC)
 Net Squared Net Tuesdays, monthly meet-ups
at Tech Soup Global, San Francisco, next
meeting, September 8, 2009, 6 PM,(
http://www.netsquared.org)
 Non profit boot camp, Craigslist Foundation
http://craigslistfoundation.org/schedule.html

16. Thanks for listening!
Susan Mernit
mernit@gmail.com
Twitter: susanmernit
Watch for Oakland Local, new community site coming in September,
http://oaklandlocal.com
News for the people