Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign, 140 Characters at a Time

Editor's Notes

• #2: how many people have a personal myspace/facebook or twitter profileHow many have been active on any or all for more than 3 months?Active meaning once a day or multiple times a month How many of you are terrified of using these channels for your professional communications?Be honest
• #4: How many of you have attended a networking cocktail party?And of those, how many of you have found a great lead or contact that has helped your business through one of those events?Now, when you got to work on Monday, what did you plug into your spreadsheet, how did you report on the ROI of that event?Additionally, did you spend weeks, maybe months creating a solid plan of attack for that event?Who you are going to talk to, what you were going to say---what did your “Networking Gin & Tonic” flow chart look like?
• #5: Social Media is a cocktail party onlineYou may have heard it before and I am here to tell you that it is true.The good news is; if you have mastered the art of mingling and chatting and smiling at a party-you’ll do well on social mediaThe Bad news is; if you’re the guy or gal in the back of the room clinging to the wallpaper and your white wine, you may need to loosen up a tad before diving in.
• #6: Before we talk strategy, tactics & tools…let me tell you about myself and my relationship with Social MediaI have always been, at my core a relationship person. As a little girl I would entertain folks at restaurants and dinner parties and always wanted to help in serving them. The two fields I have operated in from the age of 16 were media by way of radio (on air and promotions) and restaurants Additionally I have always been an activist and volunteer for a large variety of organizations.In 2002 when I was opening a restaurant in Atlanta-I discovered Friendster. As I had lived in 3 states throughout my early twenties this was initially an amazing way to keep in touch with all of those people I had met along the way.In 2004 a new site was launched that allowed a ton of customization and fun applicationsThat site was called MySpaceI quickly realized this site was much more than a way to communicate with friends but was an awesome solution to having little or no budget for a website.Thus I began using MySpace to build websites for my restaurants, my personal art, my friends bands and my churches.Fast forward to Operation Smile
• #7: Operation Smile is an International Children’s Medical charity founded here in Hampton Roads in 1982 Teams of Medical Volunteers from around the world travel to developing countries and provide FREE reconstructive surgery to children born with cleft lip and cleft palateI came on board in early 2007 to help build a donor relations programWhen I arrived at Operation Smile the extent of their donor service was a tri-fold brochure sent to the potential supporter. Additionally the caller would not have been entered into our database system and therefore no follow up would have been madeOur thank you letters were lengthy and impersonal“Donor First Philosophy”We created all new letters and materials to enable our donors and supporters to better serve Operation Smile through fundraising and eventsWe built a Donor Relations call center with a focus on out-bound thank you calls as well as the original functions of inbound account servicesWe re-created how we used the database adding action notes for each call and using rich reporting for quality control and follow-upTo give you some perspective; in 2006 there were 13,716 actions recorded in our database and in 2008 there were 54, 786 actionsEach of these actions represents an interaction our team of 4 phone agents had with a donorSo in almost 2 years of very hard work and focus on our core constituents, we were able to understand how to best serve and honor our donors and supporters.
• #12: General StatsMore than 250 million active usersMore than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each dayThe fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and olderUser Engagement Average user has 120 friends on the siteMore than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each dayMore than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day International GrowthMore than 50 translations available on the site, with more than 40 in developmentAbout 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• #15: While solid numbers on Twitter activity are not readily available the power of twitter is evident in instances such as The government asked Twitter to hold of on scheduled maintenance during the recent protests in Iran as the only way people were able to communicate was through Twitter Lance Armstrong recently brought a town in Switzerland to a stand still with his Tweet “”Hey Glasgow, Scotland!! I’m coming your way tomorrow. Who wants to go for a bike ride??” where 100’s of people showed up to the small town center ALL major and most local news outlets communicate through Twitter, offer exclusive news through Twitter and field news stories from viewers through the micro-blogging site
• #16: - Additionally people like @adventuregirl and @mattsingly who tweet on our behalf and have close to 1 mill followers
• #18: After Dinner one night I was using tweetdeck where I am able to search people mentioning Operation Smile {click}@adventuregirl-Stef Michaels who had spoken with one of our development team members about our organization tweeted our mission statement (in 140 characters or less)---she now has over 1 million followers--I responded with a thanks and asked if she had ever been formally involved with Operation Smile-she said no but the following day shared a touching story about a brother that had passed away at 9 months and who had a cleft palate-she became passionate about working with Operation Smile{click}Stef was scheduled to speak at TWTRCON the first Twitter for business conference and wanted to get us involved somehow-we had a call with their organizers and quickly partnered as the conferences partner non-profitClick
• #19: Modern Media was the company putting on TWTRCON-they offered their services for strategyWe quickly realized we wanted to do something really dynamic and innovative and that we couldn’t do it alone-but we couldn’t afford an agencyClickWe approached common knowledge an agency we were working with on some web design who offered the campaign strategy and design for free we created a goal based on 140 characters allowed in Twitter and 140 Smiles was bornclickWe needed prizes and marketing tools like postcards and t-shirts so we tweeted the needs-from those tweets we got donations fromClickVirgin americaClickThreadless-a super trendy, very popular t-shirt companyclickFlip Mino CamsClickLe colonial-even the venue where we held the launch party was brought to us by someone who saw us tweet
• #20: The last 6 months have brought us to a point of discovery where we now have a solid mission for our social media use, key objectives and methods used to reach those objectives.
• #29: Facebook “Summer of Smiles” $240 - $350 each week for the last 5 week. Total earned to date=$1450 not counting what come through the main website as we have seen some use that donation method.
• #31: Key Mentions: Popular Bloggers, Huffington Post/Scarlett JohansenLeads: 140 Smiles, Demi Moore, Kodak, Venues for events