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04 monitoring improvements through funnels
- 1. Linking communities to outcomes Long funnels for fun and profit
- 2. 9 followers 9 reach
- 3. 9 followers 9 reach 4 followers 16 reach
- 6. 10% 25% 50% 25%
- 7. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4
- 8. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4
- 9. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4
- 10. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4
- 11. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4
- 12. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4 50% 75% 100% 50%
- 13. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4 50% 75% 100% 50% =4
- 14. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4 50% 75% 100% 50% =4
- 15. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 4 2 = 11
- 16. 10% 25% 50% 25% =4 0.4 1 2 1 = 4.4 8.4 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 4 2 = 11 15
- 17. 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 1 =6
- 18. 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 1 =6 25% 50% 50% .5 2 1 = 3.5 14.5
- 19. Downstream reach (aggregate followers) 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 1 =6 25% 50% 50% .5 2 1 = 3.5 14.5
- 20. Downstream reach (aggregate followers) 50% 75% 100% 50% =4 2 3 1 =6 Amplification chance (how relevant the content 25% 50% 50% is + what the recipient thinks of the sender) .5 2 1 = 3.5 14.5
- 23. What might a community do?
- 24. It might spread a message.
- 25. That message could be viral* * Average number of people someone tells >1
- 26. It might accomplish a goal
- 27. It might accomplish a goal Visits
- 28. That goal might be inviting others
- 29. That goal might be inviting others Invite process
- 30. Seed Spread Impressions Visits Shopping cart Payment options Conversions Higher likelihood of conversion
- 31. A communilytics funnel Visits Shopping cart Payment options Conversions
- 32. A communilytics funnel Reach (impressions) Visits Shopping cart Payment options Conversions
- 33. A communilytics funnel Seed (starting community) Reach (impressions) Visits Shopping cart Payment options Conversions
- 34. A communilytics funnel Seed (starting community) Reach (impressions) Visits Shopping cart Amplification (virality and Payment options message spread) Conversions
- 35. A communilytics funnel Seed (starting community) Repurposing Reach (spread to other (impressions) communities) Visits Shopping cart Amplification (virality and Payment options message spread) Conversions
- 36. Different funnels for different communities and goals
- 37. Viral message spread Reach (impressions) Emphasis on Visits getting virality ratio above 1 Shopping cart (Retweeting, Fan, Email Payment options forward, Reddit upvote) Conversions
- 38. Megablogger proponents Seed (starting Emphasis on community) convincing highly- Reach followed, highly (impressions) acted-upon seed Visits group to spread the word. Shopping cart Payment options Conversions
- 39. A call to action Reach (impressions) Visits Shopping cart Emphasis on maximizing Payment options impression-to- click ratio within Conversions the community
- 41. Create Seed something of value it online
- 42. Create Seed Watch something of value it online its growth
- 43. Create Seed Watch Respond something of value it online its growth to it
- 44. Create Seed Watch Respond Lick something of value it online its growth to it your wounds
- 45. Amplify any interest Create Seed Watch Respond Lick something of value it online its growth to it your wounds
- 46. Repurpose in new ways Amplify any interest Create Seed Watch Respond Lick something of value it online its growth to it your wounds
- 47. Repurpose in new ways Amplify any interest Create Seed Watch Respond Lick something of value it online its growth to it your wounds Mitigate mistakes honestly
- 48. Communilytics case study Beers for Canada
- 50. Preparation...
- 52. Presence Twitter hashtag & account Facebook group
- 53. Monitoring Realtime/short-lived campaign Google Alerts, analytics less effective Searches within platforms (Twitter, etc.) Clicky Paypal checked manually
- 54. Seeding Several days before Asked proponents to help Sent calendar invites On the day Checked that they had mentioned it
- 55. Launch
- 56. Tracking
- 61. Post-mortem
- 67. Goal attainment: funnel 20
- 68. Goal attainment: funnel 20 Followers
- 69. Goal attainment: funnel 20 Followers 700,000s
- 70. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s
- 71. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2
- 72. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing
- 73. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 RT
- 74. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 2,000 RT
- 75. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: 2,000 RT 2.9%
- 76. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642
- 77. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23%
- 78. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% 32
- 79. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% Conversions: 1.95% 32
- 80. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% 7 Conversions: 1.95% 32 10 15
- 81. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% 7 x $100 Conversions: 1.95% 32 10 x $20 15 x $7
- 82. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% 7 x $100 Conversions: 1.95% 32 10 x $20 15 x $7
- 83. Goal attainment: funnel Seed ratio: 20 35,000:1 Followers 700,000s 2 Repurposing 150 Amplification: Visitors: 2,000 RT 2.9% 1,642 0.23% 7 x $100 Revenues: Conversions: 1.95% 32 10 x $20 Average: $39.54 Median: $20 15 x $7 Total: $1,005
- 86. Goal attainment: attention 300% traffic increase to Visible Government Bounce rate was only 51% Over 25% of visitors wanted to learn more about the campaign. MSM attention
- 87. What we got wrong.
- 88. A short timeframe limits others’ ability to build online context about you.
- 89. Plan out your whole message before you send the first tweet.
- 90. Schedule things, and have a single coordinator for the life of the campaign.
- 91. Be transparent and obvious.
- 92. Have a clear call to action.
- 93. Don’t waste time with Facebook for spontaneous campaigns
- 94. We should have Define known how well these were (or analytics weren’t) working! goals better.
- 96. Personal claims of action work best.
- 97. Have an FAQ–and update it.
- 99. You only get one chance to make an impression.
- 100. Make the site interactive.
- 101. Spread your messages over time.
- 102. Give donors a way to tell others automatically.
- 103. Respond in person.
- 104. Keep people updated.
- 105. After the campaign, have a next step.
- 106. What we got right.
- 107. Build analytics into the process
- 108. Make the action obvious
- 109. Don’t build it all yourself
- 110. Make the spread trackable
- 111. Make it easy to reach us
- 112. Have a good cause
- 113. Test a lot
- 114. Have a simple, catchy message
- 116. Set the goals up front
- 117. Use calendar meetings to remind promoters
Notas del editor
- ALISTAIR START Consider two key attributes of your community’s members: Followers and reach. Followers is “naive” popularity; Reach is their ability to deliver the goods.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- But it’s not this simple. In addition to followers, we have to consider reach. In a Twitter model, for example, each community member may amplify things. I’m much more likely to amplify certain people than others.
- (If you think this isn’t the case, then ask: Why is Twitter formalizing Retweets? Simple -- this is how you calculate Pagerank for people, which you can then monetize. And why )
- Let’s talk for a minute about what a community might do.
- It might spread a message to others
- If that message is popular and interesting, it will amplify itself
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- It might accomplish a goal you want it to achieve
- The goal might even be to help other people become community members (enrolling, subscribing, and so on)
- The goal might even be to help other people become community members (enrolling, subscribing, and so on)
- The goal might even be to help other people become community members (enrolling, subscribing, and so on)
- The goal might even be to help other people become community members (enrolling, subscribing, and so on)
- Well, each of those users has a chance of turning their impression into a goal conversion.
- Putting all of this together, we can start to imagine a communilytics funnel that reaches far beyond traditional web funnels, and incorporates measures of spread, amplification, and reach.
- Putting all of this together, we can start to imagine a communilytics funnel that reaches far beyond traditional web funnels, and incorporates measures of spread, amplification, and reach.
- Putting all of this together, we can start to imagine a communilytics funnel that reaches far beyond traditional web funnels, and incorporates measures of spread, amplification, and reach.
- Putting all of this together, we can start to imagine a communilytics funnel that reaches far beyond traditional web funnels, and incorporates measures of spread, amplification, and reach.
- While you’re watching communities to see what they say about you, you may as well see what they’re saying about your competitors.
- For example, a community you want to spread a message to virally means you have to focus on making it easy to amplify the message.
- By contrast, a campaign like a fundraiser might involve a small, influential set of seeders who have considerable reach.
- If you want a community to do something (like signing a petition) you care about the ratio of impressions to clicks a lot.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Most community management processes involve several stages, starting with the creation of something (a message, an offer, a destination.) Then, as you’re engaging a community, or running a campaign, you’re constantly adjusting, tweaking, amplifying, and mitigating what’s happening. The message is out of your control, but you’re shepherding it.
- Visible Government is a Canadian organization aimed at improving citizen/government transparency. We wanted to bring attention to the organization, and also raise money for a “code for Canada” project involving students.
- Before we started the campaign, we got things ready.
- We built a simple website encouraging people to “buy their country a beer” on Canada Day
- We were only on a few social networks. But we did set up a presence on them beforehand and define the tags to use.
- We used more real-time analysis tools.
- Knowing this would rely on megabloggers, we asked folks we knew who supported the cause. We made sure to use a calendar invite to remind them, because Canada Day is a holiday -- we wanted their PDA to tell them to Tweet!
- We launched the event by mentioning it, knowing others were ready to amplify and seed the message. But we (I) made a mistake -- anyone see it?
- Over time, the message spread. We used tools like Streamgraph to understand what was being said, and join in with the conversation according to the sentiment.
- Since the campaign was short-lived, we couldn’t adjust much (other than responding to people’s inquiries.) But we could try and sustain the buzz a bit, which happened because of the value we found hiding within the story.
- Recap article explaining the campaign ran afterwards, bringing more attention (though not more donations -- that was over)
- Which in turn got picked up by Beth Kanter, a nonprofit expert
- And covered by Canadian Marketing magazine
- After we were done, we put up a tally slide.
- Very spiky traffic profile reflects the short-lived campaign.
- Most mentions are direct (really coming from Twitter, but referrals are awful.)
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- We reached prominent online personalities -- though it was only around 20, they had hundreds of thousands of followers, giving us a 1:35,000 seed ratio. A few people mentioned it on other platforms or their blogs, but not many, so repurposing of the initial message wasn’t high. The message was retweeted a modest amount, and those people’s follower counts were small, meaning it only amplified by 2.9%. Remember, it needs to be >100% to be “viral”! We only saw 1,642 total visits, but that translated to about $1,000 in donations. Conversion rates were less than 0.2%, which we attribute in part to the passive message we used at first. In other words, the tone of the campaign emphasized attention (”visit this page”) over conversion (”please donate”).
- Traffic to the Rednod article was high, and more long-lived, extending the life of the subject
- Beth has a far broader reach than VG or Rednod (both of which are too small to even get on Compete’s radar.) So the repurposing led to a broader audience. Many people thought Visible Government was a new organization, even though it had been around for some time.
- Attention generated. Our bounce rate — the number of people who saw one page, then left — was only 51%, which is great: over 25% of visitors wanted to learn more about the campaign. What’s more, Visible Government saw a huge spike in attention. Compared to the previous week traffic spiked by 300%! We also have several conversations with the press underway as a result of the campaign. Enrollments in Visible Government’s google group, and offers of help, also grew.
- When you’re running a fundraiser, people want context. It’s a catch-22: If you do something quick and spontaneous, you’ll build excitement and mystery, but you won’t have the time to inform bloggers and the press about what you’re doing far enough in advance for them to provide details and perspectives. If you tell bloggers too soon, you lose the excitement.
- We carefully crafted website copy but didn’t think enough about who would tweet what, when. In a real-time campaign, your copywriting isn’t done when you publish the site. It’s constant, and it needs to be planned.
- At noon on June 30th, one of us put out our first tweet–and forgot to use the bit.ly URL that would track the spread of the campaign. This would have been avoided by having an initial schedule, and then having a single person adjust that schedule as things progressed and feedback came back from the analytics tools and the campaign. You simply can’t assume that ’someone’ will do it.
- Make sure the people affiliated with the campaign are clearly identified. I was personally thanking a lot of our supporters but my connection to either the campaign or Visible Government was not clear since it was coming from my personal account. Not only does this keep your campaign transparent it help you build you reputation and social capital making it more likely you will get those people back for a donation. One possibility would have been to temporarily change our avatars to include a visual cue–like the Visible Government maple leaf–for all those officially behind the campaign.
- The website was pretty blunt about donations. We set it up, then told the world. What we quickly realized was that the Tweets themselves–not just the website–needed to be clear what we were asking people to do. Were we asking people just to tell their friends? To donate money? To watch the hashtag? To visit the site and learn more? In Twitter’s 140 characters, there’s only room for one call to action. You need to tell people what to do and make it easy for them to do it.
- Facebook is for slow burn, Twitter is for ADD. Twitter’s like speed dating: you see something, and quickly decide if you want more. By contrast, Facebook favors a groundswell of support: as more and more of your friends like something, you do too. The duration of your campaign affects which social networks you’ll rely on. We shouldn’t have wasted time on Facebook for a campaign of this duration.
- We didn’t take the time to implement goal funnels within the system, which was a shame. What’s more, referral URLs are useless in a world where many Twitter users rely on Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, or the Twitter client on their Blackberry or iPhone. To address this, we should have segmented shortened URLs using Google’s URL builder to inject metadata into the shortened URLs so we’d get a better idea of visitor source.
- Megabloggers like Tim O’Reilly, Om Malik, Austin Hill, Michael Geist, Tara Hunt, Mathew Ingram and others generated a ton of traffic and awareness. But the messages that generated the most donations–rather than just visits–were those where the RT testified to an action. Someone who said “I just bought a round – you should too” generated far more actual donations than someone who just said, “check this out”.
- We drafted an initial FAQ that had lots of information in it, as well as links to Visible Government. We were able to direct people here if they had questions. But we were missing certain pieces of information (for example, why donations weren’t tax deductible) and took too long to respond to questions and update the FAQ.
- Tweets about hashtag visualizations showing campaign growth, mentioning who was blogging about us, and retweeting others all kept the dialogue going, but they were done ad hoc and should have been better planned.
- We live in an information-starved world. People will only click on a link once unless they think there’s new news. So if your first message says, “check this out,” they will. If after that you say, “donate to this cause” they’re less likely to: they’ve already seen it. Only when there’s new information–”50 people have bought their country a beer”–will the audience consider revisiting things.
- If we’d provided people with somewhere to comment or share their thoughts–or even to suggest how the donations should be used–we’d have had more raw material for the campaign and could play back these comments to the online community that was discussing it. This also gives people a reason to check back and see how the discussion is progressing. Again, with a 36-hour campaign, this may be a lot more effort than you’re willing to expend, but we might have been able to use a Subreddit or some other already-built system.
- Lots of people agreed to help spread the message, but it happened all at once and the initial message quickly lost traction. It would have been far more effective to have one person mention us, then let the second person tell the world all the great things that happened after the first mention, and so on. By firing all of our guns at once, we didn’t let the message “snowball” and build on existing momentum. A campaign like this needs lots of ’seeds’ to get the message out.
- We made it possible for people to tweet the site from a link on the site. But we should have had an option, selected by default, that made a tweet saying, “I just bought the country a beer and you can too.” This should have included a different shortened URL or analytics link, so we could differentiate first-visit traffic from viral donor traffic.
- You can’t plan for everything so make sure you are ready to answer any questions both publicly and promptly. Also, thank people for their donations — but respect their privacy; if you can thank them through direct messages, great. If they made a sizeable donation, you can acknowledge it by saying, “someone just donated $100″ (or in our case, “someone just bought the country a round.”) Don’t single out donors publicly as they may not want the attention.
- If you’re tracking donations, tell people about the progress. Celebrate big donations or interesting blogs. The more you can show people that others are doing things, the more engaged they’ll be. Appeal to their inner lemming. We could have build a dashboard for statistics (donations, reddit ranking, retweet count, page views, etc.) We did discuss the amount of transparency we wanted (which is ironic for a transparent government initiative.) The real dilemma here is that you need to wait until the news is newsworthy. If we’d said, “hey, we have a total of $14 donated!” people would have discounted the success of the campaign.
- There’s a lot of positive sentiment about Visible Government now. We have some great ideas for how to use the money, including the forthcoming Code for Canada contest and an initiative to get computer science students to develop transparency applications. It’d be great if we had this ready to discuss when the campaign ended, because it would allow us to continue and amplify the engagement that the campaign generated. Plus, it’d let people feel good about what they’ve done. In other words, every campaign is part of a bigger picture of long-term connection with donors, markets, and audiences.
- We built analytics into the process. We used http://bit.ly/ (to track viral spread), Google Analytics (for goal conversions), Paypal audit accounts (to see donation amounts) and Clicky (for real-time web analytics.) Clicky is essential for short-term campaigns because it provides minute-by-minute visitor information, whereas most analytics tools only show traffic daily.
- We made the action obvious. We had one simple goal for people to accomplish on the donation site: donate. We even broke it into three different tiers (beer, pitcher, and round) to make it straightforward.
- We didn’t build it all ourselves. We used Paypal for donations; while it has its issues, it’s also a well-known and trusted brand, and we seem respectable by association. We also used free services like Google Groups and Clicky. This means we didn’t need to code too much.
- We set up tracking with hashtags and keyword searches. This meant we could watch the activity online and amplify it or respond to questions.
- We had plenty of ways for people to reach us. We had links to the Visible Government website, and generated enquiries there. We also linked to the Google Group discussion, which added new members and triggered conversations.
- We had a great cause. The simple fact is that without a decent motive, you won’t have much success. People felt they were doing their civic duty by mentioning us, which helped spread. If your cause isn’t just, people will feel icky promoting it.
- We tested it a lot. Even though we didn’t find every mistake, the launch was surprisingly smooth because we verified it properly and used real infrastructure (from our friends at Syntenic.)
- We had a simple, catchy message. “Buy your country a beer” was strangely patriotic, and people liked it. Made To Stick is the bible for clear, simple messages. Early on in the design process, we were tempted to overload the message–something like, “Buy your country a beer and promote open interactions between federal government and Canadian citizens.” That wouldn’t have worked because it wasn’t simple. But “buy your country a beer” is intriguing. Remember that the tagline’s purpose is to provoke interest. Once you’ve got someone’s attention you can do things with it.
- Set up Reddit, Digg, and other social news aggregators. We put badges on the Beers For Canada website encouraging people to Digg us and promote us on other social news aggregators. This made it easy for people to support us and spread the word.
- We set the right kinds of goals up front. How do you know you won if you don’t know where the finish line is? One of the first things we did was set goals for the campaign. We wanted to see donations, of course, but we also wanted to see unique visits to the Beers for Canada site and how many went further to the Visible Government site. When we started we had no idea how the campaign would do so we focused less on numbers (500$ or 5,000 site visits) and more on what we wanted to achieve (visibility and engagement.)
- We used calendar meetings to remind promoters. This was a neat trick. When we asked people to mention us online, we sent them a calendar invite as a reminder. This way we knew when they’d do it, and since most of the people we asked had an iPhone or a Blackberry, they could do it from wherever they were–particularly important on a holiday (though as you’ll see below, in hindsight we could have spread those out more over a longer period of time.)