The ds-connex story - how one small social enterprise is striving to grow community, social media and fundraising for local Down syndrome associations nationwide

1. Ds-connex: A social media success story
September 23, 2014

2. Today’s session
• Background on ds-connex
• Social media & the Buddy Walk
• Strategic approach
• Content as cornerstone
• Key lessons learned
o Earned – owned – paid
• Measurement & metrics
• Parting Thoughts
• Discussion

3. Who am I?
• Career PR pro since 1991
• Social media advocate and
strategist since 1994
• Blogger since 1999
• Now “mom blogging” at lara-
mom.com
• Columbus transplant since 2005

4. Tony R. Wells Foundation
 Founded in 2001 by Tony and Dana Wells after selling their
international IT training business
 Mission: Create Value for the community by developing
stronger nonprofit leaders and investing in the next
generation of social innovations
 Work with more than 90 nonprofit organizations
 More than 25 years experience serving on nonprofit boards
 Vision for helping families and children with special needs –
especially Down syndrome, due to a Wells family
connection

5. Phase one: research
• Attended regional Buddy Walk events
• Reviewed more than 225 Buddy Walk events
o Number of teams and participants
o Average money raised per team and individual
o Size of market
o Staffing model – volunteer vs full time office staff
o Use of fundraising solution
o Extensive review of social media activities
o Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit
o Website performance audit

6. Phase two: analysis
Analyzed Buddy Walk research findings as well as
results of other national walk events. Keys to success:
 Highly engaged community of event organizers,
sharing knowledge about how to create a great
experience for participants
 Clear, common voice through social media to
promote advocacy and to recruit support from the
local community for sponsorship and participation
 Year-round event promotion to maintain a high level
of engagement
 Use of a peer to peer fundraising solution to expand
teams and create a healthy competition to raise
money

7. Social media research

8. Social media research

9. Social media observations
 Most Buddy Walk events have a Facebook page but
rarely update
 Only 17% use Twitter and less than 5% use Pinterest
 Audience is primarily female
 Buddy Walk events leveraging social media raise
more money than other events of equal size
 Adding new content is the largest challenge for
individual event coordinators
 Inconsistency of language about the Buddy Walk
causes confusion
 Most organizers only promote the Buddy Walk event for
four months or fewer per year
 Celebrity endorsements and press coverage are largest
contributors to awareness

10. COMMUNITY + OUTREACH + FUNDRAISING
The goal:
Increasing Buddy Walk fundraising results from
$11 to $40 million per year within five years
The strategy:

11. Ds-connex 2014: Launch
• Recruited staff with specialized skills
• Developed ds-connex website, including Connexions blog
• Converted DSACO’s fundraising solution to Stride
• Validated strategy with NDSS, other Down syndrome orgs
• Launched ds-connex in January 2014
• Rolled out national social media program for ds-connex
• Developed hub & spoke strategy for Buddy Walk partners
o Local implementation plans customized by market
o 23 Buddy Walk partners ramped up on social by May

12. By the numbers
• Grew from 12 Facebook fans to 840
engaged fans in six months
• Built Twitter following from zero to 408 fans
• Grew Pinterest following from zero to 83
• Social media is consistently the top traffic
driver according to Google Analytics
• Managed social media for 23 Buddy Walk
partners
o Total of 72 profiles monitored
o 43 profiles actively managed

13. How we began
• Strategic focus on owned and earned social media
• Content as foundation and cornerstone
• Blog posts
• Content aggregation and dissemination via Twitter,
Facebook and Pinterest
• Campaigns to encourage content creation and sharing
• Engagement and follower growth as ultimate goals
o Demonstrate credibility, authenticity
o Lead by example
• Daily social media monitoring/listening

14. Simple, effective social strategy
1.Perfect your profiles
• Ensure bio, about page or description is complete and includes
website
• Demonstrate expertise, credibility, humanity in each post
2. Listen more than you speak
• Search for key words across platforms
• Observe conversations before you jump in
3.Build your community
• Develop relationships over time
• Focus on engagement
4. Contribute great content
• Share ideas and insights through status updates
• Focus content on audience – not just on your own needs
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15. Content strategy
• Differentiation through unique content
• Posts modeling community building
• Social media knowledge sharing
• Fundraising tips, especially about online
fundraising and peer-to-peer
• Showcase positive, inspirational content
about Down syndrome
• Give ‘em what they want

16. Recommended content ratio
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17. Creating a content calendar
 Can include many social platforms
 Can be done in any format (Excel, Word)
 Use as a guide; be able to adapt accordingly
 Beware of over-reliance on scheduling
 Use Facebook Page Insights and URL shortener analytics to
determine which type of content is most appealing
 Think beyond text to great visuals
 Keep character count in mind – less is more!
 Align messaging and themes with other marketing communications

18. Listening strategy
• Why listen?
o Content
o Ideas
o Trends
o Compliments
o Complaints
o Pain points
• Free listening tools
o Hootsuite
o Facebook and Twitter Lists
• Down syndrome associations (includes Buddy Walk
organizers) on Facebook
• Buddy Walk organizers on Twitter
• Down syndrome associations on Twitter

19. Using Lists as a tool
• What are Lists?
• Hand-selected group of contacts with a
common interest
• Create your own lists or subscribe to lists
created by others
• Viewing a list will show you a stream of
content from only the users on that list
• Benefits of using Lists:
• Easily segment followers, fans or influencers
• Industry experts
• Media outlets/reporters
• Monitor competitors
• Follow or participate in events in real time

20. Using hashtags
• Useful in organizing and tracking trends
• Use Hashtag.org or Tagboard to find and track relevant tags
• To search hashtags, go to your navigation bar and enter it into the search
field. Results will populate below
• Searches can be saved by clicking on the gear
• Recommended uses for hashtags:
• Find people/organizations with similar interests
• Create conversations around a brand or event
• Create structured online events (Twitter Chats)
• Monitor topics of interest (i.e., causes, conferences, etc.)
• Discover new sources and information
• Quickly assess sentiment

21. Following to gain followers
• Ways to find new Twitter
followers:
• Find through Twitter
search
• Use Twitter’s
recommendations
• See who is following/not
following you
• Communi.It
• Use Twitter directories
• Twellow
• WeFollow

22. Engagement strategy
• If content is king, engagement is queen!
• Ask questions
• Answer questions
• Use humor
• Figure out what gets the best engagement –
and do more of it

23. Growth strategy
• Organic (earned/owned only) growth is
S-L-O-W! (About 6% per year)
• Great content, solid engagement are the
foundation
• To increase growth, it makes sense to
“boost” with paid campaigns if you can
• Start small – experiment in $5 or $10
increments to see what works. Hint:
Facebook typically drives more results
than Twitter

24. #DownsyndromeDads campaign
• Facebook photo contest to grow our community, gain more
followers, showcase our commitment
• Timed to Father’s Day 2014. 22 entries (dads nominated by
wives, friends, selves)
• More than 65,000 Facebook users viewed the nominees'
inspiring photo entries. Ds-connex more than doubled our
Facebook fans (from 120 to our current 307 fans) and
increased our Twitter following by 10% (from 250 fans to our
current 276). Per Google Analytics, we drove almost 300 new
visitors to the ds-connex website in one week, and had 318
unique views of our blog post.
• Full details available at
https://storify.com/larak/downsyndromedads-facebook-
campaign

25. Paid media strategy
• Boost what is already doing well organically. Great content
becomes great ads
• We "boosted" our social efforts with small ad buys on both
Twitter and Facebook.
• Our tweet about #DownsyndromeDads reached 23x our usual
reach, thanks in part to $20 in ad support. However, these
results were not high enough to encourage us to invest in
Twitter ads again for this particular program.
• Our boosted Facebook message about #DownsyndromeDads,
however, was our most successful Facebook post ever, with
an organic reach of 1,048 and a paid reach of 15,153

26. “Like” drive campaigns
• Facebook does not allow you to buy
page “likes” BUT you can make a
donation for likes
• We undertook like drive campaigns with
select partners we knew were our
biggest fans
• Gained approximately 200 new page
likes from each campaign (and donated
$200 to each Down syndrome group)

27. Community-building strategy
• Whenever possible, we lift up local
Buddy Walk events – whether our
partners or not
• Buddy Walk of the Day
• Messages of congratulations and good luck
before their events
• Tag other pages and organizations
whenever possible
• Ask our fans to share our content with their
friends and family

28. Blogger relations
• Research the top bloggers in your topical or
geographic area
• Find them via Google searches, ask around, check
your Google Analytics inbound links
• Create Facebook and/or Twitter lists to keep track of
them
• Down syndrome bloggers on Twitter
• Down syndrome bloggers on Facebook
• Follow and like their content. Leave them comments.
Link to their blog posts.
• Develop relationships over time so when you have an
“ask” they’ll be receptive!

29. Metrics & measurement
• Facebook: page likes, people talking
about, engagement, post reach, shares
• Twitter: followers, @ replies retweets,
favorites, lists, engagement
• Pinterest: followers, likes, repins,
comments
• Positive, unprompted mentions on any
social platform
• Social media as a top traffic driver
according to Google Analytics

31. Five stages of social media sophistication
Level 1
• Ignoring social media
Level 2
• Experimenting with social media
Level 3
• Supporting marketing campaigns with social media
Level 4
• Developing and executing a social media strategy
Level 5
• Embracing social media holistically throughout
organization
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32. Top 5 social media mistakes
1. Just having a profile (often incomplete)
2. Self-promotional spamming
3. Assuming social media replaces networking
4. Thinking others will flock to you
5. Not being able to handle negative comments
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33. Who’s using social media?

34. Commitment is critical
• Consistency is key to building and cultivating a
community online
• It can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but with a
strategic approach, a social media program is very
manageable
• Aim for 15 minutes per day at first
• Build up to an hour per day if you can
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35. General social etiquette
• Participate in conversations as if with
someone in real life whom you respect
o Talk like a real person
o Try to express your unique personality in your
posts
o Be helpful and bring value to the conversation
o Remember to always be professional in
communications
• Pay attention to how community members
interact with each other
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36. Recommended resources
• Hootsuite.com – free social media management
tool
• Smart Brief on Social Media – stay in the know
about top social news
• Explore Facebook Insights as well as the Analytics
areas of Twitter and Pinterest
• Look at your Google Analytics to see which social
sites are working hardest for you!
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37. Thank you for your time!
Questions about social media:
@LaraK (Twitter)
Lkretler@frazierheiby.com
614-702-2126
Questions about ds-connex or Stride:
Twells@trwellsfoundation.org
614-571-5195