Protecting Animals Socially

Carie Lewis

Director of Emerging Media

The Humane Society of the United States

@cariegrls // @humanesociety

• Our strategy

• Where we are

• What we’re doing

• Campaign examples

• Measuring success

• Getting buy-in

• Resources and Time

• Brand monitoring

• Famous last words

What We‟ll Talk About

My name is Carie,

and I‟m a social networking addict.

We have a team of 6. How do we know how to talk to these people? We are these people!

How many of you have…

FACT: The way we communicate

is changing. It‟s not a fad. We must adapt by:

Having a presence in places where people are.

Finding new ways to engage our existing supporters where they are.

Recruiting new supporters, donors and advocates where they are.

Giving people a way to show they support us –where they are.

Giving people an easy way to recruit friends, family, and strangers where they are.

We have to accept the fact that some people will never join our email list or website.

Our Strategy• Stay on top of latest trends

• Research new opportunities

• Train staff

• Have guidelines

• Take an integrated approach

• Measure everything!

• Showcase successes

• Listen

• Don‟t be afraid to fail

• Learn from mistakes

Where We Are

humanesociety.org/connect

Fundraising is only one (small) aspect

of social networking for nonprofits.

• List building

• Community building

• Connections

• Knowledge sharing

• Innovation

• Recognition

It‟s really about building meaningful relationships

with individuals and creating a two-way dialogue

about your brand.

WIIFM?

Spay Day Pet Photo Contest

(donations / event fundraising)

23,000 Facebook app installs

40,000 contest entrants

60% utilization rate

$600,000 raised

Improvement from 31,000 // $72,000 in „08

Humanesociety.org/spayday

LOLseals Photo Contest

(awareness / list building)

3,000 entrants

2,000 new email addresses

28,000 page views

6 major industry blog entries

humanesociety.org/lolseals

TAFA Community

(community / relationship building)

26 RSVPs to Tweetup

357 hashtag mentions from 27 people

401 followers

101 people identified themselves

139 Facebook event RSVPs

1505 YouTube video views

Takingactionforanimals.com/community

IHOP

(advocacy)

Success is no longer just about

how many friends you have.

Do those friends do what you want them to?

• Sign advos and petitions

• Donate

• Recruit friends

• Re-post your content

• Subscribe to your email list

You won‟t know unless you measure and evaluate.

How do you measure success?Unique URLs (source codes)

– Advo links in blogs and bulletins

– Advo links in banners and badges

– Donation links

Click through & conversion rates

Statistics

– # of visitors and page views to quantify exposure

– Time spent on site or page to measure engagement

– Top pages and keywords to define interests

– Referring sites to find out where people are

RSS feeds (buzz)

Friend request / commenting trends in relation to other activities

…it’s not just about the money.

We started with

traditional metrics

Got the buy-in

Now tracking

social media

metrics

Don’t just tell them about it: get them involved!

Aggressive: CEO on Facebook,

Executive VP on Twitter

Passive: Communications SVP

Twitter via iPhone RSS Feed

Speaking of Buy-in…

Show results:

Twitter link on Press Releases = 300 new followers in one day

Sharing functionality on web stories = addthis now a top referrer

# new emails, donations via unique URLs (source codes)

Setting goals on # friends, followers (they get really excited!)

Leads to:

Social media links on homepage and emails

Increased resources and interest

Internet Communications Code of Conduct

Guest Tweeters in PR, Campaigns, Emergency Services

Resources

We started out with 1 person.

Now:

New branch of Online Communications

Department called “Emerging Media”

• Director of Emerging Media (project manager)

• Emerging Media Manager (online volunteer program)

• Emerging Media Specialist (brand monitoring)

• Social Media Specialist (Facebook, MySpace)

• Internet Marketing Specialist (advertising, SEO, analytics)

• 4 virtual interns

• street team

• several furry office mascots

A quick note about Brand Monitoring

There are many tools ranging from expensive (Radian6) to cheap (Filtrbox) to free!

No company or org can afford to not pay attention to what people are saying about their brand online today.

At the very least..

You should have Google Alerts

and Tweetbeep notifications

or an RSS feed from Twitter Search

for your brand name.

Why the focus on Twitter?

Twitter is the most real-time account

you have of what people are saying

about you.

What if I’m a smaller business /

organization?

These same principles can apply

People talk (a lot) on a local level.

Follow interesting hashtags and

memes!

The time to have a social media policy is NOW.

Have a policy to help your employees understand what they

can and can‟t do when participating in online conversations.

Final lesson:

Social networking is not a silver bullet

for your organization’s marketing goals.

Our email program is still our #1 driver of success.

We participate in social networking to reach an audience we might not

reach otherwise.

You need to be where people prefer to communicate.

Take an integrated campaign approach to cover all angles.

Social media can be OVERWHELMING.

.

“If you‟re working for the weekends, your shit is BROKE.

Do what you LOVE!” -@garyvee #sxsw

Thank you!Carie Lewis

Director of Emerging Media

The Humane Society of the United States

Email: clewis@humanesociety.org

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/carielewis

Twitter: @cariegrls

Blog: cariegrls.blogspot.com

HSUS Networks: humanesociety.org/connect