Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Association launches social media campaign

My association has launched its comprehensive social media campaign "Your Piece of Maine", to start the conversation about buying a home in Maine. It has many parts -- a commercial airing on cable television (and that video clip can also be used other ways/places), print ads, a Facebook group, LinkedIn group, blog, extensive email campaign (with many partner organizations), palm card distribution at numerous events, and a YouTube contest asking the Maine public to post videos about their "piece of Maine". Grand prize for the contest is $20,000 - with 10 other cash prizes.

To give you an idea how well this works (and only 3 days into it):

1. Lead story on state television stations (they also posted on web);
2. Analytics show that Facebook third largest referral to our contest site;
3. Numerous in-state bloggers agreed to blog about it (and are);
4. Print media publishing stories about it;
5. Members posting video clip (commercial), links to the contest site on their company sites ...

Much more ahead, and really creative things rolling out during next 7 weeks. Such as the "back stories" on everyone in our commercial and ads, including the baby (which appears in a commercial we haven't posted yet) and the dog. For the contest, we also have "celebrity" judges tied to our "under 35" demographic -- and anticipate more interest as those announced at later time.

The other huge benefit is the opportunity to discuss social media with the membership in a way connected to their business (not just forum for them to talk with each other) -- those who already know how to use social media instantly knew what to do to help us. Others who have never thought about adding video to their site, or building social/professional networks online are learning how to do it as they learn about our campaign. So during these 7 weeks adding additional member education on "how to do a YouTube video", "what's Facebook", "how to podcast", etc. And our association will further use these tools for legislative purposes in the future as well ... Stay tuned ...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea, Cindy!

KareAnderson said...

What an apt mix of social media. I am struck by the growing number of associations (finally) involving members in ways that highlight their best contributions. Earlier this year I spoke at a conference of state bar association presidents and executive directors.

Just before I spoke th Texas asn. presented the winning citizen YouTube contribution on the theme of "standing up for justice." Drew tears to my eyes.

The exec director who described the contest and Facebook involvement was so proud. It was truly moving and an apt set-up for my closing keynote.

With your blog you are inspiring so many others in the association world to take the leap into the social media pool.

One of my most controversial posts was on how a low-cost social media venture could steal members from an association.